Stammtisch

Our next Stammtisch is a German Wine Tasting evening on Tuesday, 21 June 2011 at the Mansion House. Stammtisch member Anne Thiele, who grew up on a Mosel winery and local wine merchant Heinz Dennhöfer have organised various wines for us and will guide us through the evening. Gunther has prepared a menu that will include salad, cheese, meats and breads followed by blackforest gateau. The cost for the dinner and wine tasting will be £15 per head and payable in advance at the Mansion House (call 0191 281 0863) – but as usual if you could let me know if you’re coming then we get an idea of numbers to ensure we have enough wine and food available! The evening will start as usual at 6.30pm.

Last year at the London International Wine Fair, German wines won a total of 21 gold medals, which meant that Germany was joint third with Italy behind France and Spain. In particular producers from the Franconian region were extremely successful and picked up 63 medals for their wines, including 14 Gold. To get you in the mood for our wine evening and find out a bit more about Germany’s wine regions and some of its products, check out the 3-Minute Wine School online.

It’s usually beer that Germany is famous for and therefore we thought we organise a small Beer Festival and BBQ before the summer holidays. Hosted again by the Mansion House on Thursday, 7 July we will also have a marquee just in case the Geordie weather doesn’t play ball. The ‘German’ beer will be travelling down from north of the border. The famous WEST restaurant and brewery, which is run by Franconian Petra Wetzel, will introduce their award winning beers to you, which are brewed according to the German purity law.

The Martin Luther Church in Newcastle will again hold an Organ Recital and this time it will feature the renowned organist Paul Ritchie. This will take place on Friday, 3 June 2011 at 7.30pm and Paul will play Albrechtsberger, Bach, Boyce, Bruhns, Buxtehude, Pachelbel, Seeger and Stanley. The Martin Luther Church is situated at Clarence Street/Copeland Terrace in Shieldfield and admission fee is £5, which includes interval drinks.

So what about the polite Brits and the rude Germans? If you’re trying to avoid communication issues, the BBC website might offer a bit of a clue. This week there was an article on direct and indirect communications comparing the Germans and the Brits. Click here for the full article.

And last, but note least here are the answers to the questions raised in our May newsletter: 1) Düsseldorf is the city known as ‘Klein-Tokio am Rhein’. 2) And the over 100 year old Schwebebahn in Wuppertal hit the headlines in 1950 when Circus Althoff did a publicity stunt that went spectacularly wrong. The circus director and head of transport seemed to think it was a good idea to take a 700kg two-year old elephant baby on the train. Tuffi the Elephant, quite understandably, didn’t agree and very quickly got off by jumping into the river Wupper from a height of 12m– luckily she escaped unhurt. The Berliner Zeitung had quite a nice article about this event, if you’re interested.

We hope we will see you soon at one of our next events and hopefully by then summer will have also arrived in Geordieland!!!