Mr Richie in Walldorf!

Two nights ago the one and only Lionel Richie's less famous younger brother Simon Richie played a live gig right here in Walldorf. Unbelievable!

Brilliantly, I was able to hear the concert loud and clear from my very own balcony, thus managing to evade the rather steep €2.50 entrance fee they were charging. Ha, Walldorf Dave one, Simon Richie nil!!! Mr Richie played a wide range of truely astounding classics such as Hazy (Like Every Morning), Say Poo Say Heehee, and 'Allo 'Allo is it René you're looking for.

Apart from Phil Colins, who you have to like if you live in Walldorf otherwise you will be banished, I think our Simon is now one of my favourite veteran singer/songwriters. Maybe he'll even come back and play at the asparagus festival next year - that would be excellent.

Apparently, he also played a gig in Weil am Rhein yesterday. Here's a copy of the poster they used to advertise that concert as I couldn't find the one for Walldorf. I guess they were all stolen and burned by the angry Phil Collins fans.

I Love Sundays

Sorry about that last post, I don't know what happenned. I was just reading back through what I'd written and I inexplicably fell asleep and banged my head on the keyboard - I think I may have briefly dislocated my forehead but I'm alright again now.

I'm looking forward to my Sunday this coming weekend because it's one of my favorite days. Here are some reasons why I like Sundays:

1. I don't have to go to work
2. Therefore, I'm always in a good mood
3. Sundays are quiet
4. I can't do the washing on Sundays, as the spin cycle might disturb the neighbours
5. I go on walks on Sundays and not much else

Maybe that sounds boring to some people but I suppose it's just the way you look at it. Anyone who disagrees should read Simon's blog entry on attitude from 20th March (http://postcard-from-weil.blogspot.com/2007/03/attitude.html).

Riesling

Before I start this post I just want to say that this is all my own work and as such is only my own opinion...

Ever since working on a vineyard in the Pfalz in the summer of 1997, I've had a dislike for German wine, particularly Riesling. I don't want to get too much up myself here, but, for me, the Riesling grape produces some of the worst (white) wines in the world, the lion's share of which originates from Germany. Fact. Forget the sordid pleasures of Napa Chardonnay or the kinky gooseberry of Hawkes Bay Sauvignon, Riesling is the wine we should all avoid.

For decades German wine exports were fighting a losing battle for the hearts and palates of discerning international wine lovers. Drowning under a deluge of mass-produced Blue Nun and Liebfraumilch, Germany's winemakers were unable to shrug off the justified stereotype of German wine being the sweet concoction your Nan got tipsy on every year at Christmas. Something had to change, but nothing did change.

Firstly, some background information. The cause of German wine's fall from grace can be traced back to the German Wine Laws of 1971. Under pressure from the country's powerful Liebfraumilch-producing concerns, the politicians oegfnvnvfmkobvgfmdkmesdlöfgg

Fastnacht

Sorry I haven't written anything for a while but it's been kind of hectic here in Walldorf recently what with Fastnacht last month and of course the excitement of the asparagus season fast approaching. Fastnacht (or Fischnet in the local dialect) in Walldorf is one of the best shrovetide festivals in the entire South-West Germany and Switzerland area. It all begins at 11.11 on the Thursday (or Schmozig Donschdig in the local dialect) when Lord Mayor Herr Barry Klug dresses up as a Wasp and opens the festivities with a cry of "LET'S GO CRAAAZY". From then on it's non-stop fun and frolics all the way to the Tuesday (or Faschnet Dinsdig in the local dialect). Fun really is had by all with local people doing wild and crazy things such as cutting people's ties in half, drinking tiny bottles of liquor and wearing amusing hats. In Walldorf there is a huge parade (or is it procession? Actually, who cares?) and people can even throw confetti any time they wish, which I thought would be the case everywhere but according to somebody called Grenzgänger on The Brits forum, in Basel you can't throw confetti until midday (http://www.thebrits.de/index.php?topic=3445.0)
How rubbish is that!!! Anyway, I just wanted to write a bit about that because it's an event not to be missed, and the Hauptstrasse is the place to be, and I should know because I watched it all on my computer over the live webcams!

Subway

Great news! Subway, the fast food sandwich chain, is opening a new franchise in Walldorf this Spring. I love Subway, the only thing is that the new store is moving into Walldorf's best and only specialist doily shop, Horr. Heaven only knows where I'm going to get my crocheted lace table decorations now. Disaster!

Anyway, I had a look on the Subway website and found this rather interesting article:

Christmas and New Year

Merry Christmas dear readers and all the best for 2007!

