Hannover & Baden Baden

My cousins descended in June of 2014 like the plague of mad eating locusts that they are. (This isn't the first time our family's been called locusts. Trust me, it's a compliment.) I was really excited because Brendy and Tiffanie were here for the first time in almost ten years since the World Cup in 2006 when we did our first fabulous European trip together to Paris and then Hannover. All grown up this time around, Tiffanie did her research and planned a fun and food filled ten day trip for the gang that hit up Hannover, Baden Baden, Munich, Amsterdam, and Hannover again using the Eurail pass to hop on and off any major train as they please--good thing too, because crazy fluke weather conditions ended up hitting central Germany halfway through the trip causing all sorts of detouring mayhem to the last three destinations due to the damage to connecting train lines. Transportation problems didn't derail our plans. Mario and I joined in for Baden Baden and I popped over to Amsterdam to enjoy one of my favorite cities on the list. Unexpectedly hot and dry weather accompanied us most of the way, but we were grateful that not one raindrop marred our sightseeing in stark contrast to my mom's visit in May. In keeping with our reputation, the culture, countryside, castles, and six course meals that multiplied into twelve were gobbled up with gusto. When's the next meal, guys??

Rowena arrived first one night ahead of the others and it was her first time in Germany. Naturally, she had to have her first organic curry wurst and schnitzel for lunch the next day at one of my favorite restaurants, 11A in Linden.  

Everything is homemade at 11A, including the curry wurst.

The rest of the gang arrived later that day, June 6th, and the real fun began! Left to right: Long, yours truly, Tiffanie, Rowena, and Brendy. Brendy and Tiffanie are my Aunt Perlly's daughters and Rowena is the daughter of Perlly's sister, Tina. Both Tina and Perlly are my mom's sisters. 

A welcome spread of European treats and Champagne greets our guests.
"You know it's not 'sham-pag-na,' unless it's from the province of 'sham-pag-na.' I learned that at bartending school."

Candies from Ferrero that you can't get in the U.S. and the best croissants from Le Crobac.

The next day we head to Herrenhäuser Gardens for a look around. Brendy and Tiffanie have been here before but Long and Rowena have not.

I lived with this pretty girl for three years while going to college in San Diego. She was only 12 at the time but is now 27.  Scary to say the least.

Herrenhäuser has since added a palace and museum to its grounds.

Top of the palace offers great vantage points and apparently bridal photo shooting opportunities!

The grotto of Niki de Saint Phalle is ever impressive with its fanciful rendition of underwater Nanas in glass mosaic.

Oops! Someone's on to me!

You call this a fountain?

Of course there has to be some sort of reference to the Sound of Music on our trip. 

A romp in the ever popular rose garden at Herrenhäuser will get anyone into a more romantic mood.

BFF's

If you haven't already noticed, our family of locusts are also goofballs.

#bestoftheday

Long getting ready to grab one of the golden statues as a souvenir.

Baden Baden ended up being the surprise highlight of our travels together. Although Mario and I had always wanted to go to the Black Forest, we had a false notion that it was a destination for the geriatric and cuckoo clock lovers. Boy were we wrong. Baden Baden is a beautiful and stately little town that charmed its way into our hearts with its relaxingly refined vibe and good food. Cafe König was the perfect first meal of the Baden Baden trip and kind of embodied the spirit of the city. Known for its wonderful selection of cakes and sweets, and reputed to be the first to invent Black Forest Cake, this restaurant also boasted a nicely curated lunch menu of delicate but hearty German dishes.

I ordered the chicken and mushroom puff pastry for lunch. The perfect portion of creamy Stroganoff-style casserole atop a light and crispy pastry.

A heavenly raspberry coconut and white chocolate macaroon sandwich with vanilla white chocolate pudding in between sits in the foreground. A lemon tart with meringue and a slice of Black Forest Cake await us in the background. All were top notch and mind blowingly good.

The tea-time interior decor at the Cafe König.

Looking in from the outside, one sees the beckoning towers of prettily packaged sweets lit by the warm glow of the shop.

So tempting not to buy everything in sight!

