Castles, Cars, and Beer

9/23 - Late night at work since it was my last workday here in Germany, so Joerg-Stephan and I tried to make the most of it. Dean and I met Yuen for a late dinner at a fancy restaurant where we all had lamb chops with a yummy pepper sauce. That's about it for today...

9/24 - I woke up at the butcrack of dawn (4:45am!) to bring Yuen to the airport - he was catching a flight to Vienna to meet a group of friends for a long weekend - they were taking a tour of Europe and he was meeting up with them for Austria and then Venice. I actually decided to stay awake and get an early start for the day - that doesn't happen often! :) Anyway, Dean and I headed to the famous Neuschwanstein castle (the one Disney based their castle in the Magic Kingdom) and Hohenschwangau castle. Neuschwanstein is amazing - just hard to believe that its real, even walking inside of it - and the countryside is so picturesque - just amazing. Supposedly Ludwig II wanted to live in his own little fantasyland, well, he created one hell of a place! Hohenschwangau was Ludwig's father's castle just about a mile away and was pretty impressive too. Oh, and that hike from Hohenschwangau up to Neuschwanstein was pretty intense - felt like we were climbing up at a 45 degree angle! - and I'm sure it didn't help we took the "short" way up - a small gravel path that said it would take 10 minutes less to get to the top - what were we thinking? (or should I say, what was Dean thinking, and why'd I let him think it! :) Dean and I had a nice late lunch in the town in the valley between the two castles, then headed back to Boeblingen. What should have been a two hour trip back turned into almost 4 because they were doing contruction on the autobahn. I mention this because two things were equally impressive about this, in opposite ways. The bad - the autobahn went from two to one lanes and they didn't give much warning - just a big truck with a blinking arrow parked in the right lane that you couldn't see until you were about 50 feet away from it - caused slight merging problems and bumper to bumper traffic for 10+ kilometers. The impressive - they were literally tearing up the lane about 2 feet deep with one machine, and a couple hundred meters behind it they were laying down the new asphalt, and a few meters behind that they were steamrolling it and putting the top layer on! Now, I think about how long it took in the US to complete a few miles of resurfacing of I-10 - it seems to take us years, and over in Germany, it seems like they'd have several kilometers done by morning! ok, maybe I was just going crazy from sitting in traffic for 2 hours...guess ya had to be there...

9/25 - I ask you, would my trip to Germany been complete if I found out that one of the largest car shows in the world was taking place about two hours from me, and I didn't go? I didn't think so either! I took off on my own Sunday morning to Frankfurt to attend the Frankfurt IAA show. Here's a mental image for you from my trip there - me blasting down the autobahn at 140mph in my Beemer with Mozart blaring on the radio - just made me smile. Anyway, the auto show was huge - I walked through most of the 10 buildings of the convention center pretty much non-stop for 5 hours - and I still think I only saw about 2/3 of what was there. It was an eye opener to see all of the cars that just never make it to America - cars I had only seen in Gran Tourismo before now :) Anyway, I high-tailed it back to Boeblingen and Dean and I hopped on the train to Stuttgart for the Volksfest - like a mini-Oktoberfest, but still frickin' huge! Anyway, I had the worlds largest wienerschnitzel and another 3 liters of beer - good times. Gonna miss the hefeweizens over here... Chad, guess I'll be joining ya ordering those weizens when we go out! That's about it - signing off from Germany.