A Bavarian breakfast in Prince Rupert

This weekend Jeremi's ship was in Prince Rupert for a port visit in the middle of their two weeks of "Sovereignty Patrol". This is when they go up and down the coast and prove that we're a country looking after it's own borders, or something like that. Anyhow, I decided that it would be fun if I flew in for the weekend to visit him there. (He's got a woman in every port but it's always the same one.)

While we did get a chance to visit the waterfront, some shops, a couple restaurants, and a bar, the only pictures we took were at the hostel in which we stayed. It was called the Black Rooster Roadhouse, and was a fabulous place. It looked like it had been recently refinished and refurnished, and our room was great, with a full private bathroom and cable TV. Not bad for a hostel! And, being a hostel, there was a full kitchen, conveniently located next to our bedroom.

One of our favourite things to do on weekend mornings is to cook up a "Bavarian breakfast", first introduced to me by a German roommate I had in Montreal. It involves big bready pretzels, weisswurter (white pork sausage), and weissbier (German wheat beer), all served with Bavarian sweet mustard. Now starting the day with a beer or two might not make for the most productive weekend, but if your plan involves sitting on the couch and doing a crossword puzzle, it's not a bad plan.

Anyhow, we tried to have this breakfast last weekend when Jeremi was home, but it didn't work out so well. Usually I make the dough, but I was rather ill still with the flu so he was making it and letting me sleep. Unfortunately it didn't come out quite right, and was actually beyond repair. We were going to start again on a second batch but he'd used the last of the yeast on the first batch. Running out to the grocery store sort of defeats the purpose of having beer and sausages for breakfast, so we nixed the Bavarian breakfast for that weekend.

Anyhow, since I knew there was going to be a kitchen where we were, I decided to bring the breakfast to Prince Rupert. So I brought along a couple of beers wrapped in clothes, a batch of frozen dough, made up the night before, a package of sausages (also frozen the night before), some coarse salt and a bit of flour knotted into a plastic bag, a single egg (for brushing the tops of the pretzels), a pastry brush, and a silicon baking sheet for easy cleanup without having to bring something to grease the sheet. And of course this was all in my carry-on luggage, which, needless to say, they searched at the airport after seeing odd things on the x-ray. I realized at the last moment that we didn't have the right mustard in the house so I had to make do with a take-out container of honey mustard dipping sauce from a restaurant at the airport in Vancouver.

So we did manage to make our Bavarian breakfast in Prince Rupert. Unfortunately the other part of our plan, doing the crossword in the Saturday Globe and Mail, rather fell apart. It seems that the Saturday Globe doesn't actually make it to Prince Rupert until Sunday. This didn't enter into our calculations. Nor did the fact that this morning when I had to catch the bus to the ferry at 8:25 that it would be before sunrise.

One final bit about the trip to Prince Rupert - the airport there is on an island, Digby Island, and there's a ferry which brings loads of passengers from side to side, and a bus that picks up everyone from the airport and brings them across on the ferry and right to downtown. The bus is the only way to get there - you can't go meet people at the airport there, you meet them at the drop-off point downtown about an hour after their flight actually arrives. This morning while taking the ferry across (during a beautiful clear-sky sunrise), the bus wouldn't restart on the other side. This caused some delay as they had to figure out how to hook the bus's battery up to the generator run by the ferry's engines so as to give the bus a boost. After that all was fine, but it led to a cold wait on the bus. I think the view made up for it though. Things really are a bit different up north.

And now Jeremi's got the camera with him on his ship, so there should be new pictures next weekend showing scenes of life aboard HMCS Calgary. Check in to see more then!