Two daays in Saarbrücken

7 May 2009

Last month Suzy and I headed to Saarbrücken for a concert. This time we were back on land, staying in a boring old hotel for the concert at the Congress Hall, rather than sailing the Neckar on a concert ship with a floating stage like last year.

Our posh hotel in Saarbrücken was just a short walk from the station – all geekily researched with Google Earth months beforehand. I do just like to know where I’m going. And if Multimap can offer me a birds’-eye view of the hotel so I know what to look for as I come down the street, then that’s even better!

We found a quiet, nice-looking restaurant for our evening meal and ordered our drinks from the waiter. Having learned in Salzburg that asking for lemonade usually gets an “Is Sprite ok?” in response, I asked for a Sprite straight off. “Sprite?”, “Ja, Sprite, bitte”. Big or small? Small. We waited and then Suzy was brought her Apfelschorle – apple juice and sparkling water – and I was brought … a small Apfelschorle. Ok then. We ordered our food, a cheeseburger for me and salmon and pasta for Suzy. We waited and then eventually the two dishes arrived: a cheeseburger for me and someone else’s main course for Suzy. This was fun!

The next morning we did some sightseeing, our first destination being the strange Coliseum-like brickwork I’d spotted on Google Earth. It turned out to be in the slightly scruffy Bürgerpark, where Suzy traversed the walls running through the water while I watched her, ate my apple and prayed that she wouldn’t fall in.

We walked along by the river towards the town centre and explored the old town before heading across to the other side of the river to check out the castle. More accustomed to castles with turrets, portcullises, arrow slits and holes through which boiling tar could be poured onto the enemy, we were initially a little confounded by Saarbrücken castle looking more like, well, a big house. True, there were spiral staircases, but they were housed within a modern glass atrium, so it was hard to imagine damsels in distress running down them being chased by big bad men in chainmail.

In the early evening we headed to the Congresshalle for a super concert. I have no great journalistic flair for describing such events, so suffice it to say that it blew my mind and I had a fantastic time. And there’s also nothing quite like having your friend sitting next to you and hearing her singing along to a song by your favourite artist that you didn’t even realise she knew.

The next morning we had breakfast with two girls from the band and suddenly time got away from us and we were a little behind with our timing. Which then turned into a fair amount behind with our timing, because it turns out that having a billion kilos of camera equipment (hello, rented Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8, I loooove you) on my back slows me down. And when I try and run to get onto the train that Suzy is keeping in the station with her foot, nothing really happens and I continue to plod along at zero mph. But we made it and collapsed onto the train in a pile of luggage, sweat and near asphyxiation.

An hour or so later we were in the security line at Zweibrücken airport when I asked Suzy if she wanted a fight. She ignored my oft-posed rhetorical question and I turned to face forward again in the queue. At which point she poked me in the back of the knee and I nearly fell to the ground.