Tübingen

Today I took the train to the quaint little town of Tübingen via the R8 train from Stuttgart (a mere 4.8E with my 3 day pass supplementing part of the overall fee). It was an hour or so train ride and as it was the first day I'd had where I could see anything of blue in the sky, it was a pleasant trip. The train was rather empty so I took over a cluster of four seats at one point and settled in quite nicely.

Arriving in town I scrambled to find the visitor center. Finally locating it alongside the river I bought a map and set about exploring. My feet still aching from Saturday night's all night dancing, I grimaced when I realized that most of Tübingen is hilly and the streets and walkways are all cobblestones. It's quaint to the hilt with a meandering river, turretted homes, river walks, and half timbered houses. They have a rather large gothic church which is really cathedral in proportions...it dates to the early middle ages and is where they hold many concerts. I just missed the last concert by two days. Drats.

To my excitement there were oodles of chocolate stores to be had. At 3:30PM I stumbled onto a coffee shop with a full view of the city center fountain and city building and settled in for my first caffeine in just over a year. Two cafe cremes and two shots of local scotch whiskey later I found myself wandering out the door with two bottles of the elixer to meet AA for dinner at the gasthouse by the river. I arrived early and ordered myself their special "dark Christmas beer". It didn't turn out to be as dark as I'd like. The waiter suggested their dark unfiltered beer on the next run.

AA arrived and we ordered two dinners to share. I wasn't too thrilled with their ideas on salad (with sauerkraut in it) or with the spätzle as it seemed rather plain to me. I did notice that the two men sitting next to me had a different variety of the latter dish: their noodles being thicker and longer and less ribbony than ours was. Reflecting back, we should have ordered the spätzle with the cheese sauce. I'll have plenty of time to try other varieties on this trip so it's all good. I ordered the unfiltered beer partway through dinner as the waiter had suggested. It was just a hair darker and the flavor was like a Heffenweisen, which is what AA had ordered. Tasty, yes, but not what I was looking for. But still, not bad.

Dinner behind us, we decided that we just had to get ourselves a taste of the local gelato before heading home. This is as close to Italy as I'll be getting on this trip and AA did mention that one of his Italian coworkers that he works with simply raves about this particular gelato shop in Tübingen. Mind you, it's probably close to freezing and here we are, two nutty Americans off on a gelato run. For 4E we walked out with two of the largest gelatos I've seen outside of Italy. It was too late to enjoy our delicious finds inside the store as they were closing, so we made our way out onto the dark, twisting, cobblestoned streets and slowly headed back towards our train.

What a way to end a day.

Lazy Sunday at the Apartment

It's 2:25PM and AA and I are still in our pajamas, on our respective couches (mine really a stuffed chair), and we don't seem to be moving too fast. Neither of us is hungover, not even close, which is an amazing feat in itself.

Gosh, I had a dark beer in Schwaigern, 2 small glasses of wine at the house, a beer on the train, and then a little over three beers at the party.

I should feel like shit today, but I don't. What's weirder? I didn't even get a good rip roaring buzz from the barley pops last night. What's with that? I'd heard all sorts of stories on how potent German beer is supposed to be, but I think I was a bit shocked. Not disappointed as I didn't really intend to drink myself into a stupor or anything, but shouldn't I have been a bit more inebriated? One would think so.

So, two cups of German decaf coffee down, a chunk of toast with goat cheese, and I am no closer to doing anything today. I think a long hot shower is in my future. It looks cold, gray, and windy outside. It feels like a day to ride the couch and watch movies more than anything. But I'm in Germany. Aren't I supposed to be doing something? I feel a little guilty just sitting here but my legs and feet hurt so much. I even had a dream about how much they hurt. Gah!

We might actually get out of the house by the time it turns dark. Fancy. that.

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.

Flying to Stuttgart

Flight to Amsterdam was "less than". I flew KLM specifically because of the great food and service I'd had in the past. This time the food was really rather mediocre. I felt a bit like I was on an American airlines. (Mental note: fly Lufthansa next time).

Met a nice gal, NC, who lives in Atherton part time and in The Hague part time. She spends 2 months in The Hague, returns to Atherton, and then goes back to The Netherlands. She's been doing it for nearly a year and loves it. I would love a job like hers. We promised to get in touch with each other and she would hook me up with her friend "A" to show me around Amsterdam my last night. Cool.

Arriving in Amsterdam, I perused the shops, grabbed an apple (0.50E) and sat down to try to get my email to work. No luck. IPASS thinks I have a wrong password or login. Sucks.

