I'll have another eau de vie, bitte

Only three days into my trip, and I reckon I should've called this blog "Other People's Booze and Grub".

Sitting in Michael (my brother) and Anke's (my sister-in-law) new downtown Freiburg flat, chomping on a pretty grand tasting squash risotto, we book-ended the meal with some Johnnie Walker Blue Label (forever grateful, RJ) and a bit of this loveliness:

Finally found grappa I can actually enjoy. I'm toying with the idea of ditching half my clothes and using the space in my backpack for a couple of bottles of eau de vie. I'm sure it'd buy me a friend or two further into this trip.

It's Tag der Deustchen Einheit, don't you know.

I'll forgive you if you don't as most people in this part of Deutschland don't seem to be too bothered either. We're just about as far geographically from the old DDR as you can get, and either the folk of Black Forest Germany aren't up for a party or they're just not fussed about marking almost two decades post-reunification. Still, everyone here has had the day off (including my brother, good news for me) so we spent the early afternoon tramping up the nearest mountain - Schauinsland.

Hey, it's a rest day right? So why walk when you can take the gondola. Albeit one with no beginning and no end...

Successfully deposited at the top, Me, Michael and Anke trekked a further 300 or 400 metres to the summit, itself mounted by a lookout tower in such bleak surroundings that it could only hope to offer a viewpoint of the apocalypse. Think I'm over-egging the pudding here? Have a looky for yourself.

But we made it back down to ground level, and to celebrate our brush with the otherside we're going out for kino and abendessen - Wall-E and tapas.

By the way, anybody out there planning to use Eurostar in the next few days/weeks? A word in your ear - turn up early. Very early. Ignore the usual stuff about a 30 minute check-in, and pretend you're queing for centre court tickets at Wimbeldon. If they're still doing the manual check-in thing, give yourself an hour. Otherwise, you will get left behind, on the platform, forlornly watching your train disappear off to the east without you.

Nope, it didn't happen to me (as you might have guessed by now), but it could have!