Wolfenbüttel

Leibte freunde, I can't tell you how difficult it was to post this in German, or how hard it is typing on this funkenwagen keyboard. But let me say, this is a beautiful little 17th c. half-timbered city, with canals and some serious food. Upon my arrival I found a wine shop that has huge glass vats of spirits, among which was absinthe, which of course I drank last night after arriving. I became befuddled at night, but even stranger I think I was hallucinating this morning during research. I don't know whether it was reading a Latin diatribe on fasting, wearing new glasses that don't quite work or serious jet lag, but I kept imagining that people were standing next to me and talking in other kinds of Babel. I don't think I dozed off, but that may have been it.

There are also gorgeous butchers everywhere, seriously stinky cheese, picklehäring from the North Sea, dark bread, and heady weissbier. And that was breakfast. I just came back from dinner, a kind of mixed grill of veal, beef, bacon, clove-laden weisswürst and speck-laden kartoffelnschmutz. I shall now burst asunder and did the Duke Of Brunswick (10 minutes away) who did surfet on strawberries, according to Thomas Moffet, in the 16th c.

Your Ken