The LazyAssGeek’s

While this post will encompass nearly 4 days it will probably be the shortest. Though since I’m just starting to warm up one never can tell….

After a great breakfast at Jimmy & Baerbel’s we packed up again and hit the road. We ran a few errands along the way but I’ll be damned if I can remember what they are now. We eventually headed to the home of Biggi’s dad and Margret. They live out in almost literally the middle of nowhere. So much so that on the near-hairpin uphill run just before their village there was construction which is bringing in sewer service. Their home sits at the top of that hill and it’s a wonderful, relaxing place with a great view.

Andy & Biggi have this trip practically down to a science and our stay there was well timed - we needed a break! However we couldn’t get to the resting right away, after a short time to unload the car and say hello we headed back out because Biggi was meeting the girls she used to work with for drinks back in Oehringen.

Andy & I dropped her off and we headed to settle up with Monica from Saturday’s party and grab a bite of dinner. Andy had been wanting me to try currywurst, so we had that for dinner with the requisite fries. Currywurst is a knockwurst sliced up in a tangy tomato sauce with curry. Tasty stuff, even if I did want some of the sauce for spaetzle on my fries! After dinner and a couple of beers Andy & I headed back towards Oehringen for when Biggi called for pick-up. We found a bar that Andy said is one of those places that seems to be a different name every year. It looked very trendy, if small, and had an absolutely AWFUL 2 or 3 piece band playing in the hallway between the lounge where we were and the dining room. You could tell why they were a Monday night act. We weren’t at all surprised by the fact that the supposed-time the girls-night-out was to end came & went, so after finishing up our beers we headed to the bar where she & the girls were and said hello, then ran like the chickens we are away from the table and to the bar. After a bit the party broke up and back to the middle of nowhere we went.

Just a note about how ruthless your author is. I will break an old woman’s hip for a bed. After nearly a week of sleeping on sofas you would too! OK, I didn’t actually break her hip, but Margret’s mom lives with them and a few weeks back she had a fall and is in a rehab facility while she heals. So best wishes to Margret’s mom.. and thanks for the bed!

Tuesday was spent doing absolutely nothing, well expect the eating & drinking and relaxing. Margret made her famous and excellent rabbit for lunch, along with piles of spaetzle and salad and potato salad and that very good Traminer mit LImberger wine (those are the grapes, not the vineyard). DId I mention we ate? It’s a miracle we could get up from the table afterward.

I was in the middle of the latest Dresden novel by Jim Butcher, “Small Favor.” Very enjoyable read. My dad has stalled on the book since proclaiming it to be too preachy (the storyline involves Fallen angels and Church Knights) but I enjoyed it a great deal. I think Bucher has done a great job evolving a character and keeping it interesting, which is not easy to sustain over 10 novels. After polishing that one off I started in on Jennifer Fallon’s “Warlord”, the final novel of her Wolfblade trilogy.
What I did on my European Vacation

Wednesday we decided to actually do something. There is a very cool open-air museum not far from their home, the Hohenloher Freiland Museum(site in German only). It’s a place where they have moved/reubuilt historic homes, inns and farmhouses from the surrounding area. It’s like taking a step back in time walking around there. Though this was the one day of the trip where rain really effected our plans and a good bit of that walking was in the rain. WIthout umbrellas of course, cause we’re so smart.

I’ve had a few people ask me “what’s with the pigs” in the pics in my gallery. Well the pigs are a breed that are unique to the area and were thought to have been extinct. Turned out a couple of farmers had a few last specimens and they were donated to the museum for a breeding program. Follow this link for a Google translated page explaining what they are.

I could ramble on about what we saw, but again, the pictures are far more descriptive than I could ever be. So here’s a link to the section of the gallery with all the pics (around 150!) we took around the museum. The rest of the day was spent very much like the previous, eating & relaxing.

The next morning had an unpleasant surprise… snow! Ya know, it usually doesn’t snow in April in Germany (FO Andy) but since I was there, of course it did. The snow was about 2.5″ deep but didn’t last long because it was too warm. However with Fritz & Margret’s beautiful garden it made for a great photo opp.

One last great meal from Margret and it was time to leave our peaceful respite. Thanks so much to Fritz & Margret, you have a wonderful home and I am very grateful you allowed me to be your guest!

Next, a return to civilization, complete with wireless broadband!

After Saturday’s party Sunday was going to arrive far too early no matter what time we actually had to get moving, and sure enough it did. We were to head to lunch at around 12:30 or so with Cristel and Peter, including bugging out of Cristel’s flat. True to form, they arrived around 11:45, fortunately we had anticipated an early arrival and while we were out of bed and moving, saying we were awake would be stretching the point. We shook what cobwebs we could from our heads (one of the heads in particular didn’t take kindly to shaking), got cleaned up, packed and headed off to lunch.

