A visit to ze Fatherland...

 

In my description of my blog, the part where I explain who I am, I state that my ultimate goal is to move back to Germany with the British Boy and hopefully some little 'Anglo-Germanic-Saxons'. We would like to own a farm and had a chance to see how beautiful it could be.

To move the dream forward, especially when feeling really low and down with our current lives, we plan annual trips to various areas in Germany who meet the following criteria:

• Within 2-3 hours of driving distance to my parents
• In an area that has some tourism to potentially rent out holiday homes
• Within 2 hours of an airport to provide easy access to British visitors (hi parents in law)
• An area that has places we could actually really afford
• An area we could see ourselves living in, i.e. even on a dreary rainy grey day and long winters and sick children, with a flu and feeling utterly down, would I still want to live here?

That's not an easy feat. So we book some off, start searching for affordable farms, contact the realtors and set up viewings. And whilst it only took me 30 seconds to write that, the actual process is fucking annoying, pain-stakingly slow and absofuckinglutely anger inducing for me, cuz I have to talk to them all, cuz the British Boy doesn't speak German.

 

Ok, I am being unfair. He does constant scouring of the websites, did a fantastic excel to consolidate the information and make it a whole lot easier for me.

 

Back to what happened:

We went to Germany to look at farms. There were some we liked more than others, one I loved and he didn't, one he liked and I didn't and then we ended up telling each other that we had plenty of time and didn't need to force ourselves to buy anything right now.

 

Staying at my parents, I had a chance to pick the last plums of the season and bake this beauty: 

 

 

Great-grandma Emmi's Plum Cake

Prior to the last day of viewings, we decided to stay in a hotel closer to the farms so that we could get a feel for the area the farms were in. It was the Castle in Wurzen, which reminded me of the castle Max and I got married in. We got there fairly late and decided to have dinner in the castle restaurant, which looked fantastically medieval.

Castle Wurzen Restaurant

We spoiled ourselves with not just one, but TWO bottles of this amazing beauty. I want to find this wine in the UK and bathe in it. Seriously, it is worth trying to track this down.

Tasted divine

Due to the wine and the general holiday feel of the trip, I went for the whole hog, Starter, main, dessert. My starter of smoked salmon tartare was sadly too salty and the mango lacked sweetness to bring it back round. Presentation was great, but let down by the overpowering saltiness.

Smoked salmon tartar with mango and a tzatziki cream

My main was great. I am a huge fan of liver and pretty much any offal. This was done beautifully. The sweet red onions worked so incredibly well with the liver and the celery in the mash was a nice lift on an otherwise quite hefty dish. It was the perfect autumn plate of 'stick to your ribs' food.

Veal liver, caramelized onions and celery mashed potato

Come dessert, despite feeling rather full, I could not resist the sound of an ice cream sundae.


Ice cream sundae for me

I have not had an ice cream sundae in a looong time. I mean, the whole hog with cream and sauce and nuts. It was tasty and I didn't wake up looking like the Ghostbuster Marshmallow Boy (which is one of my fears). The British Boy's dessert was a crème brulee that was also superb and overall the evening and food was a success.

Crème brulee for Max

If you're in the area, I can fully recommend eating at Schloss Wurzen.