We’re finishing up a few quick days back at home in New Mexico, dealing with the sort of chores that come up after eight months away, heading out this morning with an eye toward catching Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans before the real craziness begins.
We breathed a sigh of relief when we took some items out of the back of the RV, such as a paper mache plague mask Daria has been taking care of since Venice (yes, it would be perfectly appropriate in NOLA, but it’s not going) and this flip-top bottle. The story:
We’re headed from Nuremberg to Frankfurt on the day before we are to fly home. We’ve decided to revisit Rothenberg, where we spent the first night 15 weeks before. Along the way we pass by Bad Windsheim and decide to drive by the brewery (it’s still pretty early on a Sunday morning).
We see a sign for a “floh markt” and start following the arrows. We’re just window shopping because our bags are full and carrying anything else on would be impossible. Of course we could see something small . . . but it appears there’s nothing at a price we’d want to pay. Not until about the last table we could stop at.
Here’s a lovely flip-top bottle with a hop mural decorating it. I’m confident it will be too expensive to tempt me. I ask. Seven euros. Daria thinks she heard seventy, which seems a little high but almost makes more sense than seven. “Sieben?” I ask. The woman nods. A dilemma. How could I possibly get this home?
The woman apparently thinks I’ve paused as a negotiating tactic. “Sechs,” she says. I guess that closed the deal.
I ended up making room for it in my backpack. What the customs official in Frankfurt had to say when it went through the scanner is another story.
Six Euros? Wow, what a find.
“What the customs official in Frankfurt had to say when it went through the scanner is another story.”
Heh — Reminds me of the customs officer in Munich when there was a looong line to go thru the metal detectors. I had put my check-in bags on the scanner belt and we were pretty much at a stand-still. We moved a step or two and the officer decided to move my bags through and then we waited on the other side for the queue to advance again. Leaning on my bag, the official shifts his eyes to me and nonchalantly says,
“You have 3 bottles of beer in your bag, Ja?’
Me, hesitantly: “Ja.”
Officer: Lowenbrau? (I must have looked obviously American)
Me, shaking my head slightly: “No. Schneiderweiß.”
Officer: ‘Ahh… Schneiderweiß!”
I was allowed passage. I also felt like I’d made an impression to boost status of American beer drinkers! 😉
And yes, the bottles survived.
I recall nearly losing a trophy Hoegaarden glass leaving Amsterdam. It was so damn heavy it set off an alarm in the x ray machine. I really thought it was lost, but then they waved me along.
Geez,,over beer?
I got back to NM from a flight from Akron,OH with Bil-Jac fresh frozen Dog Food, bags wrapped,,5# wax paper bags,,,,and,,,oh for sure they looked at least twice,,,left notes too. Dog food.
Bags of hops and “yeast samples” wrapped in bubblewrap?,,,,,no hassle going there. Location, location, location…and… Looks are everything?
Ignorance is abundant and people the fight hardest to maintain it.