Lunch was at a nearby winery and farm that has a restaurant and since our car was the only one big enough for 5 of us we got to drive. I should say I got to drive, because Andy was in no condition to drive. This was rather amusing because it was quite clear Peter was very nervous having the American driving and he doesn’t speak a word of English. So in addition to pointing which turn or exit from a traffic circle I needed to take I got advice on when to slow down, how to park, etc. His hand gestures became a running joke any time we were in the car from then on. We got to the winery with no trouble however. They have an old train car that if you can believe the signs was from the Orient Express and we got a table in that train car. It was a very nice place, wine was pretty good and the food was excellent. After some brautwurst, kraut and spaetzle I was feeling much more human and I think Andy could actually begin to form sentences.

After lunch we drove up onto the hillside to where they keep steer to take some photos. The steer and the stench were quite impressive, as was the view, gorgeous area.

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So now, the big event! The timing of the trip was based around Biggi’s birthday and having a big party. In Germany it’s the birthday boy or girl’s job to put on the party, vice-versa from the US. A friend of theirs (another Andy) 40th was also right around the same day as Biggi’s so they teamed up to have a party and share the expense. The party was held at TSV Sportheim Schwabbach. There are soccer fields in Germany the same way there are baseball fields in the US, though they’re not usually associated with schools. Also instead of a snackbar they have restaurant/pubs. A friend of thiers (Monica) owns the one in Schwabbach and let them use the place for the party for the price of the drinks and a very reasonable per head charge for some very good food.

Now we’ve all been to parties where we didn’t know a lot of folks so take that and add in that most of the guests don’t speak a word of English…. this is not a complaint, simply an explanation of how very little I’ll be able to share relative to what happened in the evening! I met a LOT of people and I quickly realized that suddenly there were faces to go with the names in the drinking stories I’ve been hearing for nearly 4 years now. That was very entertaining in and of itself though right now the names are all again blurred in my brain. Two gentlemen who were hard to forget (it helped that I saw them again the next day) were Jimmy & Reddy. Jimmy is a BIG man, when he came into the pub he literally picked up both Biggi & Andy. While not at the same time I wouldn’t doubt for a moment he COULD! He’s a great guy, as nice as he is large and was wearing this cape-like leather coat and a floppy leather hat to match… I couldn’t help but think GANDALF! Reddy is a very different kind of guy. His real name is Dirk, but they call him Reddy because of his red hair. I suspect from the stories I’ve heard that in addition to that it’s because you have to be ready for him to show up at any moment. At this particular moment when he showed up, it was with his radio controlled helicopter. The man is damned good at flying the thing.

The birthday party proceeded as you would expect - eating lots of food, drinking lots of beer, etc. Our friends Danni and Joerg who I’ve gotten to know quite well over the last couple of years were there and did an excellent job entertaining the American. They introduced me to a friend of theirs, Tina, who had to endure my company as well. If I got the story straight, Danni broke Tina’s shoulder so she could ride her horse while Tina recovered. Did I get that right Danni?

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Friday dawned far too early as Biggi & I had appointments with the dentist. It turns out getting an appointment on such short notice is simple if you have private insurance or as in my case, are a cash customer. If you have the national insurance it will take you weeks to see the dentist. So we dragged our wine-sodden heads out of bed and got there for our 10:15 appointment. As nobody at the office spoke much in the way of English Biggi got to join me for the fun. The doc took a look at Biggi’s teeth first, declared them in good shape and me her “living Green Card.” After she set him straight that I was in fact not her new husband it was my turn in the chair. What felt like the Grand Canyon to my tongue turned out to be “tiny” and was filled in short order. I don’t think it took him 10 minutes to grind it out (wince, no numbing!) and put in the filling. It never did hurt me (before the grinding) but I’m glad I got it taken care of so I didn’t have to be worried about it for the whole trip.

After that we were off for another kind of dental work, visiting Andy’s dad. His mom died a number of years ago and his dad has never really recovered from that, so the visits are difficult. His dad however does make a mean goulash so the visit was highlighted with a very good lunch.

When we finished the visit we went to go see the site where Danni & Joerg’s new home is being built. Right now it’s just a big hole in the ground so it was of course christened their Grand Canyon.

We stopped by at the house of friends of thiers, Sabini and Werner, but Werner was on a business trip in London and Sabini had her hands full with their two young, sick kids. We didn’t stay long!

From there we decided to head to a famous schnitzel place for some dinner called Schnitzel Charly. Their specialty is of course, schnitzel so that’s what we ordered, with salad and spaetzle. We ordered the “half” schnitzel fortunately, because even THAT was almost big enough to cover the plate. It was of course superb. The check was amusing because the half schnitzels are referred to as “KINDER.” I think we got robbed, if we were having the happy meal we should have gotten a toy!

