If you thought that a lot of red wine and grappa would help get you over that hump of a cold, you’d be wrong. At least I was... In a little village called Weiherhofen, on the outskirts of a less small village called Weisenstadt. The Rhein family has got to be one of the nicest, most generous families I have ever met, with an endless supply of warmth and great stories. Their farmhouse is in the northern part of Bavaria in Franconia twenty-five km from the Czech border and fifty km from the former East German border.

Being able to talk proper football (soccer) will open up a lot of doors for you as an American. Locals seems very surprised that you are even interested in discussing the subject, and even more surprised when you can speak intelligently about it and actually know the players, the division leaders and the current state of affairs. I’ve found that talking European football will get you a lot further than talking American politics... and shit, that’s what I’d rather talk about. As we were in Bavaria, I enquired if the Rhein Family were Bayern Munich fans. The answer was overwhelmingly not. While they appreciated the visibility the Bayern team brought to the German Bundesliga, as Franconians, they were happy to distance themselves from the more barbaric Bavarians, and instead chose the arduous path rooting for perennial bottom dwellers like Nuremberg.

Weiherhofen has been a very nice place to relax and spend some time, and a fitting transition from my thoughts about the authenticity of the places I have been seeing and will continue to see. While traveling by train you go through the countryside, and pass countless little villages where people are going abut their lives. I’ve always wondered what life was like there (these villages being thousands of years older than the United States), and have been tempted to just get off the train and go find some village you don’t see in the Lonely Planet guidebook... just spend a few days there and see what life was like... have a visit where you aren’t passing tacky souvenir shops and postcard stalls and hordes of tour groups sticking to one another pushing their way through the tight cobbled streets checking sights off a list.

Weiherhofen has been that place, and I am enjoying it to no end. Henry and Gihta were recommended to me by my friend Jim Durham. I’ve know Jim for a while now through projects at work. His stone company, Quarrastone, supplied beautiful quartzite material for a number of projects we did out of the San Francisco office, so over the years I’ve come to know Jim and do a bit a traveling with him to inspect material.

Henry is a master stone carver and now teaches at the local university. Henry and Gihta met Jim about thirty years ago when Jim came over to look at some stone cutting machinery that Henry owned. As I understand it, Jim and Henry were at the airport as Henry was leaving the states, and Jim commented that he very much liked Henry’s Italian shoes. Henry wasn’t even wearing these shoes at the time, they were packed deep in his bag... but Henry being Henry, pulled the shoes out of the bag and insisted that Jim have them. Henry didn’t hear from Jim again for maybe ten years, something like that, when Jim called out of the blue and said ‘Henry, this is Jim, I need a new pair of those shoes!’. Since then their families have grown together, vacationed together and over the years have become quite close. Very lucky for me Jim has put me in touch with these very fine people.

Daniel, the eldest son, picked me up at the train station in Marktredwitz, just over the border from Cheb in the Czech Republic. Daniel is just beginning his masters program in wine culture and wine making. And it is obvious it is something he is very excited about. We went back to the farmhouse where I met Henry and Gihta, and a little later Daniel’s girlfriend Lisa. Unfortunately I did not get to meet the younger son Andreas as he had to work all weekend, across Germany doing an internship on a farm. We enjoyed a wonderful goulash stew (that I spilled on the nice white table cloth), and we chatted and drank wine that Daniel brought back with him from his internship at the Hummel winery and Grapa that Henry had from the father of an Italian friend. As I mentioned, the cold recovery took a back seat to great conversation around the dining table, and before I knew it, it was well past midnight.