Guten Tag!
Well, I've been in Germany for about a week and a half now, and I've settled in and already started making wine! The first week I mostly spent getting over the plane trip and completing formalities, which involved registering at various offices around town and signing lots of forms which I have absolutely no idea what they say!
I eventually got my work visa on Friday, for which the local foreigner office wanted to charge me another €50 for the visa fee which I had already paid in NZ. Herr Müller (the visa guy) and I discussed this situation - him in German and me in English - and I showed him my receipt from NZ which he promptly took a copy of. He then had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone, after which he issued my visa and I was free to go. Of course I was proud of myself, not just for saving €50 but also for 'winning against the beaurocrats' and in a foreign language to boot! However later when I was telling Oliver, my boss at the wine school, about my success I found out that he was actually the person on the other end of the phone call, and that the only reason Mr Müller had issued my visa was because Oliver had promised him that the €50 would be paid!
Of course I've been acclimatising too - not just to the heat and the humidity but also to the amount of food I'm expected to eat! It's the 3-course meal at lunchtime that I had to work on, followed by dinner again at 5.00; eat it then or miss out! Anyway, I've trained and can now happily scoff the whole shebang for lunch and be getting peckish again around 4.30, so it's all good. The canteen lady is my friend too; she gave me a chocolate at brekkie this morning. Although we can't speak to each other, food and charades go a long way towards transcending the language barrier!
Weinsberg itself is beautiful. There is a maze of tiny lanes on the side of a hill, and the village is dominated by the 'mountain' after which Weinsberg is named. At the top is the ruined 'Castle of the Faithful Women'. The story goes that centuries ago the villagers were held under siege in their castle, and when they were finally forced to give up, their benevolent captor told them that he would kill all the men, but that the women were free to go with whatever they could carry on their backs. So being strong and faithful German women, they picked up their husbands, put them on their backs, and carried them down the mountain to freedom!
At the weekend I went down to Schramberg in the Black Forest to see Biggi, our old homestay student. It was great to see her and I had a lovely weekend. It's a really beautiful area and on the Sunday we went down to Lake Contance on the Swiss border. Spent the day wandering around Radolfzell and the city of Konstanz, which was amazing. The centre of Konstanz is made up of narrow cobbled streets lined with medieval houses and inns and churches, and many of the buildings have old frescos painted on them. Check out the photos in my gallery and you'll be able to see what I mean; it was incredible.
This week I've been working at the wine school, and learning how to use some of the flash winemaking toys they have here. There is one other Praktikant (trainee) in the cellar, who is a guy also from New Zealand. So the Keller-meister has been training the two of us up for when vintage cranks up next week. We're going to be running about 300 ferments I think, and it will be mine and Rob's job to look after them, so it should be pretty hard-out. The staff are all really nice though and most of them speak good English too. The wine school is like a maze; I'm still getting lost in it. And there are lots of interesting things going on. Deep down in the cellar there's a distillation plant set up to make schnapps, so I'll try and get the low-down on that at some stage too!
Well, that's about all my news for now, so I'll sign off. Hope everybody is well and happy, and I'll write some more stuff soon.
Prost!
Shona x
