New Year's Eve with Audrey in Germany

As mentioned in my post about Christmas at home (click here), my friend Audrey would come over for New Year's Eve :-)
In November she had left Oslo and had moved to Holland. We had seen each other for our Christmas market trip to Hamburg (click here for the post), but I had the chance to meet her again at the end of this year. The initial plan was to spend New Year's together with both my friends from Oslo, with Audrey and Jana, at my place in Germany. That would have been half way for both, half way from Holland and also half way from Thuringa, from Jana's home where she would spend Christmas. Unfortunately Jana eventually wasn't able to join. But I was happy that Audrey could still make it. I was so much looking forward to seeing her again :-)

The 29th of December I had spent in Mainz at a family reunion. Fantastic day. In the evening, though, I still went to Cologne central station to pick up Audrey who arrived by train. It was already pretty late, so it was no long evening anymore before we went to bed.

On 30/12 we went shopping for the raclette evening we had planned for New Year's Eve. In the afternoon I took Audrey to Cologne. We first had a little stroll around the Breite Straße and Ehrenstraße and ended up for dinner at "Gaffel am Dom", a typical "Brauhaus" (brewery restaurant with a lot of typical local food and of course Kölsch = Cologne Beer.

 

Unfortunately we rather had to eat in a rush. For shortly after dinner we had actually tickets for a concert in the Cologne Philharmony: "Les musiciens du Louvre" playing music of Strauß. The tickets were a present from my mum :-) Thank you, mum!!!

The concert was really really good - and actually also extremely funny. This was professionals playing there. Really good artists. But in the end also just humans. At the end of the concert, for the encore/bonus part, one of the artists (actually the first violin) wasn't quick enough to sort her note papers as quick as the conductor improvised the bonus programme. So the violinist lost all her papers. Then the violin player behind her had passed her his notes, he himself then playing standing trying to read his notes which were now placed on the music stand the row before him. The situation looked so funny. It was as if one could see from the audience how the artists were blushing being so ashamed of what had just happened, of their "unprofessionalism". However, the conductor was so cool. He had such a humor and simply excused with the words "you see, this is French charme". For someone reading this, this certainly sounds more unprofessional than funny, but it's difficult to describe. I can just tell that people were laughing and laughing and laughing. As if the whole was part of a role play, as if the concert at this part was a cabaret, as if the whole scenario was planned and part of the concert - which it certainly wasn't.

Anyway, despite this little "malheur" the performance was simply great. In the end the conductor even included the audience, conducting their clapping. Just a very good performance! Audrey and I had a really great evening!

Before making our way home we still had a last drink at the "Extrablatt", somewhere in the old town of Cologne.

31/12 - the last day of 2013! We started the day with a 2 hours walk in the nearby vineyards of the Ahr valley, together with my mum, Engelbert and 2 friends, Werner & Witha.

As announced: in the evening raclette! Yummy yummy yummy!

With yummy dessert: apple crumble and mum's unbeatable "Lebkucheneis" (ginger bread ice cream) with coriander-chocolate sauce :-) Every Christmas period I could die for this ice cream!

After dinner, at around 9 p.m. my mum and Engelbert drove Audrey and me to Meckenheim train station.

Our plan was to celebrate New Year's Eve in Bonn, along the Rhine. We were told "there was something going on". Whatever "something" would mean. I have to admit that in all the years I have been living in Meckenheim as a child/young person, I had always been celebrating on private parties or somewhere totally away from home or even abroad. I had actually never been out in the public on New Year's Eve, never been to Bonn or Cologne. So I really had no clue where to really go. Of course I knew about those big gala dinners or big parties in venues such as big hotel like the Hilton. Venues where you had to pay some hundred Euros for the ticket. But that was certainly not what we were looking for. I had actually found some nice alternatives, but tickets were already sold out. We would have had to plan everything much more in advance. But since we didn't know until kind of last minute if Jana would make it to come or not, we couldn't buy any tickets.
Anyway, the plan for that evening was to see the fireworks from the Rhine banks in Bonn.
I expected the city to be super crowded when we arrived in Bonn. I expected people to be outside in the streets and bars and all over, all awaiting midnight to come and to celebrate 2014. But Bonn was empty. No a living soul was in the streets. What was going on here??? Audrey and I were walking through the empty streets of the city centre, walked already towards the opera, hoping to meet at least some people there. But nothing. Just the music ringing loud from some private parties in the surroundings.
Since nothing big was going on we had decided to have a drink somewhere. However, most of the bars/restaurants had decided to stay closed that evening. But eventually we found a little, simple bar, "Pincho's" which was open and had place for us where we could at least enjoy each of us a nice cocktail.

Only at quarter to midnight we left the bar and headed back towards the opera and the river banks. And suddenly there they were, all those people! It was as if they came out of their holes like ants. Funny: before there was not even one person out in the streets and now the river banks and the bridge and the square in front of the opera were just full.
And on time at midnight the fireworks started that Audrey so much wanted so see :-)

*** HAPPY NEW YEAR - HAPPY 2014!!! ***

01/01 - the new year... started with a culinary experience :-) We made "Reibekuchen" or "Kartoffelpuffer" = potato pancakes/fritters. I had actually never made them myself and it was certainly a very long time ago that I ate them. It was just some days before that I had mentioned to my mum that I would love eating those again once. And well, so we did it. Together with Audrey we became pretty active in the kitchen, peeling tons of potatoes, grating them, squeezing them, mixing them with flour and eggs, then frying them in the pan. And then eating them with home made apple puré - soooooo good :-) I missed that!

A friend of the family had dropped by, just wanted to say "hello". He had no chance to get around our Reibekuchen!

Totally stuffed we went for a little digestive walk through Meckenheim. A little sightseeing. Meckenheim is certainly not a touristically interesting place, but it's at least my home town. So we were just walking through the many streets through residential areas, the place where I went to school, where friends live(d)...

And well, then in the early evening it was already time for Audrey to leave. So I drove her back to Cologne central station from where she headed back to Holland.

Audrey, merci d'être venue! C'était vraiment un plaisir de te revoir et de passer ces jours et le réveillon avec toi, chez moi à la maison en Allemagne :-)