Christmas was a fairly quiet affair here in Walldorf. I spent most of the time sitting down but also a bit of time standing up and walking around. I particularly enjoyed my Christmas dinner which was the traditional meal of chicken with a side helping of ravioli followed by an anchovy sandwich and a cup of hot chocolate. Yum!!!

One rather exciting piece of news is that there were a couple of earth tremors in Walldorf over the yuletide period. However, as these occurred on a daily basis approximately 30 minutes after lunch, I strongly suspect that they were "man-made" (as was the case in Basle in December) - in fact, come to think of it, one or two suspects spring immediately to mind.

My favourite gift this Christmas has to be my new camera. It really is a handy little gadget and I'm still trying to get used to the fact that I can take it with me everywhere I go. The best thing about it is that I don't even need to worry about carrying a couple of spare flash blubs around all the time - it actually has a flash build in! How fab is that! Anyway, now I've got my new camera I don't need my old one any more so I've organised for a crane to come and take it away. It may have been a bit on the big side but the picture quality was fantastic.

Ho hum, that's all for now. I'm dying to get into Walldorf with my new toy and get some photos before it gets dark. There are some lovely new roundabouts in Walldorf and, call me weird if you will, but I want to go and see if any of them are shaped like feminine hygiene products.

Simon's Comments

I was pleased to see this morning that Simon had left a comment on my weblog under the Frankfurt entry. I was hoping it might be some kind words to thank me for helping him promote his blog or maybe to offer some useful advice on how to improve this blog as Simon is obviously much better at this kind of thing than me.

Anyway, it turns out that the comment just contains 2 links to different websites - I haven't had a chance to have a look at them as yet as I've been quite busy doing some administration but from the names of the websites "lovethebeast" and "zooaccess" I assume they are links to some kind of animal charity organization such as the RSPCA or the WWF. Simon certainly strikes me as the kind of person who loves beasts of all shapes and sizes...a very accommodating young man by all accounts.

Here's a picture of a monkey and a dog:




















And here's a picture of Hulk Hogan:

Frankfurt

I was in Frankfurt yesterday to do a bit of shopping at the Christmas markets and I couldn't believe what I found there. It would seem that Simon has a very innovative, effective and aggressive marketing strategy for his blog because Frankfurt, which is a LONG way from Weil, was completely covered with stickers advertising postcard-from-weil. When I got home I even found that somebody had stuck 127 of the stickers to the back of my Pierre Cardin coat and I never even noticed (I was a bit tipsy on glühwein though). Each sticker had a nice picture of Simon on it in various poses. I think I liked the one of Simon in his pyjamas best as it was a little bit sexy and seemed to say "Want more of this? Come, read my blog". What mortal could resist?

On a slight tangent, here is a picture of a shop with an open door:















And here's a picture of a shop with a closed door:














Not much difference, I think you'll agree...

Simon in HD

I was just checking super-blog postcard-from-weil to see how the bridge to France is progressing and apparently, Simon, the author of the blog, was in Heidelberg last weekend. That's just quite spooky because Heidelberg is quite close to Walldorf where I live and I was actually in Heidelberg on Saturday night but unfortunately I didn't see anyone in a pink polo shirt which is what Simon said he was wearing. Maybe I was in the wrong kind of bar.

Man Hit by Bus

An unfortunate incident occurred yesterday in the neighbouring town of Wiesloch. A man, aged 31, was hit by a bus in the main street and sufferred slight concussion of the elbow! Poor fellow - that can be sore! Although, according to our local paper, the Walldorfer Rundschau, the man was listening to some music on a walkman (or ipod) through earphones at the time of the accident so to be honest I don't really have very much sympathy for him. Not to mention the considerable damage loud music can cause to the eardrums, listening to music on a walkman (or ipod) through earphones whilst walking around town is downright foolish as it renders you oblivious to oncoming dangers such as busy traffic, vicious dogs or angry gangs of youth. I never listen to music on a walkman (or ipod) through earphones and I've never been hit by a bus so that proves it. I have had concussion of the elbow though...and the shoulder...ouch!

I recently read an interview with Who guitarist Pete Townshend. When Townshend (60) was asked whether his hearing had been irreversibly damaged from using studio headphones, he replied: "Pie and peas with a little bit of mash".

Point proven me thinks!

Power Grater

Wow! Look at this...

It's a power cheese grater!!! I really had no idea such a wonderful gadget existed! The advert I saw for it reads as follows: "You will always be ready to grate cheese, bread or chocolate at the push of a button". Yes, AT THE PUSH OF A BUTTON! Amazing - what will they think of next! Although why anyone would want to grate chocolate and bread is a mystery to me but just think of the time you could save if you had one! Like eggs, cheese can be pretty tricky - I sometimes spend up to 3 days just grating a bit of cheese (very nice on top of ravioli) so one of these would literally change my life and leave me heaps of valuable time for other things I like doing such as not watching films and not playing games on my computer. It's quite expensive though at €69 so I'm not quite sure whether I should risk investing in one. Maybe I'll think about it for a few months...yes, I think that's the best thing. There's no sense in rushing into something I'm going to regret later on is there!

