Back in Jersey, after a full month away, a week without internet connections in Germany, and three days in the Mosel valley tasting german Rieslings with the schoene Prinzerin.

The trip to Frankfurt from Dubai was upgrades all the way, to business class on both legs of the trip thru Paris, and to a Mercedes C class with turbo and all the trimings at the rental counter. I drove to Karlsruhe on the French border on perfectly smooth Autobahns and hit 220km/h on one of the no-speed-limit stretches. After a morning meeting there, drove back to Mainz in the same highly engineered comfort for our workshop there.

Princess caught up with me there on Wednesday, and we didn’t do much I’m willing to share on this blog for the remainder of that day.

Thursday thru Saturday we drove up and down the Mosel valley between Bernkastel and Trier, keeping appointments with some of the best Riesling ‘weingut‘ (wine-maker) taking hundreds of pictures of the beautiful, steep vineyards soaking up the sun’s rays in the unseasonably bright, warm October afternoons.

Saturday night we met with a friend of the Princess and her German husband, and they cooked us a feast, opened gorgeous bottles of Italian wines, stuffed us with Tiramisu and then finished us with fine Swiss eau-de-vie and cuban cigars.

If it hadn’t been for the extra hour Sunday nite, I’d never have caught my first flight of the day that morning. Made it to Paris just in time to catch an earlier flite to Newark, and instead of having to wait for me, the Prinzesin found me already there when she came out of Customs.

We caught a burger on the way home and crashed into bed around 5pm.

Woke up, of course, at 3am.

More pictures over the next few days, I need to sort thru them…

Last day in Dubai, flying out tonite, should be having that dinner in the 8 star hotel before that.
Next post from Germany.
Four days to bliss.
I love you,
Princess.

Took a while, but two wonderful things have come to pass: I have finished ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance‘, and I have returned to the Burj Al Arab with my camera.

‘

Yea verily I say unto thee, I have stood at the foot of the great fishtanks and gazed up into the numinous heights of the great shell, and truly, Quality was all around me, an excellence in all things, the parete of ancient Greece was my sheperd and my CompactFlash runneth over….

Like a wolf in sheep’s clothing I stalked the lighted halls of luxury, intent on stealing a piece of the fire to warm me thru the simpler night I must return to, and the dogs, they hounded me, that I not turn my cyclopean eye upon their charges and disturb the hushed murmur of fleece softly settling like snow around our feet.

Climbing to the tip of Olympos, I appeased the guardians of the aerie with my own burnt offering, thrice two hands of bucks in return for two Stellas, and verily was I thunderstruck to see…that gods drink bottled beer, and there is not enough pressure for draft, one thousand feet about the sea!

My companions and I were quick to eat of the many tasty treats that came beside the ugly bottles, olives and maki and the smallest tomatoes I ever did see. When the stench of burning wool became too strong for even our solid appetites, we glanced around one final time, and ran back down the mountain weary and skittish all at once.

We had an uneasy feeling that we had been inside a childhood toy that bleeped and flashed primary colours and cursed like R2D2 if you failed to remember its flashy jingles, but nay, in truth it could not be. If red and green and blue and yellow adorn the highest halls of the mighty, then perhaps it reflects poorly on the toy’s travesty, but surely Olympos cannot be simply a little tacky…

This trip has morphed into a month-long pilgrimage to nowhere in the company of hotel staff who are like family by now, and a lone executive from the head office quietly and sadly going native. We roll boulders to make a mountain, because we are not Muhammad, that the mountain should come to us, or perhaps we roll boulders because we’re scared of what it would mean if we were to stop. Scared that the mountain start rolling by itself, or worse, that silence should return and the dust settle all around us.

My chest is an aching hole where heartbeats from eleven megameters away are echoing softly like the bloodwarm surf of the gulf.

Yes, I get the heebee jeebees when I think about it, but I’m down to one book now, one I’ve never managed to finish before. Yet this time, the aimlessness, the existential fear of being, perhaps even the spiritual vertigo of the holy month of Ramadan, all conspire to put me in bed by 10pm with nothing on my night stand except ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance‘. Somehow, it seems like the only thing worth reading right now, short of a quiet conversation with an emir or rabbi, or perhaps the Dalai Lama.

Can you get the Dalai Lama on room service?

Because sometimes, you want to share an insight, the sudden giddy intuition that there is no substance behind your perceptions. Like, when you are drinking in a deserted bar in front of a mirror-smooth pool, surrounded by the unceasing toil of an army of slaves building pigeon-holes you suspect will forever be empty…

Mathieu : I need 13 more nights at a Hilton after this trip to make gold
Mathieu : or three stays
Princess: whoa
Princess: why don’t you stay there until thanksgiving to get there?
Princess: that might work
Mathieu : lol
Mathieu : if I stay until thanksgiving, I can probably make Diamond
Princess: try it
Princess: see what you get
Mathieu : in trouble is what I’ll get
Princess: I didn’t say it
Mathieu : you thought it so hard i could feel it
Mathieu :
Mathieu : 11,000 km and I can feel it from here
Mathieu : :*
Princess: whatever
Mathieu : he he
Princess: you’re making fun of me
Mathieu : I should blog this
Princess: and no need to edit
Princess: it’s all kosher
Princess: or halal
Princess: in your case
Mathieu : lol

Incidentally, on the subject of hotels, I’m still working on a return visit to the Burj Al Arab, but the big news is that I may be having dinner at the Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, the ONLY eight star hotel in the world…
How do you like them apples?