On our way to hiking off our lunch with a journey by foot to Burg Hohenbaden. 

The empty old town on Whit Monday.

Stiftskirche

Entrance to the Friedrichsbad, New Castle and Abbey School

The road up the mountain to Burg Hohenbaden was full of scenes of idyllic perfection like this... 

...and this. To be continued...

Have fun storming the castle!

Dungeons of Burg Hohenbaden.

A new captive in the dungeons?

View from the top.

Oh right, here we are again with the scenes of idyllic perfection.

And the last one with the setting sun on the way down from Burg Hohenbaden.

Beautiful Baden Baden in the afternoon light.

Dinner at the Le Bistro, a place we picked at random while walking by but were very happy with. The food was rustic but delicious and well made. Fresh boar caught from the region was on the menu that night so we ordered homemade maultaschen with wild boar mincemeat.

Rowena wanted something light and went with their fish soup with garlicky toasted croutons.

The maultaschen close up.

Wild boar ragu on spaghetti.

Wild boar house made sausages with horseradish and pan fried potatoes.

The next day we take the Merkur Bergbahn to the top of Merkur Mountain like the lazy tourists that we are. At the top we enjoyed a welcome cool breeze and watched people paraglide off the side of the mountain.

A town drenched in sunlight on this fine day.

Reunited and it feels so good.

After a long hike down from the Merkur, we take a little rest in the hotel and drop off Truffles to recover from the hike before we head off to a spa for some R&R in the hot springs and I gave my camera a rest. Mario heads back to Hannover a day early at this point to go back to work and the cousins and I bum around the town for one more night.

My rack of lamb at the Rathaus Glöckel. Delicious but don't ever ask for split plates here as we found out the hard way that they charge a hefty fee to do that.

After dinner, we walk around the town one last time in search of the Rosengarten auf dem Beutig. We ended up finding the famous Casino Baden Baden and Lichtentaler Allee, what you see here, but the Rosengarten was not meant to be.

Oh well, the walk down Lichtentaler Allee wasn't exactly torture.

What began as a path from the town market to the Lichtenthal Monastery, the way is now lined with exotic flora, spas and kingly estates. 

The walkway dumped us right into the neighborhood where our hotel was and we spent the rest of the evening relaxing at the hotel between horrifying text messages from Mario to inform us he was still at the train station in Baden Baden due to damages from a storm in central Germany. Unaware of the same fate that awaited us as well, we all slept soundly after getting a final message from Mario that he had finally boarded a train to Hannover. The next day we found out all trains were delayed at least two hours due to rerouting. I had a ticket back to Hannover that was set in stone with no room for improvisation whereas my cousins with their Eurail passes could hop on any train they wanted for their next destination of Munich. I spent a lonely two hours by myself reading at the station after my cousins departed until my train came.

After a few days working, I hopped on a train toward Amsterdam to reunite with them there. It turns out Tiffanie found a great little room in a popular area of Amsterdam in one of those old narrow houses near a gracht. It had loads of character and I swear to you there were no straight edges or right angles in the place! The stairwell was also the narrowest I've ever seen.

Right across the way is this well known eyewear museum and a ton of cute boutiques where we ended up getting some gifts.

Rick Steves guides us to this Amsterdam favorite, Kantjil und de Tijger. For about $40/person, you can experience the traditional Indonesian rice table with all the trimmings.

We seriously had enough food to have it for dinner the next day as well.

The next morning we do the Anne Frank house--remember to reserve online and you can bypass all the lines like we did--and then head to one of my personal favorites, the Pancake Bakery. It seems I haven't gone to Amsterdam without stopping at this place at least once before I leave. Savory and sweet pancakes for every craving, this place always satisfies. Tiffanie and Long tuck into a Mexican pancake with cheddar, ground beef and taco sauce.

Some sweeter versions with ice cream and fruit.

After we make a slight detour to Patisserie Holtkamp for some croquets, cookies and cake shopping, we are off for a walk to the Museumplein and an afternoon at the Van Gogh museum.

