My room is on the top floor of the three storey house at Gietmannstr. 20, Rohr. It's twice as large as the one I had in Australia, and the view is much nicer. The ground floor of the house is occupied by the Rabenseifner family, and the middle floor by the Nickolaus parents, Reinhold and Hiltrud. The top floor is shared, with two room belonging to each family, as well as a shared bathroom and toilet. As the two Nickolaus kids, Matze (Mathias) and Eva, have moved out - Mum & Dad bought them an apartment in the city (!) – I ostensibly share the facilities with the Rabenseifner daughter across the hall. In reality, though, she's never there if not to sleep, so I basically have my own little pad, complete with telephone line and internet access :-D
Hiltrud & Reinhold are wonderful; Hiltrud studied as a teacher at university with my mother, and the families have been friends for years. We put them up when they came to visit Australia years ago, and they more than repaid the favour by hosting first me (in 2002), then Klaus (last year), and now me again. They categorically refuse to accept rent, so I try and offer my services as kitchenhand, cleaner, English tutor, shopper, or whatever else comes up instead. Hiltrud is a maths teacher at the local high school, and Reinhold a professor in Stuttgart.
My friendship circle from 3.5 years ago is pretty much still around. While Matze is up in Hamburg with his girlfriend doing a traineeship, virtually everyone else is around. On Tuesday Volkher and I walked to our local pub (the same as back then) to watch Champions League football with Seb, Dennis, and Dodo (Dominic Dokter - but everyone calls him Dodo). On Wednesday Seb then picked me up to come play soccer with the same group; they play a social game every Wednesday and Sunday. The pitch is this reddish rubbery material, very similar to that used on athletics tracks. It belongs to the local University, but is unused, so we get to play for free. There's talk of moving to a proper (grass) pitch, but this has been the established spot for a while.
My bike is proving very useful; while the train station is only 300m away, my lack of student status (for the first time in years) means I baulk at ticket prices, so when the weather's good I choose to ride instead. It's a scant 1.5km to the centre of the next suburb, where the shopping centre, town hall, and banks are. Registering myself and getting a bank account was therefore very easy, though a mobile phone has proved a little trickier: because I ordered online to get a better deal, my application is taking much longer to process. First it was misplaced, then the long weekend slowed things down a bit. It should all be up and running soon, hopefully.
When I'm not going out, I spend my time online planning my trips during June (World Cup month) and other mundanities. I mentioned my mobile plan mainly because I'm waiting for the new mobile I get with it: a Sony Ericcson Walkman 800i. It's not as flash as the P990 I wanted a while ago (itself an updated version of the P900 I was looking at way back when, but much cheaper; it also doubles as an MP3 player with reasonable (512MB) storage capacity.
On Friday I rode into Stuttgart to shop for a birthday party on Saturday. Seb and Volkher happened to be shopping for the same party, so we all pitched in for something nice. I then lashed out an bought some wonderful football books: the first is a translation guide – it gives you a list of football terms in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, and Portugese. That was always my favourite part of the phrasebook, anyway. The second book is called "Fußball, Unser", which literally translates as "Our Football", but written in the way you would write "Our Father (i.e. who art in Heaven)". I've always said my only religion was soccer ;-) Anyway, it's a little like "Schott's Original Miscellany", except about football. For example: in 1996, this chap bet upon the results of 61 football matches over Christmas in England – then, when he didn't get them all right, he simply faked his ticket and claimed his prize. Now, I don't know what the odds were or how much he bet, but his winnings would have been 3'862 billion pounds - that's British billion, so a million million - or ten times British GDP!!
Needless to say, his faked ticket wasn't accepted so readily..
