It takes the Kirschtorte

Update Three

Voila! Here is the third one of these. We have been here for almost two
months, so it is time to say that Europe is officially a good place to be
most of the time! The biking is really fun, the beer is great, and the
weather has been awesome recently. We just miss our friends and our puppy.

We have to start out by finishing the story of Dave and Dave. We had to
resort to just calling them #1 (Kausch) and #2 (Holland), for it was much
less confusing. I believe when we last left off, #1 and #2 were in
Amsterdam, exploring the Dark Side of the Force. When they returned, the
four musketeers departed for Hornberg, Germany for a three-day weekend.
(Belgium has sooo many holidays in May!) We stopped off in Metz, France,
because that is my brother-in-law’s last name. This city was one of two
unexpected gems of our weekend, and quite possibly Europe. We stopped in
for lunch, but (Voila!) fell in love with Metz before our second beer. It
is a gorgeous town – clean, old and beautiful. It thankfully lacks the
soft-coal-burning-black-soot-covered stone facades (I’ll bet there is a
Dutch word for this that is equally long) associated with the buildings in
many other cities in Europe. The people were also very pleasant.

In fact, for the whole weekend, everyone was nice to us and really went
out of their way to please us. We decided this was because our itinerary
took us to towns where few out-of-country tourists go – Metz, Hornberg,
and Baden-Baden. These are less touristy towns, except Hornberg, which is
a tourist town for Germans. We rarely ran into someone who spoke English.
Anyway, I would recommend stopping in Metz if you are ever near it.

After a long drive, we arrived in Hornberg late in the day Saturday.
Because of the length of the drive, the car was abuzz with disparaging
comments about Kathy’s choice for the weekend…until we entered the
valley. Hornberg is exactly that, a valley town nestled between two steep
mountain ridges on the edge of the Schwartzvald – the Black Forest of
Germany. As you enter the town, you first catch a glimpse of the Hotel
Schloss Hornberg – a four-story yellow house halfway up the mountain and
perched precariously overlooking the valley. It is adjacent to a stone
wall, the remaining portion of a castle.

The hotel was immaculate – nice rooms, and a dining room overlooking the
valley. But the service took the kirschtort! (that pun was for Roger and
#1). Kirschtort is Black Forest Cherry cake, for those of you who haven’t
seen “Young Frankenstein”. We asked if it would be possible to rent some
bikes for #1/2 so that we could go mountain bike riding. The receptionist
said she would take care of it; she just needed to know what time we would
ride in the morning. OK, 9? The bikes were ready to go and pretty nice,
too – Raleigh USAs with STX components. Oh, and here are your helmuts. All
the way to Germany, and yes, the U.S. bikes are the best. Good sign.
Patrick wants to know if we know where to go? (map and trail guide
provided) It’s pouring rain, do we require ponchos? (Here you go, #2). The
ride was awesome. The rain did not deter us. #1, #2 and I took off into
the Schwartzvald. We started out on a fire road and did a lot of climbing.
Fortunately, it was not too steep, since it was the first mountain that I
had ridden in two months, and the first time that #1 had ever been
mountain biking. This is worthy of further comment, since #1 lives in
Portland which has excellent trails – and he rides the exercise bike at
the gym? Tsk, Tsk. I predict he will buy a bike this summer and begin
riding more – he is a natural… Eventually we came across a single-track
trail off the fire road. Yes, we took it, and climbed even more. The
vistas were stunning and we felt as though we were the first ones to reach
this remote area in years, until we saw the German Boy Scout camp at the
top of our climb!

We took some solace in the fact that none of the boy scouts passed us up
the hill, and after a couple of s’mores, we headed back down. The wet
trails were challenging because there are quite a few flat rocks and lots
of tree roots crossing the trail. But we pointed our front tires downhill
and had a good time letting our rear tires do what they had to do. We
returned to the hotel muddied from head to toe and all testosteroned out.
A good time was had by all. Special thanks to Patrick, who disappeared
with our bikes to clean them and prepare them for the next day’s ride.
“Tomorrow, I will school you California boys!” he exclaimed as he turned
away.

After showers, a beer, and surviving lunch in a local German restaurant
(thank God #1 brought a German translation book), we headed off to
Baden-Baden. It was a 1.5-hour drive in the rain that #1 and #2
conveniently slept through. B-B is the second gem of Europe. It is another
immaculate town, but is even cleaner than Metz. There is much more money
in B-B, and it appears cleaner because more buildings are painted in
pastel colors, which we Californians dig. The biggest attraction for us
was the natural mineral spas. B-B is famous for them. We had two options –
either buy bathing suits and enjoy the fairly new bathhouse with 100
people milling around the front lobby, or, go ‘au naturelle’ at the
Roman-Irish baths next door.

The choice for us cheapo, art lovers was easy when we checked out the
price of bathing suits in the lobby and saw the naked women in the
brochure for the co-ed Roman baths. The baths were built in the 1800’s –
very old and very grand. It seemed very odd to us that there should be
separate mens’ and womens’ showers in a clothing un-optional co-ed
bathhouse, but we went along with it. ‘The boys’ traded our Tevas and
shorts for sheets and entered the baths. It is actually a circuit, where
you start out with a shower and move into a series of progressively warmer
saunas, prior to losing your sheet for another shower and a cold plunge.
Up to this point, it has been all men.

