04/09/07

This morning we woke earlier and met Maggy’s uncle at the Mercedes museum. The building is really impressive as were the many cards on display and information. We actually spent about four hours here but it went pretty quickly. I then went with Maggys uncle Udo in his Mercedes E-class wagon back to their place about 25 kms from Stuttgart in a little village although we can’t have gone a minute without being in an urban area. Here I met his wife who only spoke a little English and we had a very nice pretzel and butter with tea. Udo then drove me to a Hugo Boss factory outlet in the near by village Metzingam as this is where the company originated. On the way I asked him about the letters ‘evo’ on a Mercedes Benz in front of us and he thought I was referring to the Italian number plate because Germans pronounce ‘I’s’ as ‘e’s’ when saying the letter. Udo then said ‘if it has an ‘E’ its from Italy and a ‘D’ then its from Germany’ – I thought it was funny… In the Hugo Boss store I looked for some jeans to replace my now repaired ones and found them all to be pretty well priced, but I couldn’t find any that fitted better than my current ones but then I saw some cool brown and black striped pants for only 20 euro so I picked them up and found some undies on the way and was just about to buy them, when I though - I don’t really need these, so I put them back. So it wasn’t a materially fruitful outing but I did get the experience of Hugo Boss for pretty cheap. After a dinner of Schnitzel, Udo’s fourteen year old daughter Anna (who introduced herself to me as Anne only to be corrected by Udo (?)) and I and there lab/German Shepard Bella had a walk from a near by hill back to the house. She could speak alright English, but forgot words occasionally, but this didn’t stop her from talking at all, not by a long shot. On the way back it rained solidly again and got dark.Normally one of the first things that you ask someone you meet is ‘what sort of work do you do?’. Turns out I didn’t ask Udo. He’s a singer – yeah cool eh? He is 56 and a really big guy and speaks with a German accent, but sings fantastically in English. He showed me all of the songs on his computer (just the instruments) and then sang along to a couple, Eric Claptons ‘tears in heaven’ and another that I forgot. He’s got a great deep voice. We then chatted until about Midnight in their living room and went to bed. Maggie called to make sure everything was sweet and that I would get on the right train the next day which was very kind of her – her second interview went really well too. That night I slept fantastically even though the mattress on the fold out was really hard and thin.

03/09/07

I woke up that night because I was thirsty having only drunk fizzy drink that night but was momentarily stumped as to what to do about it. Normally I would go and drink some water from the tap - but Kai had said that the water was too chemically for drinking – was this just like townies saying ‘ohh our water tastes yucky, I prefer bottled water’ or would this water actually kill me? Choosing life, I went into the kitchen and drank as much sparkling mineral water as I could, which wasn’t very much , as this is what Kai gave me yesterday when he offered me some water. I then went back to sleep with a very airy feeling in my belly. That morning after a quick breakfast Dai walked me down to a nearby train station, helped me buy an all day ticket and sent me on my way. I arrived in central Stuttgart no probs and then found the information centre without any difficulty. Thankfully the Porsche Museum wasn’t closed on Mondays like the Mercedes one and with some guidance from a very helpful lady I found the train to go there. The train station is called Porsche platz (Porsche Place) and it really wasn’t hard to find the Porsche dealership from there. I walked in and had a fair mosey around taking some happy snaps and then headed back outside to find the museum. This was a little harder that the dealership to find and I had to walk about 300m around the block. The room had about twenty cars in it and these were all pretty sweet – I even saw my hero car the 959 from 1987 (a good year for stuff) although its body looked a bid second rate (it was made from fibre glass) compared to the much newer Carerra GT that it was parked next to. What do they say about meeting your hero’s??? I asked the friendly assistant if she could put English sub titles on the film that they were showing and she said she could throw up an English version in ten mins, which she did. In the mean time these two men dressed in Black with long black hair came in and started taking photos of all the cars, then the assistant opened the doors for them and they took interior shots – I though they might be publicity guys but one of the men kept getting in the photos as well and later they watched most of the movie with me.After the film it was bout four o’clock and I was getting a bit peckish so I wandered back outside and it was raining, but i had my jacket on so I kept going regardless. The further I walked the harder it go until my white pants went pretty see through (I seem to have this problem with my pants) so I walked into another Porsche building to dry off and because there was a customer restaurant on the top floor and as I bought a 3 euro fifty model car from the museum, that included me. When I go tot the restaurant It was completely empty so I thought I would have a self guided tour of the building as I had missed out on the factory tour. I started at the top of the stairs and check out some riveting storage rooms, and then a very interesting air-conditioning room, then I opened a door to a room that had about thirty businessmen all sitting around a big table, I meekly closed the door and scampered back down the stairs – end of the tour.

