Swabian Life

8/8 - Well, the trip didn't start out the greatest... I left Austin at 1:30pm and arrived to Stuttgart at 9am (2am Austin time) and got little or no sleep because of this 10 year old girl behind me who kept kicking my seat every time I was about to doze off. I got so frustrated, I couldn't even come up with a polite way to ask her to stop, so out of fear of causing a scene, I just sucked it up.

8/9 - One thing I noticed as we were landing at Stuttgart - ALL of the buildings in these little German towns have red tile roofs - crazy! Anyway, I didn't end up springing for the nicer car (think BMW 3 Series), so I'll just have to see what this Ford Focus can really do - man I love driving stick shifts! I made it to the Hotel Boehler (pronounced much like Ferris's last name) without incident. Its a very cool little European style hotel in the middle of downtown Boeblingen, and they give you a shot of a schnapps of your choice when you come in after work - hmmm, isn't Goldschlager a schapps? :D So once I brought my bags up to my room and unpacked a bit, I began the adventure of finding the IBM plant. The lady at the hotel desk gave me a little map and drew the route I needed to take, but she also drew over the street names, which led to the adventure... I also learned that "bear left" in German means make a U-turn into oncoming traffic - oh God! An hour and a half later, I finally broke down and asked where I was, got my bearings, then some 30 minutes later made it to the IBM plant. Work went well, got to meet the team I'll be working with here - they all seem friendly and more importantly, all speak English well! I left work a bit late, and had to go back to the hotel to call into a meeting back in Austin, which lasted for 3 hours, which meant I was awake for about 33 hours straight, without the Vegas lights and girls to keep me going!

8/10 - The second day at work was pretty low key, though I did have a tasty Swabian (South-Western Germany) dish of lentils, pasta, and two 9" hot-dog-like sausage links for lunch, which is subsidized by IBM, so it cost $2.40 Euro! After work, I met up with a buddy (Louis) from Austin who's also here for a few days, and we went to the Schonbuch Brauhaus/Bier Garten with some new found buddies from work. Very cool place - and what makes it better - its about 2 blocks from my hotel. We sat outside for about 3 hours and then it got quite cool (mid 50's I'd guess), so we went inside for an hour or so. To attempt to keep track - I had 4 beers - a Pilsner, a Hefeweizen Dunkel, a Polar Weizen, and a Horst Hell - all quite tasty. Also had some some Wiener Schnitzel for dinner - not sure why I thought it was supposed to be sausage, but its actually breaded veal - silly American! During conversation, I found out that one of the guys, who's here from Poughkeepsie, is a car guy too, and he already went to the famous Nürburgring Nordschleife to watch some races, but he's happy to go back with me and actually try to race on the track - for 15 Euro you can race your own car! Now I really wish I had played some Gran Turisimo 4 before I left - we'll see if I kill myself - at least I'll die happy! ;)

I've already started an Imagestation Album for my Germany trip, and I'll try to keep it updated, along with my Blog, so people can follow along as I go, as opposed to my Italy Trip, where I dumped 1300+ pictures for everyone to go through at once...has anyone really made it through them all?