All good things must come to an end. Dad and I will be flying back home to Colorado bright and early tomorrow morning. It has really been a great trip, better than I had even imagined it would be. I don't have time right now to write about my overall feelings and impressions from the whole trip, but I will write about the past few days.
Basically we did a lot of driving through some very picturesque German countryside and ended up in Stuttgart on Friday. The car was a fun adventure, but we were happy to get rid of it. We think that Dad managed to get two photo-radar tickets in a 5-minute span towards the end of our last full day of driving. And then the morning that we had to return the car our GPS system decided to freak out as we were approaching Stuttgart so we spent an extra 45 minutes and probably €15 of gas driving around lost in Stuttgart. Eventually we found the place though and we happy to go back to using public transportation.
Our first night in Stuttgart we wandered around trying to find some dinner and ended up having some beers outside at a little french restaurant. Dad and I were sitting there having a conversation about something and I noticed that this guy sitting next to us seemed to be paying a lot of attention to our conversation. After awhile he finally leans over and in some labored English asks us where we are from. It turns out he has been studying English for 3 years and was enjoying listening to our "beautiful language." I do this all the time when I sit next to people speaking other languages, so I know exactly how he feels, but I'm sure this is the first time I've ever heard anyone feel this way about English just because English is so ubiquitous. It was kind of refreshing to hear someone say that English is a beauiful language. Anyway, he obviousy just wanted to practice some English and we obliged. We had a nice little simple conversation. He said something about how the USA is "such a wonderful country." I guess that in lots of ways it is, but we told him that we feel much the same way about Germany and that we think in many ways Germany is better off than the USA. Before we knew what was going on he had paid the waitress for our bill as well as his own and left before we could even offer to buy him another drink. It was kind of a neat encounter.
The next day we had the misfortune of being stuck in Stuttgart for a huge futbol game. This is the second time I've unknowingly ended up in a European town on a futbol game day and I've decided that I don't like it. Part of me feels like it is the sort of thing that I should enjoy and a unique cultural experience or whatever, but mostly I just dislike the unruly mobliness of the whole affair.
The highlight of Stuttgart was the amazing and huge Mercedes-Benz Museum. Dad and I went inthe afternoon on the first day we got there, unfortunately in the two hours that we had we were only able to get through half of the museum, so I had to go back the next day to finish it. Today we went to Ingolstadt, home of Audi, and saw their museum which was not as good as the Mercedes museum, but we also did a factory tour which was much more interesting. We saw the automated robots and the whole assembly line for the Audi A3. It really makes you realize all of the work that goes into making a car. I was very impressed by the whole thing.
And so now we are back in Munich where the whole trip started. I wondered if I would find Munich as appealing the second time here as I did when we started here a month ago. I wondered if after seeing a bunch of other cities if Munich would still seem as cool, and in fact it does. Anyway, I only have a few hours left of daylight here before we hop on the plane in the morning so I had better to go the beer garden for the rest of the afternoon. I'll hopefully write something about my overall thoughts and impressions shortly after I get back home. Tchüss!
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