I don't know if your average sane couple would do this, but we bought chocolate from seven different stores in three countries within the span of 6 or hours.
Is Europe a great place, or what?
Greetings once again from Saarbrucken, where we accomplished one of the two great tasks we hoped to achieve while over here. Since it was cold and rainy and since we weren't sure if Loraine's soccer club would be practicing today (especially after they lost last night in Hoffenheim, although Loraine's favorite player Tim Civeja scored both their goals!) we decided to hit the road for the semi-epic trip of which we've been dreaming for lo these many months.
One of the reasons we chose Saarbrucken as a base this time around is because it's only 15 or so kilometers to France and only 60 or so to Luxembourg, which means that we would have no problem popping over the French border to both Forbach and Oeting, where we could shop at two stores with walls of chocolate like this--
Then, another 20 minutes later, we were in Creuzwald, for two more really BIG walls of chocolate--
Then we hit the road, again left France, cut through Germany, and ended up in Luxembourg, for yet another wall of chocolate--
The best thing about the stop in Luxembourg? The chocolates we were really looking forward to getting were buy two, get one free. It's almost like they knew we were coming and wanted to make us feel as welcome as possible, right?
8-)
The final haul from France and Luxembourg?
That should last us, what...a week or so? And lest you think all I did was take pictures of walls of chocolate today, here's a palette cleanser for you.
A wall of beer-
As I mentioned, it takes less than an hour to get from country to country in this neck of the woods. Even when you're driving those relatively short distances, you notice many varied differences between here and the US. For instance, over here there are no billboards to distract you while you're behind the wheel. You also notice windmills, solar farms, and electric cars everywhere, because Europe, one of the places hardest hit by climate change, is looking to the future for energy, as opposed to going back to the policies that got us into this mess in the first place.
You even notice it with things like a simple bottle of water--
The water itself costs 17 cents, but since it's plastic the deposit on the bottle is 35 cents, to make sure you recycle instead of toss it. Not only that, but you'll notice that the cap is actually attached to the bottle, so that every bit of it gets recycled.
They're serious about clean energy and a clean environment over here. So hopefully, we didn't set back their efforts too much by driving to seven different stores in three different countries in six or so hours to get our chocolate.
If so, we'll do our best to make up for it when we get back home by doing what we usually do, and walk everywhere.
Speaking of the countries in which we drove today, zipping through France & Luxembourg was a breeze. However (and we noticed this last time we were here) every single Autobahn in Germany seems to be under construction at the moment. Sure, it's a vaunted roadway system where, in some places, they don't even have a speed limit. But more often than not, you end up plodding along at 40 kph as three lanes of traffic try to merge into one because there's a construction site ahead.
Maybe one of these years I'll get to test my nerves by seeing how fast I might go on a freeway with no speed limit.
Maybe.
Just a few random pictures to wrap up the day. You recall yesterday when I was talking about Spargel, the white asparagus that's just come into season here? Well, something else is now being picked and offered to you right off the farm--
We didn't actually come across any bizarre pot shop windows today (it's still illegal in France, although not in Luxembourg, if you're keeping track at home). But once we got back to Germany...
Finally, I have to share something I saw at the store we went to in Remich, Luxembourg. And since they offered us three Galler chocolate bars for the price of 2, and since we ended up buying (ahem) nine of them, let's give the Cactus store there a little free publicity--
It's such a cool store, in fact, that I would buy just about anything I saw in the place.
Well, except for one thing. While looking around for their chocolate aisle, Loraine and I came across their soft drink section, which had just about any pop you could imagine. It even had one you would NEVER imagine, perhaps the one thing that you could never convince me to buy, even if you offered it to me as a buy 2, get one free deal.
What exactly IS that one product? Let me present to you Fanta's Banana and Chocolate soda--
Yes, that's a real product. And no, I have no idea why.
With that, I'm going to lovingly gaze upon the 30 or so bars of magical wonder that we purchased today and, hopefully, not have too many bad dreams about (and I can't believe I'm actually typing this) banana and chocolate flavored soda pop.
(jimkoskimqt@gmail.com)
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