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March 26th 2015
YORK by Horst Schäfer

Of course Horst told us about and showed us pictures of the mediaeval city of York, its walls ( over 4km long) whose embankments are covered in flowers, the gateways with meaningful names, the wonderful minster with its stained glass windows, the narrow old streets with houses leaning towards one another and at least 4 museums. In the Yorvik museum the smells almost came to life. Of course that’s what we came for and what we heard and saw but we also saw and heard about the York that only Horst could have told us.
Horst Schäfer went to England a long time ago. He went for a year to get away from home and to learn English. He stayed for 40 years and opened an Austrian restaurant, called Schaefers! York is an area known for flooding. Through Horst we saw the tide forcing the water, caused by the heavy rain, back up the river again. There was a pub on a flooded street with a sign „ business as normal“. As long as you wore „wellies“, Horst said. Trains from the Railway Museum Britain’s largest) went past Horst’s restaurant on their weekend trips. This was an ideal place to drop in after an hour‘s ride on a museum train. One morning Horst was awoken in his sleep and could not understand where the noise had been coming from until he saw the cathedral on fire. This fire in York Minster badly damaged the ancient oak timbers of the roof and the beautiful rose window.
Horst offered his guests, among other things Emperor’s Meat ( Kaiserfleisch) and Apple Studel but after 40 years in England he now still needs certain English specialities. Ask him about Branston Pickle, HP Sauce or Lemon Curd.

Hazel Zeiner

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