Boarded a shuttle van to take us to our hop to Stuttgart. Plane seated 80 people and was probably 60 to 70% full. I counted 6 women on the plane, the rest being men. WTF? Where are the women? The gross man behind me hacked all the way to Stuttgart, making disgusting noises with his throat. "Ah, I know where the women are", I thought. "They've all left Germany because of the gross men!" My first impressions of German men on that plane weren't good ones.

Descending into Stuttgart we hit loads of clouds. The lower we went the darker it got. We were nearly on top of the runway when the clouds broke. Nasty weather. Dark, gray, windy, a bit rainy.

I was a bit nervous in the airport waiting area. I didn't have to go through customs, so that wasn't it. But AA wasn't there to greet me. I felt a bit conspicuous waiting for him but eventually he showed. Thank god.

We went to a tourist office and bought me a 3 day train pass (17E) and off we were. The trains are conveniently located in the lower airport area. Easy to find ever if AA weren't with me, but navigating the maps are more difficult. The trains are very similar to the metro in Paris so I'm not sure why I had a hard time. I think I was just tired from not sleeping on either of the flights.

His apartment was a short uphill walk from the train stop. Ah, didn't realize he lived up a hill. I didn't bring flat shoes with me. Big mistake. I'd have to buy a pair of flats at some point. Ugh. We passed an interesting looking meatshop and bakery. Food, conveniently located. A good thing.

We dropped off my bags and headed back to the train to check out the downtown area. A few of the booths were already set up for the Christmas festival that starts on the 28th (Wednesday). We chowed down a couple of sausages on buns with mustard. I found out later that the vendor stiffed me 2E ($3) on my change. Bah. I looked at some shoes in the windows of a few stores. God, these folks wear ugly shoes and boy are they expensive! Most shoes started at 75E (add 50% on to convert to dollars these days thank to our fearless leader in Washington who has destroyed the power of our dollar - another rant for another day - perhaps when the bills from this trip roll in?)

Made our way to a market to pick up food for the apartment. AA's refrigerator was, in typical bachelor style, quite empty. We bought bread, a bottle of local red wine (pinot style), fruit, coffee, and a buttload of ritter bars. Groceries are about what we'd pay at Whole Food's. I wasn't too surprised at the cost of anything, but I was blown away at the selection. I felt like a kid in a gourmet candy store. I think we bought EIGHT bars of chocolate.

The chocolate gluttony begineth.

OMGF. Their chocolate selection is to die for. I will have to return to the market to take pictures just of the chocolate selection. They must have had an entire wall devoted just to Lindt chocolate. It's so unfair that we can't get the same varieties!

Getting late, we headed back home, popped open the wine, two ritter bars, and set up my laptop. I was exhausted but I tried to stay up as best I could to ward off the jetlag. I woke up in my chair around midnight and decided I should go to bed. It had been such a long day.

6 Days to Stuttgart

The ten day forecast over at Weather.com portents some really nasty weather for my arrival into Stuttgart. Visions of Heidi and Peter on a warm, sunny, pastoral hill just receded into the dark recesses of my brain. Yeah, it's crazy to go to Germany in the winter, actually the beginning of winter, but it is just the time for me to go.

Oddly my last three trips to the EU have all been in November. My birthday to Paris? Late November and early December. Last year's impromptu (read: whirlwind) trip to Italy? Mid November. And this trip? Late November to early December once again.

Two of the trips, Paris and the immediate one, are happening in November because of the convenience of leveraging the rather lengthy period that starts on Thanksgiving day and stretches to the weekend after my birthday (29 Nov). I can usually eek out a good 10 day holiday for the price of 5 business days. Sort of like "buy one vacation day, get one free!" on some level.

The last few nights I've been utterly preoccupied with figuring out where I should eat, what I should buy, train schedules, and day trips whilst in Stuttgart. You think I'd be more obsessed with learning the language seeing that I don't speak a lick of German. I'm not sure why I'm procrastinating but I suspect that my brain is sending out "full" messages after three years of studying French. I am also secretly hoping that since the French border is so close that I might be able to get by with French if need be. At least it helped me in Italy; more than my three years of Spanish did.

Another part of me feels that learning the German language is akin to learning Romulan. It's not an easy language no matter how often you hear that the English language finds it roots in German. Bullshit. English is 65% bastardized French and that is why it's so damned easy to learn. German? Gosh, it's like talking with a mouthful of chewed up crackers. Despite my two phrase, and 1 grammar book, I don't think that this is going to set up residence in my brain too well.