the Weinmeile

Last weekend was a long weekend in Germany, due to Pentacost (or Pfingsten), and we had Whitmonday off work. Every year on Pfingsten weekend the wine region to the north of Jena, along the junction of the Saale and Unstrut rivers, which Jeremi, Marie and I visited last summer for a bike trip, has a big festival. It's called the Weinmeile (wine mile - the link is in German), and all 32 little wineries over the 6 km from Bad Kösen to Naumburg open their doors on Saturday and Sunday, serving wine, cheese, and heavy German snack food to passersby.

I mentioned it to Calin and Susanne, and we decided to ride our bikes up to Bad Kösen and across to Roßbach and take the train home from Naumburg (just past Roßbach). The weather has been simply gorgeous the last couple of weeks, and it was a perfect day for a bike trip, about 25 degrees with blue skies. The ride was great, down along the bike path that runs along the Saale river. It stays mostly in the valley, so the hills aren't too brutal, and it's only about 40 km to Bad Kösen. Along the way we stopped at the ruins of the Cyriakskirche, which was a convent (I think) founded in the 10th century. It was just 100 m off the bike path, and worth the short walk.
There was a spooky staircase into a cellar there too, but none of us ventured down...
And had we continued on from there, it was only another short 1.3 km to get to Hell, as this sign helpfully indicates. (Hölle means Hell in German, for those of you wondering what I'm on about.)

We stopped for a light lunch and our first bottle of wine just a bit north from here. While it wasn't officially the Weinmeile yet, we were pretty hungry. In the courtyard where the restaurant was I saw the biggest pigeon ever. I know it's not clear from this picture how big it truly was - the size of a chicken, I swear. Susanne was trying to chase it so that she'd be there for scale, but it was too quick. While eating we saw other giant pigeons with different colouring, brown and white, and it became clear that they kept some variety of giant domesticated pigeon, and that this wasn't just a massive everyday pigeon with a severe case of leucism.

From there we continued on toward Bad Kösen. Around Saaleck we crossed the river and I saw the castles high up on the hills above that we rode by last summer, with 38 C heat. Luckily this time we had a proper map of the region, which clearly showed the alternate path of the bike path which avoided the hill altogether. I'm sorry I didn't know about this last year, Marie, but the view really was nice from the top...And finally we saw the sign - we'd made it to the beginning of the Weinmeile. Calin isn't confused about which way the arrow is pointing - he's just practicing some of his male model moves.
From there on in it was a long stream of people, wine, food, wine, animated discussions (in both German and English), wine, trying to ride our bikes through throngs of people, wine, wine princesses, wine...The place shown above had quite a nice set up, with live music and a variety of food. As we sat and ate and drank at one of the long communal tables, there was a group in front of us who were all singing along and doing actions with the song that the band was playing. We didn't know it, but they all did, including all the actions with bunny ears, lassoing, making a tail, holding the reins etc. Some of these actions come up in later photos as we attempt to relive the moment.Ah yes, here they are now, with bunny ears and lasso, and a bottle of rosé. (Jeremi and Marie, if this looks familiar, it's the same place we stopped for rosé at the top of a very steep hill.)
By this time I was having lots of fun! (Note the vines growing in the background.)
Susanne may have been feeling the effects as well...
We met lots of friendly people along the way too. I think it was at this place that we sat down with a group of older people who were all wearing small glasses in leather holders around their necks, so they didn't have to pay the deposit on the glasses at each place. (Also quite popular were giant snail shells made out of pottery which were hung from the neck.) To say cheers they said something like "long live Karl Marx" (a free and approximate translation), and one of the women just couldn't get enough of hearing Calin speak Dutch. They were lots of fun.Now it was getting a bit darker......and then suddenly it was night time. Seeing as it's not getting dark now until around 9:00, the evening really surprised us, as did the fact that we'd been drinking for over 7 hours at this point:
Hmmm... This picture of the top of Susanne's head (and the ubiquitous bunny ears) doesn't seem quite right...
Ah yes! I just had to aim a little lower.
Did I mention that we'd been drinking???
And don't I look like I'm up to something?
Here's a picture of the last place we went to (at least as I remember it, which is not so clearly). Here we made a bunch of friends, including someone named Heidi, whose number I saved in my cell phone under the heading "4". Luckily Susanne remembered her name the next day. There was a band playing here too, and people dancing...
...and then we were dancing too!
Ah yes, it was a drunken night. A nine-bottles-of-wine-for-three-people night. Luckily Susanne managed to guide us to the train station in Naumburg (I fell off my bike once on the way, and Calin fell off his twice), and we caught the last train to Jena that night. We had checked the train schedule earlier, but really didn't think that we'd spend so long there. While it was convenient that we caught the last train, it was unfortunately a night train, which requires a reservation (costing 19 euros per person, and 7 euros per bicycle, for a 25 minute trip that usually costs <10 euros). We honestly didn't know that it was a night train when we got on, but the conductor wasn't entirely understanding. We pled (genuine) ignorance, and argued, and she threatened to call the police, and Susanne got upset when she told us that we were too drunk and stupid to understand, and I got indignant and thought that she should call the police, and Calin was slightly more reasonable and got her to settle for 19 euros for the three of us (and our bikes). I think she only agreed because we were almost in Jena at this point. Still, at least we made it home.

That night we changed our original plan which had been to go up to Cospeda, and slept instead at our apartment in the city which was closer. The morning found us all a little the worse for wear, me the most of all, but by the afternoon everyone was doing much better. None of us even got headaches, the usual curse of too much wine, which maybe says something good about the wines from this region? Who knows. In any case, we had a great time, and can't wait until next year, but we're going with rules next time. Perhaps alternating bottles of wine and water, or setting an upper limit on the number of bottles, or a time limit so we get the right train, or perhaps all three. There was much discussion on Sunday about whether we'd have been as drunk if Jeremi had been there - perhaps we would have split the same number of bottles four ways instead of three? We'll have to wait for next year to see if that's the case.