The LazyAssGeek’s

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.

I was up early on Saturday to give “Steve Germany” from the Corvette Forum a call. I’ve known Steve via the forum for a couple of years now and when I mentioned to him a couple of months back that I would be in the area he very generously offered the opportunity to drive his C6. I had driven the previous day to get a feel for the street signs and the rules of the road, which differ in a few very important ways from the US, so I fired up the flame-throwing 1.9L turbo diesel in our Opel Zafira, put Steve’s address in Susie the Garmin NuVi and off I went. It’s been a long time, probably since I drove in Ireland & England in ’97, since I had to pay that much attention while driving. Everything is just different enough that you can’t just put your mind on automatic. Instead of being a constant speed, the autobahn changes frequently, going from 100 kph to 120 and if you’re in an area rural enough removing the speed limit altogether. Head on a swivel and if you venture into the far left lane don’t hang out long or you’ll get run over!

So anyway, I arrived at Steve’s right on time and after a short while we headed out with me behind the wheel of Steve’s ’05 coupe. The first leg of our trip was to meet up with his wife Shawni (sp?) for lunch. We went to a shooting range which apparently is where all the local cops and hunters go. It was of course tucked away back in the woods, but had good food (a different style of schnitzel, this one pan fried instead of deep fried) and an access road where you have to watch out for frogs horny during their mating season. This pic’s for you, Mr Hall:

After lunch Shawni headed out for some shopping and Steve & I headed out for a drive into the Black Forest. The roads through there are great and it’s easy to see why they’re very popular for motorcyclists. We took a ton of pics and I’ll post a couple of them here, but if you want to see the rest of them click this link.

We made a couple of stops along the way, including a small walled town, the name of which of course I cannot remember. We also made a stop on the far side of an old one lane bridge that has god-awful lines of sight. I took a few pics and just as I decided to run some video the inevitable happened. As soon as I get the vid uploaded to Google I’ll add it to this post. Here are a few of the pics.

On returning from our drive Steve took me for a ride in his other toy, a Porsche 996 4S. I’d never been in a Porsche before so it was an interesting ride. Very different sound & feel to the Vette. Steve is likely going to sell his Vette because he just doesn’t drive it enough and the Porsche is better suited to the roads here. I can’t argue the point, with the towns roads the way they are you really can’t even wind out 2nd let alone 3rd before you’re going too fast. The Porsche “lets you use all the engine” because it’s a 6 cylinder at 320hp. After that ride it really was pretty obvious what he was talking about. So to finish this point I’ll put a pic or 2 of his 996 up and say thanks Steve, it was a great afternoon!