Switzerland and Racing

8/12 - Worked picked up today, only because one of the German guys I went to talk to decided to offload a HUGE amount of work to me because he's going on vacation next week, and its not really what I'm here to learn about - nice of him, eh? So, while I've learned alot starting on this exercise, I also realized it would take me 3 weeks to do, so I'll be unloading this soon! :) After work we (my new friends Yuen and Kevin), went to a nearby town called Tuebingen to wander around. We had a nice dinner there, then went to the local brauhaus and shared a 2 Liter pitcher of their Neckarmuller Hefeweizen.

8/13 - Kevin, Yuen, and I went to Switzerland - yeah, that's right - I hadn't been out of the country for the first 27 years of my life, now I've hit 3 European countries within 6 months! It was about a 4 hour drive to the town of Interlaken, which, ask you might guess, is between mountain lakes. The Swiss Alps were amazing and the water of the lakes were this translucent tourquise - just amazing. We had lunch at a resturant in town and I had this Swiss cheese,bacon, and potatoe skillet deal - yummy. I also bought a Swiss Army knife - I just had to. Anyway, we were planning on taking a train to the top of Jungfraujoch (one of the tallest mountains in the Alps) but it was very foggy, getting late, and would have been 120 Euro each, so we decided to take a ski lift to a lower peak. Here's my Switzerland pics and a few other pics. One is of a Mardi Gras like crowd in Zurich (some kind of festival going on) - we were planning on stopping there for dinner, but it was insanely crowded, so we just came back to Boeblingen, where I had a WurstSalad (basically a pile of sausage meat put through some kind of press with shredded cheese - man was that dense- but yummy).

8/14 - Exhilirating - one of the best experiences of my life - today, I drove the Nürburgring Nordschleife. Amazing. And this was even just driving the rental Ford Focus hatchback I have! Kevin and I took two laps each, and Yuen took one, but all three of us were in the car for each lap. I'm really at a loss for words to describe - I was giddy as ... as a... I don't know what, but damn that was an adrenaline rush. Here are a few pictures, and I have a good bit of video, if anyone wants it via email. Kevin does autocrossing on the weekend, so being a pretty good driver, he was pushing the car to its limit. And yes, Chad, I did go off the road in the same spot as the damn License test in Gran Tourismo 4 - trying to carry speed through multiple s-curves in a real Focus is a bit trickier than than on the Playstation2! :) Oh, and we basically forgot to eat we were on such a high, so on our way back, we stopped at a Burger King, then headed back - I know I know, BK when there's all kinds of schnitzel and wurst to be had, but we were HUNGRY! To end the day of high speed driving, as we got back to Boeblingen and had just gotten off the autobahn, I saw a bright flash of red light - it was the automated speeding ticket machine taking my picture! A day of going 160+kmph (100+mph, fo those who need the conversion) and I get cought going 65kmph in a 50 - GRRR! Still, awesome day!