Chapter II

In which Josh has a day-trip to Cochem, a pre-Tag der deutschen Einheit party, plans for his birthday party and waits with declining patience for the arrival of his German PIN and debit card.

Saturday dawned, and I was forced to rise abominably early to set off for Burg

Cochem. Fog lay thick upon the ground and, skirting a small duck-exodus across campus, I made it on time to the coach. This is more than could be said for some of my fellow exchange students; the coach had to turn back to pick up a couple of dawdlers, and a certain Irishman - who shall remain nameless - failed even to make this second opportunity, returning to bed.  

Cochem castle sits proudly at the summit of a highly inconvenient incline. Having been largely destroyed by Napoleon, it was rebuilt by a 19^th Century Berlin businessman to serve as his vulgar summer home. This theme of vulgarity endured throughout the tour, with the experience of the Rittersaal marred by the intrusive, clichéd classical music being pumped in. We were furthermore forced to traipse through a wedding being held there, and I naturally ended up bumblingly interrupting the bridal party’s photographs as I vainly tried to scuttle through unobtrusively. No, much more enjoyable were the local registration plates, with the following photograph quite finely illustrating my point:

Leaving the castle behind us, we came to a vineyard and got well and truly sozzled at a wine tasting session. I found the Riesling to be most enjoyable, but the cheese selection highly suspect.

Since we had the Tag der deutschen Einheit (Day of German Unity) off, we decided to seize the opportunity and sample our first Trierisch club. I tried the local speciality Viez (apple-wine), hoping it would be close enough to cider. It is in fact rather a lot more potent, and its influence led to my friend Isabella and me joining a table of elderly German men to play a very complicated card game. Needless to say we fared poorly against these experienced individuals who, it must be said, were jolly friendly. To cut a long story short, we ended up in Club Elf, a dungeon-esque affair. Whilst the drinks were quite steeply priced, they played a house remix of Call Me Maybe, which made up for it in my eyes.

Finding myself on the cusp of my 21^st birthday and adulthood, and determined to have a party, there is a rather nice bottle of Sekt (bubbly) chilling in the fridge. Since my friend half-French Tim has kindly offered his new pad to throw a knees-up in celebration of me, my fears of drinking alone on my birthday were thankfully unfounded. With Mumsie, Daddikins and the brother visiting for a long weekend, it appears that tonight will be the night for my shindig. Christ, one-and-twenty. All downhill from here…