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Leaving Berlin in the early afternoon, we are now on the legendary Avus Highway, direction Thüringen.
In GDR times it was the only way to get from Western Germany to Berlin.
The lowlands of Brandenburg pass into the hilly, cultivated landscape of Thüringen with yellow cornfields, vineyards, orchards, woods and meadows. Someway the landscape reminds you of the Italian Toscana or the Austrian Weinviertel, when silhouettes of single trees become apparent in contrast to the blue sky.
We are invited for coffee and cake -and soup of corse- by Hartmuts family (his parents Barbara and Hermann, his brother Frank with girlfriend Christina) in a small village called Neugönna, 10km far from Jena.
Neugönna is composed of a handful of pictorial frame houses and a church. Frank and Christina are living in such a house, which they have renovated with love and attention to details and material, but the very special about it is the garden behind the house. A gentle slope with orchard, vineyard, vegetable patches, shady resting places, a tree house for the kids and a wonderful view over the roofs of Neugönna. Amazing, how much various sorts of grapes and fruits are growing here. One single tree bears 10 different sorts of apples. A thin, barely half a meter high sapling already bears two nice, chubby plums. There is not one plant in this garden, that doesn't bear fruits. Hermann shows me the vineyard, that he cultivates together with Frank. Here are 10 different sorts of vine, most of them new growings.
One speciality is the Riesling, a wild descendant of the wine, that once was cultivated in this region. Hermann found it growing at the place around the house.
Once upon a time Thüringen was a well known wine-growing district, that later on disrupted and now since a few years regains its momentum, mainly on the initiative of some individuals. Hermann explains about the art of engrafting, which he and Frank can handle in a masterly way. New sorts of wine are growing on old grapevines and already after two years they bare grapes. The diversity of sorts is only temporary, just to find out, which sort will grow best on this special place. So the use of pesticides can be avoided and the earnig be optimized.
And, needless to say, in such a garden the soup is being cooked with fresh vegetable. With the help of all involved persons an impromtu vegetable soup is created. We take our delicious meal under the shades of the vine-covered arbour thereto we drink the felicitous cuvee from the own vineyard.
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