Text 3252, 80 rader
Skriven 2010-10-30 16:32:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: trip 677
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At oh dark hundred, G drove us to Brixton (a couple miles
down the road), where we steeled ourselves for another
Victoria line adventure, but there was no particular
adventure, and even the Piccadilly line was behaving. So
we got to LHR in the hour claimed by the Tube people.
Lufthansa-womanned checkin was efficient and friendly, and
we were in the Star lounge in a jiffy. Refreshments
included bacon butties and breakfast things, but I poked
my nose in the wines - for a change the whites were better
than the reds: Wandering Bear Zinfandel Rose, Stonebauer
Merlot 08, Wolf Riesling (Pfalz) 08, and a decent Chard
from Marmesa. The selection looked like what you might get
in a Japanese edition of Sky Mall.

I poured Lilli a sinfully large Famous Grouse and myself a
Remy, and life was good.

OS 452 LHR VIE 0920 1245 738 16EF

This was an hour late, owing to late arrival of equipment.
Lilli had been given the infinite legroom seat, which she
kindly ceded to me. Nobody in seat D.

The refreshment involved a rather wilted turkey sandwich
whose wrapper crowed "Best ingredients, all natural flavour,
handmade today." An Ottakringer helles helped.

Then the search for the All You Need 2, during which we got
lost several times in several ways. To give us our due, the
hotel's instructions were pretty weird, something we should
have figured out from the fact that they told us to take the
tram from the S-Bahn but neglected to say in which direction
(turned out it would have been just as quick to walk).

After a freshen up, what to do but go walking - and in fact
we did most of the next day's tour, but sans knowing what
we were seeing. We got to the 12 Apostles quite early for
our dinner date with friends from the frequent flyer community
so ducked into Bane's, a quaint little bar, where we set the
precedent for several evenings to come by testing the local
mediocre Zweigelt against the local mediocre Blauburgunder.

Back to the Apostles right on time, where we found our table
already oversubscribed (with more to come). Jolly strolling
music, plenty of alcohol, abundant food, and a poker-faced
but accommodating waiter all contributed to an atmospheric
and memorable evening. I drank the caramelly thick Kaiser
doppelmalz, while Lilli and this Indian psychiatrist shared
a bottle of a much better Zweigelt than we'd had before or
were going to get later. For sustenance she and I split a
sampler platter for two: bacon-infused Kraut, meat dumplings,
caraway roast, smoked pork loin, blood sausage, and
frankfurters. All were varying degrees of good, the pork loin,
dry, and the franks, wet, the least good.

There were issues with one of our party's meal, as his abundant
and good-looking sandwich contained ingredients he couldn't eat
and that he had nixed when making his order (we speculate
that they couldn't believe "no butter," but he'd said
something about butter, so they figured "extra butter").
I ate the butter-contaminated slices of smoked pork loin
(better than ours, as not dry), and, feeling guilty, paid
for his sandwich, and apparently off he went to McDonalds
afterwards.

After a few hours of chatting, I walked Lilli back to the
hotel, my friend Werner joining us shortly after. We bade
our lovely colleague goodnight and asked the girl at the desk
for a recommendation for a place to drink. Turns out she
didn't drink, so she turned to another staffer - in Muslim
garb - who couldn't help either. Someone eventually pointed
us vaguely in a direction, and we took it, only to find the
local bar, which was closing up and sent us to the local
Chinese restaurant, which was closing up. Shortly we came
upon a wine bar that was open late; we split a bottle of a
Gruner Veltliner, decent, not memorable, but it did the job.

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