Wasted

Well, having had a long-standing¹ arrangement to meet up with Sho and Trillian's Child in Koblenz on Easter Tuesday, Reddyfreddy and I awoke rather more than the worse for wear. You see, since I'm moving back to the UK later this year, I decided it was a good idea to run down the stocks in my alcohol reserves and so we'd had a cocktail inventing evening the night before. We started with a fine tuning of our 'Charlodka' recipe. This was a combination of bison grass vodka and apple juice that we'd been introduced to in Warsaw, but we wanted to check whether the bison grass was essential and so did a blind tasting with that one, plain Absolut, and vanilla vodka. And yes, the bison grass stuff is the best. So there.

So far so good - and so onto the first cocktail invention. I imagined that vanilla vodka and pear flavoured liqueur had promise, so proceeded to swoosh equal measures of these with a dash of blue curaco in my cocktail shaker before pouring them into cocktail glasses. We toasted. We sipped. We christened them 'viletinis'.

Freddy's turn next and he came up with a combination of banana liqueur, rum, cane sugar... and after that revealed itself to be too sweet, we drowned them in grapefruit juice. 'Grababanana' we came up with as title. But hardly earth-shattering.

And so to effort 3. Gin, cointreau, blue curacao, half measure of lemon juice and a dash of angostura bitters. Aha! Success! A beautiful emerald green colour, a nice tarty orangey flavour. This was good! We christened it 'Emerald Star²'. And made some more to check the recipe.

So you can imagine how we felt the next morning...

There Ain't Nothin Gonna Ace This

But we had set our alarm clocks, duly woke at 7 and thought 'yeah we really should get up and atom and fulfil our researcherly duty'. We forced ourselves into showers, put ourselves on the outside of some restorative scrambled eggs and headed for the train station. Recognising the high chances of us falling asleep on the train, we re-set our mobile alarms and settled back for the rather lovely journey along the Moselle, through picturesque hamlets and steep vineyards. Made contact with TC en route and arranged our meeting place - a pizza shop just opposite the station.

Lunch was a most enjoyable affair while we shared hootoo experiences; things we miss as expats³, thoughts on radio stations and linguistic variations. Since only TC and RF had met before, once briefly, there was a lot of getting to know you stuff. Now, the loos in this establishment were accessible by a rather labyrinthine corridor, and the 'Ladies'' had a confusing mirror which got bumped into a few times. But we left trails of breadcrumbs to lead us safely back to the fold.

And We're Gonna Go To Space, Kid

And so we consulted the tourist map and headed for the Deustsches Eck, where the Mosel meets the Rhine. We were blessed with lovely weather (although it started raining when we put our sunglasses on) and it was extremely pleasant to admire the boats on the river, the snap-happy tourists and the roller-blading local kids. We climbed the massive monument to Kaiser Wilhelm and, since TC refused to mount the stairs, I was declared the rotten egg as being the last to achieve the summit. We sussed out the surrounding tourists for possible victims to take a picture of all 4 of us together, identified a potential photographer, approached him in German, only to discover that he was English...

Cos I'm Leaving With An Astronaut⁴

Sight-seeing complete we repaired to a nearby beer garden by the rivers and talked of many things, of cabbages and kings, of drool threads, children, and life as an army brat. Sho was astounded to discover that she had been to school⁵ with the first girl that RF had kissed - small world indeed! We felt it necessary to investigate the toilets here, too, and discovered some very odd piped George Michael⁶. No hootoo meet being complete without a quiz, we played a quick 'intros' round, Buzzcocks style.

The sun began to sink, casting its golden glow over a fire boat spraying its pumps, and we wandered lazily back towards the station, past the erotic shops, seeking a suitable pub in which to finish the afternoon. An establishment of the required standard having been located, we enjoyed a final refreshing local lager and discussed recent (and not so recent) hootoo controversies, before having to catch the train home.

As dusk settled, our train snaked its way along the Moselle and RF and I shared reading a book. Conscious of the fact that he was flying home to the UK the next day and I didn't actually know when I'd see him again, I put my arms around him and kissed his neck.

'I know' he whispered.

LuckyStar

07.04.05 Front Page

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¹Ooooooh, at least 3 weeks.²After me. You do know I'm Irish!³Krackawheat! Parsnips! Cranberry juice!⁴Special prize to anyone who gets the reference. ⁵Reminder to Sho - you have to write a Guide Entry on your alma mater⁶One of his songs, I mean.