After stuffing ourselves silly on the schnitzel we were feeling the effects of the week and the previous evening’s wine, so we decided to just make a stop at the restaurant where Biggi’s party would be the next day and then head home. The stop at Moni’s let us know that all we needed to do was show up, so we had a pils, talked for a bit and then headed home. Back at Cristel’s flat we took it easy and got to bed at a decent hour for a change.

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Turns out that one is also paved with good intentions. Such as the intention to write a little bit here & there during the trip. It’s now a week since we drove from Köln to Öhringen and I barely found time to finish up the post about Amsterdam and the first night in Köln. We’re now in the very small village where Biggi’s father lives, and I’m sure it has a name but I have absolutely no idea what it is at the moment. So what I’ll try to do now is get us from Tuesday leaving Köln through Friday.

Tuesday morning we headed to DYNOS where we again met with Klaus-Peter. After a coffee and a brief meeting we drove over to the production building and toured it. Nothing much had changed to my eye since 2000, though I’m sure there are tons of details that have changed. But making Vulcanized Fibre hasn’t changed much in 100 years, you take giant rolls of paper, feed the number of plys required to get the resulting thickness you’re aiming for, dip them in a really nasty Zinc Chloride acid bath and then rinse it for hundreds of linear meters of rollers. Andy & Biggi seemed to enjoy the tour, though that wasn’t unexpected from Andy since he’s a guy and it’s giant machinery making stuff(insert Tim Taylor grunt). I was worried about Biggi being bored to tears but it worked out OK.

After the tour we hit to road South toward Öhringen. We started off on the autobahn (most Americans think of “The Autobahn” as a specific road, but really it’s just German for “highway”) but after a bit we turned off to side roads and drove into Heidelberg. It’s a beautiful old city, though we didn’t have time to do anything in the actual city aside from drive through it. We did drive up a winding road to the castle and walked around snapping tons of pictures. The most amazing bit of the castle is actually a ruin. One of the typical tower cylinders you see had split almost in half down it’s height, with the outside part mostly just sliding down do the ground to that it still rests against the castle. It’s sort of like opening a dollhouse where you can look inside. I could try to describe more, but picture being worth more words than even I am able to type (ok, more than YOU are willing to read) just click the photo gallery link and you’ll find tons of pics.

We stayed off the autobahn for the rest of the trip, winding along the river Neckar. It’s a gorgeous ride that Andy & Biggi have done tons of times on motorcycles and even in a Volkswagen bus a time or two. You pass though village after village built into the hills on either side of the river, with the occasional castle-like villa perched hillside from time-to-time. They’re the kind of roads I love to take the Vette out on(cue the foreshadowing music).

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No, not me, duh, but we’ll come back to that later…

So we were somewhere in Amsterdam when last we met, dear reader (not you Jim, the other readers, both of them). All 3 of us slept very late and after waking up a bit Biggi declared she wanted breakfast, even though it was 1:00pm by the time we were motivated enough to leave the room. Andy hunted up a place to aim towards on Google and off we went. Our hotel was right by Centraal Station which is quite a building, so we wandered across the street in that direction, took some pics and worked our way towards our destination. We didn’t make it to that restaurant because Biggi was HUNGRY and our walk took us right by a place the declared breakfast all day, bingo! An excellent call it turned out to be as well. Not only was the food good, but the coffee was superb.

After the refueling stop was finished we wandered along and through some of the many shops that line the streets. We stopped in the central plaza in town where there were a number of street performers, including a Darth Vader I had to get a picture of for Aidan & Owen. Then we headed into Madame Tussaud’s. The wax figures were the usual mix of local figures who you would never know unless you were a local and movie & music celebrities. Most of the statues were pretty good, some were very good, some just made you say “hmmmmm.” They had a Pirates of the Caribbean exhibit which included a small “house of horror” setup with live actors. There were a group of young girls behind us which made this a great deal of fun as the provided an excellent scream-track. Biggi added her own music to the mix when the actor who was jailed like Jack Sparrow aboard the Black Pearl started making grabs for us. Overall it was an overpriced but fun way to spend an hour or so.

We did some more shopping & touring the remainder of the daylight hours, visiting a couple of old haunts of Andy’s. One of them was a pub called Black & White, or had been called that anyway. It obviously had changed ownership and shifted focus from coffee shop/pub to café. The other haunt was much more successful and where we stopped for dinner, an Italian restaurant that doesn’t look like much but serves very good food for Amsterdam-reasonable prices. After walking all afternoon we decided to ride the trolley back to Centraal Station and stop at the hotel before we went out into the Red Light District.

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