Apologies, we’ve long since returned to the UK from Tour 12 and I’m still playing catch up with the blog.
We were on our way back to the UK but had a few days before our scheduled ferry departure from Calais. We decided upon a couple of days in a hotel and Vanya found a small privately owned hotel in Heusweiler some 3 to 4 hours drive from Frickenhausen am Main and in the general direction of Calais. There is nothing wrong with the hotel Vanya chose for us (Hotel L’Adresse). It suited our needs and the management and staff were most welcoming but; Heusweiler proved a real disappointment. Heusweiler is not a large town and we didn’t expect much of the place but almost everything there was closed. Without realising it, we had arrived on a German National Holiday. It was German Reunification Day and, to make matters worse (at least for us), the nearby town of Saarbrucken (the capital of Saarland) was taking it’s turn, as the 2025 holder of the rotating presidency of the Bundesrat, to host the country’s annual celebrations of the Berlin Wall coming down on 9 November 1989*. Saarbrucken was holding a party and just about everybody in Heusweiler had closed up and gone there for the weekend. In hindsight we should perhaps have joined the rest of the town and caught a train to Saarbrucken but, in our defence, we didn’t arrive in Heusweiler until late in the afternoon.
Instead, I wandered Heusweiler looking for a restaurant which could feed us that first evening and, while it took a while to find somewhere open and not already fully booked, we struck lucky with Restaurant Herrgottswinkel. Until about a year ago this was a traditional German restaurant and it still very much looks the part. It was taken over by a Syrian family whose focus is more towards Arabic cuisine. I have long considered Lebanon to be the home of the best Arabic food (and I treasure the memories of our last visit to Beirut and Byblos in 2016) but, this place ranks up there with some of the best Arabic food we have eaten anywhere. They produced a wonderful mezze of Hummus, Baba Ganoush, Muhammara and Muttabel and followed it up with a delicious Kebab dish.
Exploring Heusweiler the next day took no time at all. There’s very little to see and what there is was mostly closed. Moreover, it rained nearly the whole day. I was able to access the entrance hall of an old church, the Pfarreienge Meinschaft, but that porch was about as far as I could get and; I tried numerous times, without success, to access the Pfarrkirche Saint-Josef (opposite the Herrgottswinkel). For my part, that’s all there is to say about Heusweiler.
Well, that’s not altogether true. I’d passed the Da Tano Italian Restaurant while roaming the town and reserved a table for the evening. The restaurant is owned by an Albanian family and that evening we were met with a warm and friendly welcome and served some of the best Italian food I have ever eaten. The rump steak (in a pepper sauce) had a rich, beefy taste and was cooked to perfection and; it came with a bottle of the smoothest of Primitivo’s. Life is full of pleasant surprises.
Next stop is somewhere in Luxembourg. We’ve found a vet who will sort our dogs in readiness for the return to the UK.
* NB The Berlin Wall was brought down during the night of 9 November 1989 but the Unification Treaty which officially reunited East and West Germany wasn’t concluded until 3 October 1990. Consieration was given to making 9 November the unification date but, with Kristallnacht having taken place on that same night in 1938, 3 October was deemed more appropriate.