Saturday, January 24, 2004

Hitting the hills

It is ages and aeons since I have been to the Hills. But a cute little Megane test car and word that my favorite seaweed soap may be found in Hahndorf seemed like reason enough for a run up the prettiest of motorways too the little tourist haven German town. I don't know why people want to knock Hahndorf for being German touristy. That's the whole point. One never knows when a bratwurst and saukraut may take one's fancy. And there were the people, having their steins of beer at the umbrella pavement tables. And the wee shops full of knits and weaves, leather, crystals, soaps, gemstones and cakes, cakes, cakes. Rex and I strolled the length of the town, meeting Lita and her gentleman friend Surindra in his new upmarket Indian store. My soap I did not find, although I found many fine hand-made soaps and I bought some honey furniture polish...and we wended our way through the winding and summery Hills roads, lined with blooming cannas and agapanthus, past orchards and villages, to a new weekend market in an old woolens factory. Goat cheeses and olives, berries and oils, women with spinning wheels, more soaps and bags and crafts. We had coffee and a light, late lunch in this pleasant ambience and then hummed along more pastoral roads, stopping at a roadstand to buy kilos of juicy black cherries fresh from the trees, and apples and honey and newly-baked apple cake...
And we figured that maybe we would not leave it quite so long before we headed for them thar Hills again.

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