Conveniently, after the cold plunge, we entered the same warm shower we
first had, only to encounter our first female – Voila! Face-to-face with a
17 year-old babe with her head thrown back while washing her hair. She got
quite a kick out of our response – utter confusion coupled with open
mouths and wide eyes! After stammering around for a minute or two cursing
the effects of the cold plunge, we headed over to the steam and communal
bath sections.

Here we mostly found old folks – 50 and up, and silently vowed never to
eat raisins again. The unofficial poll of attendees suggests that
circumcision and aerobics are less common in Europe than the U.S. But the
bath section itself was stunningly beautiful – a Romanesque rotunda filled
with statues (of naked people, of course). In addition, we were reunited
with Kathy, all 9 months pregnant of her. She looked (and still does)
awesome. Predictably, she and her brother tried to avoid each other most
of the time, until Dave’s dolphin kicking, double-cheeked Moon under the
Dome broke the ice! Surprisingly, we were fairly adult about the whole
adventure; the towel guard only scolded Kathy once for sporting a towel in
front of her brother, me once for the splash fight in the cold plunge, and
#1/2 once for not staying the requisite four minutes at the warm towel
station! Aside from those events and the weenie jokes over bratwurst and
beer, we were fine…until we started running into people around town that
we had seen much more of in the spa!

I thought that MB rides did not get better than the ride on Sunday, but
Monday’s mountain bike ride with Patrick was better than the first. He
took us on a different mountain, and it was sunny and beautifully warm.
The ride was longer, more difficult, and with a more aggressive pace, but
the traction was excellent. It was one of the best rides I have ever been
on, despite the fact that #2 rode his brakes down every hill, heating up
his rims so much that he got flat after flat after flat (was it 3 or 4,
Dave?). No matter, for it allowed the nerves in our forearms to cool off
between downhill sections! Eventually, we realized that the rim tape was
slipping and the spokes were piercing the tube. We made it home to the
hotel, gave each other high-fives, and then sadly had to depart from our
home away from home, the Hotel Schloss Hornberg. After a quick stop in
Newark, NJ’s European sister city (Strasbourg, the armpit of Europe), #1
and #2 were off for Prague, and Kathy and I returned home.

My sister, Ruth, and her husband, Neil, also visited recently. We had a
wonderful time together. We checked out Brugge one day and Waterloo
another. Waterloo is slightly uneventful, as the only attraction is the
Butte de Lion, a statue of a huge lion at the crest of a small, man-made
hill. Ruth and Neil treated us to dinner at de Kleine Zinke (traditional
Belgian food) one evening, and we cooked dinner together the other night.

We also got to see my other sister, Colette, and her husband, John, and
son, Anthony. They live in Kaiserslautern (refer to Update #1). We met
them in Trier for the day. There are some Roman ruins in Trier and a very
beautiful church that claims to have the robe that Christ wore on the way
to being crucified.

No other major scandals in the Besser’s Belgian Life. We went to the
Brussels Jazz Marathon last weekend with our friends Laura and Joe (Kathy
met Laura through the American Women’s Club). The Jazz festival was held
throughout Brussels, but we went to the Grand Place where we saw Fabrien
DeGryse and his (boring) band de Guitares, and the Phillip Catherine
Quartet. At Iban, The Minstrel’s put on a great sound of New Orleans
Dixieland jazz. We also had some rip-roaring Indian/ Indonesian food. We
have been to this restaurant three weekends in a row – it is sooooo tasty.
They make a coconut milk-based curry called Chicken Sri Lanka and an
excellent Chicken Biriyani. Oh yeah, and I had another “rendezvous avec
Nathalie” (the real term for appointment used by the French). They call it
a coiffure, but it is sooo much more! Joe has started “rendezvous-ing”
with Nathalie, too. I can’t wait to find out what the referral fee is –
maybe an extra long massage!

I also went biking after work on Wednesday. Luc and I did a serious 60 km
off-road ride! There are these trails called the “Mountainbiketrails” (the
Dutch love to make long words out of short word combos of English words).
It was a very long ride, and some sections were really hard, but the ride
was fun. Belgians like to ride really fast.

Well, there is only one thing to talk about yet…. Dane. Funny that the
most important thing in our lives is last in the letter. He is due in less
than 2 weeks, and Kathy is ready for him to arrive. It is probably more
accurate to say that she is ready for him is depart her body! She has
taken to drinking Raspberry Tea and using the trampoline in the backyard
in an effort to induce labor. I will let you know if she starts drinking
Castor Oil and going on mountain bike rides with me or as soon as I know
something more. Since the best way to communicate is email, expect a very
brief note soon after the birth. Kathy’s parents arrive June 6th. They
will be here (off and on) for 2 weeks to help us out with the transition
to parenthood, and to cook and clean, so they say. We are looking forward
to their arrival – our fridge is empty and the apartment is filthy and way
overdue for a cleaning!