A Cold, McDonald's Wino

AM BOP* 1 Wildschütz
PM BOP 3 Wildschütz

I kicked this cold’s ass! Yes! Now I have that awesome, euphoric feeling that one has when one starts to feel normal again and just thanks God to be alive like every minute of the day.

I just had to go to McDonald’s last night. I know it sounds stupid, but, I started to have dreams about giant floating hamburgers when I was sick and I just wanted to eat them but couldn’t. So, I got dressed, walked to McDonald’s and chowed. Apparently, because yesterday was yet another state holiday (All Saints) everyone else thought they should eat at McDonald’s, too.

Eating at McDonald’s in Europe is always funny. Once you’ve been here a while, you can never be sure what new products actually came from the States, and which ones are just being pawned off to Europeans as being “American-like”. Perhaps someone will help me with this one, because McDonald’s newest sandwich, the Big Tasty Bacon doesn’t sound American, somehow.

I was remembering something that happened a couple of weeks ago... I had gone to the Pfalz area of Germany for my weekly voice lesson. It is very rural and flatter, like France, which is only a few miles away. Pfalz is known for its wine. You can see vineyards all over the place there. And, about this time of the year, just after the grapes have been picked, you can drink Neu Wein (New Wine.) It's basically grape juice with about 4 per cent alcohol. I stopped off at a little town on the way to my voice lesson one day and saw a little sign that advertised New Wine. So, I walked up and rang the buzzer. Out came a farmer, who was very amused that some American was stopping to get a bottle of new wine in his extremely isolated town. He just talked and talked, and took me back to where the wine is made. It was amazing. They have a room with about 15 gigantic, stainless steel vats (500 gallons, maybe, I don't know.) He just went up to one, pulled out a glass, opened a spigot at the bottom and let me taste what is basically what the grape juice tastes like after just about a week. It was so sweet and good. Really good. So, I bought a bottle, (for about $1.25.) He explained that the top had to be kept very loose because the fermentation process would produce a lot of gas that would need to escape. The grapes, at that stage, change their character almost hourly, he explained. So, Chris and I enjoyed a small glass daily for several days to taste how wine grows. The farmer was right. Every time we opened the bottle, we found that we were drinking something entirely new. New wine.

* Bühne Orchester Probe—Rehearsal on stage with all learned staging, dancing, without costumes, with orchestra.