Wolfram Siebeck on swarms of mosquitoes and wine festivals

We love summer because it's warmer than spring, autumn, and winter combined. In that sense, it's like a stew of caviar, truffles, foie gras, and currywurst. Should a specialty containing all four ingredients ever appear at our favorite restaurant, we'll consider it the pinnacle of summer (avant-garde!) and celebrate accordingly. Because summer is meant to be celebrated. We celebrate the return of swarms of mosquitoes from their winter quarters, as well as the return of chefs from their cruises. But above all, we celebrate wine. Anyone driving through Germany will encounter a wine festival after just three potholes. Alongside the courtyard concerts of the musical winemakers, a summer like this offers all sorts of events, which connoisseurs call vernissages if they have even the slightest connection to art. Such a vernissage always begins the same way: you stand around with a glass of warm Müller-Thurgau in your hand, nibbling on a whole-grain roll. It wasn't long before a guy approached me and said, "Aren't you Dr. Schlotzmann?" Serves me right. Why did I even go here where nobody knew me and they didn't even have their own parking space? "I heard you're interested in bread?" he pressed. Bread? Of course I'm interested in bread. Who isn't! If only I knew who Dr. Schlotzmann was. I nodded, puzzled.

"I was told you work with good bread professionally...?" – "Well, sort of." Who could this sloppy fellow be? "Our bakers' guild," he continues, searching his jacket pocket for something (I presume) that might reveal his identity or his bakers' guild. He can't find it in the left inside pocket, and then not in the right. "Too bad..." he says apologetically, when a stout woman pushes between us and asks, "Is that BMW with the number 234YZ yours?" I shake my head, while the man from the bakers' guild says, "No, I'm here by bike," and laughs uncontrollably. I take a small step back and bump into another person, apparently a woman. "Can't you watch where you're going..." she scolds, her voice trailing off. We both turned around; she saw my white hair and instantly realized I could be her grandfather. I only registered that she was an exceptionally beautiful art lover and wondered how I could get her to want to see my stamp collection. "Our bakers' guild," the guy interrupted my philatelic fantasies, "has set itself the goal of..."

“I’m so sorry,” I murmur, looking deep into her black eyes, “it was my fault.” – “Oh, it was nothing! No wonder with the crowd.” – “A light, modern bread without a premix…” – “The BMW with the number…” – “I’d be inconsolable if I hadn’t bumped into you!” The beautiful woman squints slightly and looks me up and down. The baker has found what he was looking for. He hands me a crumpled piece of paper and calls out: “Sunday morning, ten o’clock! Will you be coming, Doctor?” I turn to the dark-eyed woman and ask: “Are you coming? It could be a lot of fun.” – “Fun? I’m going to church on Sunday mornings!” And I thought until now that art followed bread.

I almost arrived too late. It's exactly ten o'clock, and a good dozen bread-loving friends are standing in front of the entrance to one of those concrete buildings with a grand staircase, the kind that have left municipalities so indebted that they have to liquidate the city's art collections and raise the entrance fee for the public swimming pool. At the very top of the stairs stands that guy who mistook me for Dr. Schlotzmann, chatting animatedly to three others. I quickly turn my back on them and see a footman holding open the door of a flashy twelve-cylinder car so that a dark-haired beauty in a Chanel suit can get in. I recognize my art-loving friend and am beside her in two bounds. "Will you give me a ride to the church?" I ask her, stepping on the footman's toes. She looks me over, less surprised than amused. “I was already at early mass.” – “Then we’ll go to my place. I’ll show you my stamp collection.” – “What a shame. When I saw you at the gallery, I thought you were interested in art.” “Can’t you watch where you’re going, old man?” the doorman yells in my ear. His face is contorted in pain. He’s really angry. He’s probably wearing patent leather shoes. But I don’t look down. I look into the eyes of the beautiful art lover. “Dr. Schlotzmann,” the bread-loving man trumpets in my other ear, “how wonderful that you’ve come! May I introduce you to Director Berg…” I don’t catch who he wants to introduce me to. Because at that moment, several things are happening at once. A young man with an antique full beard, dressed in a hairnet, is wheeling over a pile of loaves of bread in an equally antique stretcher, which he sets down next to the car door, in front of which the wailing lackey is hopping on one leg. At the same time, the aspiring philatelist opens the car door so wide that the one-legged lackey is pushed backward against the bread basket, loses his balance, and tumbles to the ground, pulling 40 modern loaves of bread with him. "I know a quiet wine tavern near the cathedral," I manage to call out to her, when a man in a Tyrolean hat grabs my right arm, pulls me towards him, and says: "It is a great pleasure and honor to welcome you, Dr. Schlotzmann, to our establishment on World Bread Day!" I manage to escape his shaking hand while trying not to step on the modern loaves. Therefore, I hear more than I see a flashy limousine start off in a direction that certainly doesn't lead to my stamp collection. Someone calls out, "Dr. Schlotzmann...!"; but by then I'm already out of earshot, which, at my age, doesn't extend very far. I hope I can still make it to the wine tavern near the cathedral.