Schwaigern & Uber 30 Party

Took the train to Schwaigern today to see where the Caplinger's (Käpplinger) family came from. They left in 1720 or thereabouts and after seeing the town, now I know why: there's nothing there. NOTHING. It's tiny, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do. AA and I walked all over town, checked out a new old church dating to the 1500's, and tried to find a cemetery old enough that we might actually find a gravestone or two. But no. the oldest stones in their only cemetery dated to the 1800's, long after my family split from the desolate place.

We made our way back to Stuttgart via Heilbronn. We stopped at one of the Christmas shops in the main train station and I bought a squarish "Tirol" smoked sausage that looks like Langenjager, but I'm not sure if it is or not. We went back to the apartment and had an early dinner of sausage, cheese, bread, and wine.

Out 9PM we headed out to catch the train for Boblingen for the Uber 30 Party and each grabbed a beer for the train ride (yep, it's legal to drink in public here...so we wanted to be juvenile and give it a try).

It was freakin' cold last night and we had to walk about 10 minutes from the train station. I had my doubts about this so-called "party" but what the heck. I needed to get AA to socialize with folks and it would hopefully be fun in the process. We arrived at a building so large that I guessed that it was a veritable CONVENTION CENTER. You could hear bass emanating from the building. Hmmm, this party was bigger than I thought. Mind you, I still couldn't see the front door. We rounded the building and holy crap: this was one big party! It cost 14 euro to get in ($21 per person) and when I saw the size of the coat check was I then realized just how huge this party was.

We made our way to the main dance floor. There was a couple hundred people easily. Drink tickets were 1.25E each and beers were 2 tickets, or 2.5E ($3.75, not bad!). I bought 6 tickets, AA bought 8 and we made our way to the drink bar. I probably should have stuck with wine as that's what we'd had earlier in the day. Oh. save for that beer on the train. And the beer in Schwaigern.

Anyways, this party turned out to be gigantic. I would guess that there was at least 2000 people in five dance areas. There was one room for German/Oldies music, Techno, Salsa, Pop/Dance music, and a piano bar. It was amazing that there were this many people even living in Boblingen! Everyone over 30 must have been at this party. That's all I know. I didn't see a lot of hunky Teutonic boys, but there were loads of cute girls. We met up with AA's coworker W and his girlfriend, D, and went about checking out the various dance areas.

And dance we did. Till my feet and thighs hurt. We spent most of our time dancing in the Techno and Pop/Dance rooms. One thing I noticed is that most of the German men are just too shy to ask a girl to dance. It was strange. I did quite a bit of people watching this evening and it was fun to see how people intermingle in another culture.

We stayed til about 4:30AM and headed to the train. The train didn't get started until 5:30AM and we had a choice to find a warm spot to wait, or pay 50E ($75) for a cab ride back home. In hindsight we should have stayed at the party till it closed at 5AM just to stay warm until the trains started back up. But we opted to find a warm place and wait. I spied an elevator and suggested we hide out there as it would be somewhat protected from the cold. Come 5:30AM, we were never so happy to see a train in our lives. Arriving back at the house I whipped up a batch of maulthausen (sp?) fried in butter and we promptly went to bed. I think it was 7:30AM when I hit the pillow.

German bedrooms have thick wooden shades that cut out light and keep heat in. It would be nearly 1PM when I got up.