Dusk approaches and we head home for a quick bite of the leftovers from our Indonesian meal and the goodies from Holtkamp including an assortment of cookies and their famous apple tart. Then we go back out to see the rest of the city.

A quick walk to the red light district.

Rowena and I duck into a pub just down the street from our hotel to catch the Holland vs. Spain game that ended in an epic 5 to 1 with Holland coming out most triumphant.

Everyone rejoicing. The bartender told me it was revenge for a previous loss to Spain.

The Saturday before my cousins leave on the 15th of June, we head back to Hannover from Amsterdam and encounter the worst train rerouting situation ever. Because of the inability of certain trains to travel within central Germany due to that same infernal storm, we end up getting detoured to Cologne from Amsterdam to take another train from there to Hannover. Long story short, my cousins go on to Cologne as planned while I hopped off the train early at Apeldoorn due to a misunderstanding and end up in Hannover at about 7:30pm, about an hour later than my cousins. We had an 8p reservation for the Ole Deele restaurant in Burgwedel that we had to make so Mario and my cousins picked me up straight from the train station with the family van and we hightail it over there just in time. As soon as we settle in at the restaurant, two plates of an amuse bouche of spherical tomatoes and a tomato cream cheese between crispy wafers welcome us while we wipe our hands with warm towels before our meal. 

Famished, we order their six course dinner and unwittingly partake in the bread they brought out before the meal thinking the portions would be small like typical pre-fixed menus in the U.S. are. We forgot we were in Germany.

Crispy parsnips and carrots as a pre-appetizer appetizer.

First dish of the six course meal: beef tartar with a sugar snap pea salad, potato truffle with horseradish sour cream, raw sous vide radishes, mustard mayo, nasturtium leaves, herb potato oil, and potato sand. It might look small but the portion was pretty hefty, about 8 cm in diameter, and very delicious but filling.

Second course: roasted eel with tomato cream, tomato ash, pickled potatoes, braised raw cucumber gel, herb salad, dill, and pearl onions. This was also a big dish that might as well have been the main dish with the generous piece of eel.

Asparagus focaccia and sauce rouille that arrived together with the eel dish. They also brought out more bread. We shouldn't have had any more bread. But we did.

Third dish: sous vide asparagus mousse and chip, green asparagus puree, green asparagus lightly cooked in butter, asparagus salad, onion chutney, tomato seed sorbet, tomato seeds, buttered breadcrumbs, horned violets, young elderberries, and elderberry flower salad. Biggest pieces of asparagus ever by American standards but a work of art!

Fourth course: sous vide pork belly with cauliflower, consommé, cauliflower chips, raw cauliflower, cauliflower greens, sorrel cream, a 'fake' gnocchi made with an emulsion, an egg yolk 'bon bon,' mini-red sorrel, and chili brown butter. Also a heavy dish with the pork belly. At this point we were busting at the seams and laughed when the next dish came out because we were hoping it would be small. 
It was not.

Fifth dish: grilled veal filet with asparagus five ways: braised, pickled, raw, grilled, and fried. Creme fraiche pearls, morels lightly cooked in butter, chervil, yarrow, sauce Bernaise (Of course, sauce Bernaise!), veal ham, cognac gel, shallot butter, and puffed chervil chips. So good, but we were so full! Some of us only managed half.

Pre-dessert desert of cake. Again, lots of laughs as they brought out this unexpected 'bit' of food because we actually joked that there might be a pre-dessert dessert and it actually happened. I don't know what the waiter, who ended up being our neighbor in the apartment across from us, thought of us.

The actual dessert and final course: strawberry mousse, fresh, as a gel, and fried as chips with candied strawberry greens, rapeseed blossom foam and blossoms, rapeseed leaf ice cream, frozen lemon meringue, and 'branches' of white chocolate and fried pastry.

Laughing hysterically at this point because we were already anticipating this one. Post dessert dessert of a forest floor scene with cookie slugs, cookie leaves, and flute cookies filled with a sweet cream. Fresh snapdragons and a red berry gel sit atop 'earth' made of cookie and nut crumbs. We soldiered through and ate every last bite of this one.

Passed out from our big but very enjoyable meal.