Normally, I avoid restaurants, which show pictures of their food in their windows and their menus, but it was New Year’s Eve and nearly all restaurants (even fast food restaurants) were closed. So, we decided to give the C&T Jumbo a try. As starters we choose Wan-Tans (good, but not self-made), a Jumbo soup (which had a mucilaginous consistency, so we didn’t eat it) and a homemade spring roll (very delicious). Unfortenatly, we were not able to order a main course, because all meals were precooked (very strange for chinese restaurants) and only warmed up in a microwave and thererfore I was not able to order food without mushrooms.

Survey: a small restaurant for smokers (unpleasent for non-smokers because of a bad airconditioning), without fresh cooked food, not recommendable for allergic persons, Saarbrücken has many better chinese restaurants

The original plan was to celebrate the New Year’s Eve at a friend’s party in Berlin. As luck would have it, our concierge in the hotel has noted our reservation for the hotelroom only on a post it (unimaginably not in the computer!) and so, our room was already booked again. Hence, we had to pack all our stuff together and went to the train station. Barely, we catched the last train to our home station (Neunkirchen). Because of a breakdown in the Deutsche Bahn’s signal installation, our train was only able to drive 160 km/h and so, we arrived in Mannheim with 25 minutes delay. Therefore we missed our connecting train and had to wait nearly one hour. Luckily, Marko is a “bahn.comfort” customer, what allows him to spend the waiting time in a warm and nice arranged lounge drinking some coffee or soft drinks and reading some newspaper. Unfortunately, it was the New Year’s Eve and the lounge was closed already, as well as nearly all other shops. Well, after a short search, we found an open gambling area which also offers some drinks. So we took there a coffee while waiting for our meal in the next trains dining car.

Our next train was not the expected one. It was a minimum 30 year old train, which operates only as alternative train for the newer ones. This train was a little bit uncomfortable but the worse thing was that it hadn’t the expected dining car (and we were so hungry, because our breakfast was 8 hours ago). A little bit nerved about all this things, I began to read the timetable of the train, to check our new arrival time. I catched the glimpse of the small print and was shocked: Due to the fact that we missed our earlier train in Mannheim, there was no other train to bring us home! To make the most of our new situation, we decided to unpack our suitcases, change our clothes and I put my make-up on.

With a new look, we left the train in Saarbrücken, looking for an open restaurant. At the St. Johanner Markt, we found a small chinese restaurant, where we ordered some starters. Regrettably, I was not able to eat some of the main courses, because there were mushrooms in the food (I have a mushroom allergy) and the food was already cooked. So, we went a little bit saturated to a party. There, I was very happy to have eaten so few the whole day, because everybody brought some delicious things for the buffet. Finally we started to celebrate the New Year’s Eve (paunched).

Closing my first entry, I would say, that I hope 2007 starts better than 2006 ends. I wish you and your family all the best for the new year!