02/09/07

Maggy had done all of the organising for me to get to Stuttgart – places to stay and train times. I left Keil at about eleven and arrived in Stuttgart at about seven after changing trains twice. On the second leg of the trip I sat next to a girl called Marie. I was eying her off before we got on the train as she looked pretty cool, she had blonde hair and was wearing a knee length skirt, knee high boots and green glasses (she must have had some sort of top on as well or otherwise I really would have been eyeing her off!). I wanted to walk onto the same carriage as her but a lot of other people did as well so I went into the next one along – it was a good move as there must have been to many people on that carriage and she came and sat next to me. For a while we didn’t say anything, I ate my apple and baguette that Maggy had packed for me (see how nice she is?!) And had a sip of my juice and Marie ate a banana and then sent a message on her phone. It was about here that I was thinking, ‘play it cool Justo, you’ve got heaps of time and she probably doesn’t speak English anyway’. But then a sudden realisation spurred me into action – if I didn’t act soon I could miss my window of opportunity because her next move is likely to be whipping out a book or listening to an pm3 player and one these barricades are erected no conversation can commence. ‘Sprecken Zee English?’And she did! So for the next three hours we chatted about loads of things and she asked questions about me and the stuff that I didn’t – which really highlighted for me that a lot of other people haven’t. She’s a 24 year old Med student who just failed an oral exam and is going back home to Constance for a little while. We swapped email addresses and numbers and she said to look her up if I’m ever going to be in Hamburg again.At Stuttgart I met Kai – an old uni friend of Marks and we went out to a German pub for tea and had a German ravioli type thing with warm potato salad and apple pie – very nice! Kai works for Mercedes Benz deciding if customer s like products and how much they would be prepared to pay for them, at the moment he is working on automatic doors for the 2010 S-class. This sort of thing impressed me greatly and I fired bucket loads of questions about Benz and the German auto industry at him.We then went back to his place in his girlfriends 15 year old Opel Corsa (he rides a new BMW motorbike) and while he made some phone calls I checked out his massive CD and DVD collection. I was really impressed and we and a fair chat about bands and movies before watching a comedy and drinking Mezzer mix (orange/coke) and coke and eating the m and m’s that we picked up on the way. We then watched a couple of ‘Friends’ episodes of which he is a big fan, and then hit the sack.

1/09/07

We drove to Hamburg today in the 1.7l Diesel Corsa on the Autobahn at times reaching 180kph! When we got their we had trouble getting around as their was a triathalon through all of the city – Mark who was driving said ‘Shiezer’ a lot – that and the autobahn made it a very German start to the day!We went on a harbour cruise and it was pretty long, but worthwhile – we saw a lot of big ships as Hamburg is the second biggest port in Europe and many bridges as it has over 2000, more than Amsterdam and Venice combined. Afterwards we walked through a street that has a very German name which I have forgotten. It is where the sailors used to (and still do) hang out – so it is really seedy, lots of sex shops, pubs and I saw a shop that had pistols in the window for a couple of hundred euros. Mark said that it is a lot dodgier at night when you are here and that you don’t want to walk in the side alleys at all. We walked past one street that was closed with a gate that said only men that are over 18 can pass – no women – the prostitute street. When we got back to Kiel, we did a spot of grocery shopping and I was stoked because I walked past a very pretty girl giving out free samples of bread and pesto – awesome! However by the time we left the centre I had had about seven different samples from biccies to coke – at one point I had a nice small bowl of pasta in one had and a cup of premium ice-tea in the other – Good times! It must be a great part time job giving out samples – you get to make people feel so happy.

31/08/07

I woke up pretty late today, had a nice cinnamon scroll thing for breakfast with Maggy and about lunch time we walked into downtown Kiel in the light rain (was nice) and Maggy did some shopping and we got a drink in a coffee shop with a swinging chair, I got a chilli hot chocolate, which was interesting… Maggy also hooked me up with some of her rels and pals in Stuttgart – one who works for Mercedes Benz so that is cool, I leave on Sunday. Tonight we went out to IKEA for a look about then we got nice burgers and chips at a classy but pretty cheap local restaurant (4.80 euro for my Hot Texas burger) it was very good. Maggy went to bed and I talked to Mark for a while about cars – he wants to get an old Dodge charger, he’s nice bloke.

30/08/07

At about twelve or so this morning Maggie and I caught a A$90 000 Mercedes Taxi to the train station where Maggy went off to her interview and I hung out in down town Kiel. I got my phone fixed no probs – the man in the shop spoke pretty good English and I just needed a replacement battery. I then went to catch a bus back to Maggy’s place as she had given me the bus to catch and the station to get off at written on a piece of paper, surely I could go wrong, surely…I must have mispronounced the name of the station to the bus driver and he dropped me off at a place that didn’t look at all familiar – as I was getting off I knew I should have showed him the piece of paper, but I was out of money so I couldn’t have paid to go further and too indecisive. So I walked in what I thought was the right direction, the rain started to lighten up, I saw a lady on a bike that I had seen over in town, I stepped in some dog pooh and almost slipped over (side note: Europeans take dogs everywhere, on trains, buses, into cafes and department stores) and then I asked a random guy at a pedestrian crossing ‘Spreken Zee English? Which he did and he pointed me in the right direction and I got back after only about thirty minutes of walking around. Although that wasn’t the end. I couldn’t open the door to the apartment. I had the keys and everything. The main purpose in mind that a door is constructed for is to open - and I could do it. I pushed and pulled and twisted and ultimately felt very much like I was seven years old. Not even running my fingers through my beard which I have been growing since Switzerland could make me feel any more manly. I called Maggy, but ultimately needed the help of a neighbour to get inside, the neighbour made it all look very simple – turn the key and pull the handle towards you.So from having a broken phone, getting lost and failing to open a door I have met three random Germans who all happily helped me get what I wanted and spoke pretty good English. That must be what travelling is about.

29/08/07

I slept fantastically until Maggy woke me up this morning and I jumped almost to a sitting up position and I yelled out and scared Maggy. She very quietly whispered my name from across the room. I wonder why it shocked me so much when I’m used to being woken up by loud noises? Perhaps that’s just it. Maggy and I took a train to Lubbock, a similar town to Kiel and had lunch and coffee and came back here, had a nice dinner – some Bavarian meat (like hotdog meat cut into steak shapes) and nice potatoes and bacon and then we watched some ‘Friends’. Maggy was getting pretty stressed about the job interview that she has tomorrow and it is pretty important for her but I can’t associate with the stress. It’s nice to be able to help her with English words though and how to phrase things – makes me feel knowledgeable. My big plan for tomorrow is to try and get my phone fixed or sorted out – I’ll go when Maggy is in her job interview – its good to have a purpose. Then with a fixed phone I can contact Keisha and possible meet up with her when I go back to France.