August 2017

    Visiting an area in a foreign country with good friends, who also happen to live in that area, is always something to remember for always. There are many little as well as big things which stay behind in the recesses of your memory for a very long time. Unless you are getting as old as I am, 84 years today and counting, when the specter of Lethe, the goddess of Forgetfulness and Oblivion lurks just around the corner, ready to pounce as soon as you let your guard down. Well, that is why I write this here.

    I met Ludwig a few years ago on a Princess Cruise in the Bahamas; he looked lost in the upstairs Horizon Buffet, where everybody else was busily scooping up mounds of food from the buffet to take to their tables to scarf this down and come back soon for another helping of carbs and perchance of sweet dessert.

    This is a ship where English is the lingua franca, and Ludwig only speaks German. From his reply, in broken English, to my query, I recognized he was German. I then found out that he only speaks German, and he was so happy to meet me, because now there were two people he could talk to on the ship; his wife and me.

    Later on we met Renate, his wife, who also spoke very good English, and who had worked for 30 years for Osram, well known for their Sylvania brand lighting; her latest job was to instruct the staff on how to operate their newly installed German computer system for central accounting purposes. Osram is a huge multinational German company, headquartered in Münich, with some 35,000 employees working in lighting and electronics. Renate had been traveling extensively between the various Osram locations worldwide to troubleshoot and to give seminars and training sessions on this subject. Renate is Austrian.

    After that meeting in the dining hall, we always had dinner together, allowing me to polish up my German which had suffered from years of disuse, and we have since then became very good friends. They actually drove down to Croatia, when we were there on vacation with our Australian friends, so we could be together again for a few days.

    We had just been on a 7-day river cruise on the Donau, from Budapest to Passau in Germany. At the end of the cruise we were driven to München airport to fly back home. But since Ludwig and Renate live in Münich, we accepted their offer for them to be our hosts and show us München and Klagenfurt, and stuff in between, before our flight back home. They have a small pied-a-terre in Münich, and Renate owns a big house in Klagenfurt, and they shuttle between these two locations.

    Ludwig and Renate met us at the airport and took us to the huge hangar between Terminals 1 and 2. This is an area with shops and eating places, and sometimes there are performances here in this huge space, large enough to park a couple of jumbo jets. It looks like we are outdoors, but the hangar is so large it feels like we were outdoors.

   

left: Welcome lunch in Münich airport.

    We had our welcome lunch; the local specialty, Weisswurst, beer, bread and pretzels. The Weisswurst is white, and has a delicate taste, certainly different from the many other sausages one finds in Germany. In the middle of the table is a white stoneware pot where the wurst is cooked in slightly salted water. The meat is veal, delicately garnished with some herbs.

    Wonderful Renate remembered I was gluten-intolerant, so she disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a loaf of gluten-free bread. She must have purchased it earlier and kept it in their car. Amazing hosts. She had to do this another two more  times in the 8 days we were together