Saturday morning started off with bright sunshine, heat and 6 of great guy’s work colleagues over for breakfast. The pressure for me decreased significantly the day before when he told me that all of his colleagues are male; there wouldn’t be a single female coming over. Whew! Men are way easier to please, I think, with food than women are.
Great guy’s colleagues are, in his opinion, are a bunch of simple, but friendly, misfits…hmmm, interesting. I was excited about meeting them since I often hear stories about them when great guy comes home from work. There is the very nice, much younger than great guy, boss-man. Also zeki from Turkey, the Italian named Mario (of course, what else would his name be?), the 55 year-old guy who still lives with his mother, and the talker named roland.
We sat out on the terrace, me beside the talker (I listened) at our long wooden table, overlooking the river. Coffee was consumed by the carafe fulls, fresh brötchen (buns) were eaten by the basket-full, and I had made easy cottage-cheese bake (that’s it’s official, un-elegant name), which came through for me here, as it always does in Canada. And, along with lots of cheese and würst varieties, we had put out Canadian salmon which I recently brought over. That was definitely a big hit…almost as big as Crown Royal! (Should I clarify? We didn’t serve crown royal…it was only 10am! We’re not in Bavaria!).
After the group toured the house, and ooohed and aaahed (fun!), great guy and I jumped in the land rover and headed to the hafen (harbour) just outside of Wiesbaden for a spaziergang (walk). One thing we both love to do is to be by the water, watching boats, water dogs and ducks, and dreaming about which boat we someday would like to take on a watery holiday. Relaxing.
In the evening, we stayed inside, cozy and warm while it finally poured rain outside, nibbling on peanuts and watching the Eurovision Song Contest 2011. I have been hearing, none-stop coverage of this finale show because last year’s winner was from Germany and she was defending her title this year. But, I honestly didn’t understand what the show was about. In my North American naiveté, I thought this song contest was just some European, American Idol spin-off. Kind of ignorant of me.
Eurovision is in its 55th year and it involves every European country (the current number being much larger than it was in the beginning). Each country has its own competition in the months before to pick their winner, who then competes against the other countries on this finale night. But, the very cool thing is that all the callers who call-in to vote cannot vote for their own country person. Callers vote for a country other than their own. I kind of love that…along with the geography lessons. Did you know that there is a country called San Marino? Then, after watching all of the contestants sing (the songs are all originals, no American idol karaoke happening here) the last half hour is dedicated to watching the results come in…kind of like watching federal election results, but a bit more interesting I must say. By 12:20 am the winner was declared, and this year it was a couple from Azerbaijan. Germany’s Lena placed a respectable 10th. Good show.
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