Anyway, the other swell thing I did on Friday was go to the Spring Festival/Carnival; festivals & carnivals are a big thing in Germany, and Stuttgart hosts the second biggest in the world after the Oktoberfest. This wasn't it, but pretty big none-the-less! I was talked into going on the "Power Tower", this 13-storey ride that lifts you up.. then just drops you down in freefall. It doesn't look particularly impressive from the ground, but – much like the big ol' hill on the way to my place back in Templestowe – you get this stomach-rising-into-your-chest feeling that's a rush, but not too nauseasting either. Leni convinced Volkher to go on the "Revolution" ride with her (he's a total wuss when it comes to stuff like that, but she's trying to train him so he can come flying with her on her new pilot's license), then we convinced Volkher to try his hand at one of those shooting galleries. He's actually in a shooting club, but the fact he was using a crossbow and shonky darts probably explained his underwhelming performance. I, on the other hand, chose to throw soft balls at a pyramid of tin cans and won a silly German hat for my troubles - a hat which I intend to wear to every single World Cup match I'm at, regardless of whether Germany made it that far or not! I tried to win a second one for Klaus at a different arcade, but couldn't repeat my earlier success :-(
Saturday was the party I was shopping for earlier, Anissa's 25th birthday. Nissa still lives in Ludwigsburg, which is where I was 4 years ago before I moved in with the Nickolauser. Though she' in the same building, Nissa's moved flats; down a few stories. This threw me out at first, since no-one told me and I thought I was having memory issues. I didn't really do much mingling: Matze had come down from Hamburg for the weekend, so I spent most of the evening catching up with him, meeting Seb's new girlfriend – he broke up with Melli while I was away, and she's now in Munich – or chatting to a girl called Silke, whom I'd met once last time I was here at some other thing organised. I played some Missy Higgins (well, put it into the CD player), and was promptly tasked with making at least three copies for Nissa and her friends. Matze was also very happy to have some new Living End material to listen to, as was Eva – she, in fact, had the mix-tape I made before I left playing in the car when she picked me up from the airport :-) God, I'm so at home here – it's like I've just come back from a holiday or something. Fantastic.
Sunday was family lunch at the Nickolaus residence. I'm an unofficial member of the Nickolaus family, having met the extended family on several occassions, and even performing with Matze and Eva at some of the gatherings (on saxophone). Maybe at the next gathering I'll have taught her enough dancing to do a little routine!
Speaking of swing: I haven't been to any events/classes yet, but the scene here looks to be pretty small. There looks to be all of one weekly class (to say nothing of the number of dance schools), but in their defence they've only been operating for a little over a year. I'm withholding final judgement until I've gone and seen the quality of the dancers, and asked around to see if it's more like America (where individual towns may not have much on, but everyone travels on weekends to whatever's on), but I don't yet want to be one of the top dancers in my locale. I've probably been spoilt rotten learning from Josh & Noni, but if there's gotta someone here who can teach me. But I'm getting ahead of myself – let's just say it looks like a small scene, and leave the qualitative judgements for later.
More soccer on Sunday, with a much drier pitch than Wednesday. This suited me much better, since the vast majority of game requires rapid accelleration, decelleration, and directional change - on a slippery pitch, I'm just rubbish. I even managed to score a headed goal, which was worth at least as much to me as the other two or three, since I never score headed goals; I'm rubbish in the air. That I headed the first attempt directly at the keeper, and somehow had it palmed directly back for me to try again, I won't dwell upon too long :-P
Yesterday was public holiday to celebrate workers' rights - basically Labour Day, except that here people tend to know what the holiday is for. Although, since the traditional celebration is to take a little wagon, fill it with [alchoholic beverage of choice], and then walk around all day with your mates drinking from said wagon, by the end of the day I think the meaning may have been.. diffused.. somewhat.
Roughly this is what I did with Matze and 16 others; we drove out into the county to where some guys have a hut on the side of a hill in a vineyard for a weisswurt breakfast. Following this, we packed our rucksacks (with wine) and wandered through the forest down to the towns below. There we had lunch, followed by wine tasting at (another) festival - including a mechanical bull ride by yours truly - then walked back up to our hut for a barbecue ("grillen", we call it) and more booze. Not a bad way to spend the day, really, even for a non-drinker like me.
Germany has this concept of "pfand", where you pay extra when you buy a bottle/glass/whatever, and get the money back when you return it. It permeates everyday life to the extent that people will go out of their way to collect these bottles, and in certain situations where the "pfand" on each bottle is quite high - 1€ per peice - a sharp for unwanted empties can net you a fair bit of cash for little effort. I ended the day comfortably up, anyhow. It certainly took the sting out of our walk. take this photo as our starting position
We walked along the mountain on the right, and then took this shot (same towns, now from a different angle).
Crossed that bridge, went through the town to the festival, then across another bridge and back up the mountain to our hut. Then everyone got drunk and I drove them home *lol*
Ah, Germany.. I could get used to this.
Edit: added video of the mechanical bull to youtube
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