Weinlese!

So, today was the Weinlese! Students and staff were invited to go take part in the grape harvest in the vineyard just behind the castle at the school. We spent 3 hours cutting grapes and collecting them in buckets in the October sun. It really was a fun time and I'm glad I participated. I think the best thing now would be to just post a bunch of pictures (don't forget you can click on any of the pictures to make them bigger!)





Left: rows of white grapes waiting to be plucked to make the ever famous Johannisberger Riesling! (I had my share of this in college). Right: 2 of my group members cutting down grapes with very sharp scissors marketed specifically for grape harvesting. Top: My first bucket of grapes. Don't they look great? I'm glad we were harvesting white grapes that day, because the juice got everywhere. A little farther off there's a vineyard with purple grapes that probably wouldn't have been so kind to my jeans.



Left: Here you can see the green buckets the "Träger" had to wear on their backs." The Träger (carrier) would go around to people as they harvested and the harvester would dump their bucket of grapes into the green tub. They would then run these tubs to the truck, as shown in the top picture. To the right you see my bucket and those of my other group members as we collected grapes.

One of my favorite pictures for the day, though, is looking up from the vineyard at the castle from the school as rain clouds gathered around: