Back to Durbach
I could not leave Europe without another walk (my third) at Durbach.
Durbach is in Germany, just across the Rhine River from France’s Strasbourg. Access is easy. TGV fast train from Paris to Strasbourg. Then a local train to Offenburg. Then a taxi to Durbach (the buses are hard to find in Offenburg).
My taxi driver moved from Russia (then USSR) to Germany during the !970s. This was the days of Brezhnev, so I could hardly blame him for Putin. Germany was a great place to live, he recounted. But things are now deteriorating. High cost of living. Increased crime. And weak, ineffectual politicians.
As per my routine, I went to a nice cake shop/cafe before I started my walk. It was “very German”. Lots of cream cakes and customers fatter than me. Fortunately, my server, Alexandra, cut a slim figure, and was very nice.
Durbach is a long narrow town with vineyards climbing sharply up the slopes on both sides. On past visits, I clambered up both sides from which you get spectacular views of the vineyards and down on the town.
So today, I walked up a hill slope. Thanks to beautiful weather – a perfect blue sky and 22 degrees – I had wonderful views. I came across two gentlemen (father and son) planting some new Riesling vines (see photo). They said that their vineyard has been in their family for over 200 years.
As I have previously discussed, Durbach makes very high quality wines, red and white, and from a range of grape varieties— notably Riesling and Pinot Noir.
Knowing the bus stops in Durbach, I took a bus back to Offenburg. I chatted with a fellow passenger. He works on software for security management. He works from home 4 days a week, and goes to the office in Freiburg one day a week. He despairs at the state of the German and indeed the European economy. Europe is too old and stodgy, and lacking in new ideas and dynamism. Germany is behind IT.
Europe needs a new Maggie Thatcher, he claimed. I asked him about Angela Merkel. He argued that she was basically reactive to outside events, and was not a proactive leader. Despite the madness of Donald Trump he admires America’s technology and dynamism.
When I arrived in Offenburg, I lunched on Germany’s most popular delicacy, the “doner kebab”, at a cheap Kurdish restaurant. With the popularity of doner, sauerkraut is suffering from fading glory.
It’s amazing how Europe’s migrants are changing local eating habits. The British prefer chicken tikka to roast beef, while the French now eat more couscous than steak frites. This is one of the many ironies of Europe’s anti-migration movement.