Over One Billion Users

Crikey - I've just read that the world's population is 6,499,697,060 and internet penetration for the whole world is 16.7%. That means that potentially potentially 1,086,250,903 people could be reading this blog right now!!! Now if that isn't a scary thought I don't know what is. It's made me feel a bit queasy actually and a bit of sick just came up...I can taste this morning's ravioli now!!! I mean, these words could influence people from right across the globe - obviously I realise that not all parts of the world have the Internet. Poorer places like Afghanistan, Burkina Faso and Keighley still have very low percentages of internet usage but it's still quite impressive to think that people from Australia (g'day mates), South Africa (Howzit), and China (erm..hello) might be interested in happenings in little old Walldorf!!!

Spargel

One thing that Walldorf is famous for is asparagus - they love it here. In fact it's so popular that every year they have a Spargelfest (asparagus festival) where the local people gather to eat asparagus (which is horrible), drink asparagus schnapps (which is horrible), and listen to music by Phil Collins (which is horrible).

Somebody once told me that asparagus can make a man stay up all night so last year, even though I don't really like it, I had some asparagus because there was a film about wine making that I wanted to watch on tv and it didn't start until 3am. Anyway, the asparagus didn't work at all. I managed to stay fairly alert until about midnight because I kept my self busy polishing my woods but then I fell asleep before 1am! And all that happened is that my wee smelt funny for a week! I think next time I want to stay up all night I'll go back to the more traditional coca cola and wine gums!

Here's a picture of Bob Hoskins (who looks a bit like Phil Collins)

Wine - Tasty

I had a nice glass of wine yesterday. I think it was a "Markus Molitor Zeltinger Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese 2001 Mosel Saar Ruwer" but I'm not sure. It had some melon and apple character on the limey, minerally nose. Rich textured yet precisely defined on the palate with lovely density of fruit. I'm afraid when it comes to wine I wouldn't really know a Claret from a Bordeaux but I know what I like! Anyway, I liked this one because it tasted of apples, and I like apples because they remind me of apple tart, which reminds me of custard, which reminds me of trifle, which reminds me of Christmas, which is my favourite time of year. That's mainly because of the Good Will To All Mankind thing, which is nice every now and again, but also because of the Christmas crackers and the excellent jokes you get in them. Last year, the joke I got in my cracker was this:

Q: What did the grape say when the elephant stepped on it?
A: Nothing. It just let out a little wine.

Quality!

Here's a computer image of some Christmas crackers:

Chairs

I don't think Walldorf is particularly well-known for its chairs but it does have an awful lot of them. Most of them belong to people who live here and they are generally used for sitting on although some are occasionally used as rests for people tying their shoelaces or polishing their boots. In addition to all the chairs that are owned by local people, Walldorf also has an Ikea, which is a huge swedish furniture shop that has lots of chairs (over 200 different varieties*). Here is a picture of a chair that is rather amusingly called PONG hahahha!













* May not be true

Holiday Park

Went to the holiday park in Hassloch the other day. Went on the Freefall Tower. It was good. Much better than Europa Park, which is somewhere near France.

HELLOOOOOOOO WORLD!!!

Greetings fellow bloggers, or readers of blogs, well everyone really,

I was surfing on the interweb one day last week - I think it was Thursday but perhaps it was Friday- yes it was Friday because I was looking for the previous week's results of Strictly Come Dancing (which is on BBC1 every Saturday and is brill) (come on Peter!) (or Emma - she's lovely and she can dance well too) and I wanted to send a virtual postcard to Bruce Forsyth to tell him how great the show is and how funny his jokes are, and anyway, because I was in a place called Weil in Germany not so long ago I decided it would be nice to send a postcard from Weil so I typed it into google and was directed to a website called postcard-from-weil... what a stroke of luck. But no! Disaster! As it turned out this is not a site that does what it says on the tin as I could find no function whatsoever for sending postcards from the town in the title or anywhere else for that matter. Anyway, as I was there, I decided to read some of the words on the site (there were pictures too but they weren't very interesting) and I found out some rather fascinating information about Weil am Rhein with its abudance of chairs and a very very (very very) long bridge (that isn't open). Anyway, sorry about that slight tangent - the be all and end all of it is that if Simon can do it then so can I. So here is my blog called postcard-from-walldorf - Walldorf is much better than Weil so I think I might be able to make this blog just as interesting as Simon's.