Day 29 - Break out Tractor Tuesday

Posting this weeks after the event I can't remember how I got permission to leave the parish borders and escape to the 6km distanced Erkheim. Perhaps it was to pick up some paperwork from my GP required by UK authorities.

However made a nice break for the dogs and myself to catch some foreign country air and get a decent Tractor Tuesday Blip. A Fendt 718 Vario with Pöttinger butterfly mowers, I think cutting a field of, as it is known in Germany "GPS" or Whole Plant Silage often used in Bio-Gas production but also for cattle silage.

Recently over lunch, the builders had mentioned the best "Weißwurst" (white sausage) in the area was made by the Erkheim butcher Gregor Müller whose shop I had to pass on the way home and lo and behold, Weißwurst was on the Today's Special Offer blackboard outside. So grabbed enough for three and 50 metres up the road, the equivalent number of fresh Brezn (Pretzel). The other obligatory ingredients I knew were in the fridge at home.

And so the two builders and I had the full Bavarian Monty including cool glasses of Franziskaner Wheat Beer and the only legal sweet mustard, Händlmaier's. There is a rather good mock up of a BMW production instruction sheet, describing step by step how to prepare, cook and serve a Weißwurst meal. I followed it to the letter. Wonder if the BMW/Mini production workers in the UK get to enjoy this speciality from time to time. The first time I was subjected to it in 1989 by work colleagues in a beer garden in Munich, I fought very hard not to spew up the entire contents. In the years since, I have come to enjoy it.

My records don't show how much work was done on the roof in the afternoon and honour does not allow me to publish a photo of the builders at lunch - certainly contra to Health & Safety laws. However an extra photo of the alps and thoughts in England of people who I haven't forgotten despite my lack of contact. They are still full of snow and the windmills producing regenerative electricity while our roof waits for it's PV modules.