days 37-47: ulm/prague

Flo and I decided to go on a spontaneous trip to Prague. We were going to go camping on Thursday, but the weather in Konstanz was pretty bad. Thursday was a holiday and I already took off Friday, so we decided to take a trip somewhere in the 4-hour radius of Ulm. Prague was 4 hours 20 minutes by regular car and we took a Car 2 Go. So that took us 5 hours in a Smart. Pretty much everything that could go wrong did.

Germany -> Prague
First, Flo and I couldn't find our Car2Go. We looked up and down the street and finally found the car a street over. Then everything was going well, we were doing about 130kph (~80mph) and all the sudden Flo couldn't accelerate and we couldn't go faster than 80kph (~ 49mph). Cars and trucks were flying by! This was around 10:15 am Friday. We pulled off the autobahn and waited a while for ADAC, the German kind of AAA, and that guy couldn't help us (12:30), so we had to drive to the Smart dealership so they could either fix or replace our rental car. Finally around 2pm we were on our way again. The trip was pretty uneventful until we got to the city of Prague. The Google directions wanted us to go down the wrong way down one way streets. Somehow we ended up in the underground parking lot of a mall once and couldn't figure out how to get over the river to the hotel. We finally got to our hotel about an hour later (about 6pm. we were supposed to be there at 1).



Prague
We got to our hotel, Hotel Manes, finally. We parked on the street checked into the hotel. Our conversation went kind of like this:
hotel: Hello, welcome...
me: hi, blah blah... Where can we park our car?
hotel: anywhere on the street. It's the weekend, so it's free.
me: ok, I am already parked there. So it's ok to park there? we're not going to get ticketed or towed? It's safe there?
hotel: yes, we can see it. It's no problem.
So we checked in and went up to our room. The hotel was really elegant and the staff was really friendly and helpful, but when we got to our room, it sounded like someone taking a shower or someone pouring water into a bucket above us. I asked the reception and they said it would go away, just wait it out. So we went and took a walk and got lost for another hour in Prague walking around. My favorite part was when Flo said as we were turning the corner "so we finally made it back" and we realized we were actually in the city center old city area and just walked in a GIANT circle. haha! Now I think it's hilarous, but at the time it was about midnight and it wasn't so funny then. We were back in the room, and the water noise was a lot louder, not really quieter. Luckily, the hotel moved us to a smaller, but much quieter room and that was it for the night.

The next morning Flo and I were eating a delicious breakfast and he wanted to do something with the car and I was waiting for the breakfast lady to put out a fresh plate of fruit. She came out and I loaded my plate, then Flo came over and told me the car was gone. It turns out that the city of Prague cleans the streets once a month and it was just our luck that the one day they clean the streets was the day we were there and they towed our car.

The hotel management apologized, and said they didn't see the sign and that we could check out late and help ourselves to the minibar. So we cleaned it out.
that was it for the bad luck. Somehow Flo and I always have fun and even with all that bad luck we had a blast in Prague. Next time we should stay for more than one night :)





I think the theme of this summer's trips is something will go wrong. But this way we have a good story and the big debacle of Flo's camera resulted in a midnight tour of a castle! Fun fun!

days 21-36: ulm

Lasagna Cookoff 2009!
It was the Third Annual Lasagna Cookoff last week in Ulm! Let's take a look at the previous Lasanga Cookoff highlights:

Lasagna Cookoff 2007:
Ashleigh & Jonas: Titled: "lazy lasagna" Consensus: made from a box. Very tasty, enough to enter the same recipe in next year's battle.
Flo & Stefan: Titled: "we worked too hard on our lasagna", Consensus: Adequate. not bad.

Lasagna Cookoff 2008:
Ashleigh, Jonas & Matze: Titled: "our lasagna is from a box and it still tastes the best" Consensus: Matze joined the team and the made-from-a-mix lasagna still tasted the best.
Flo & Stefan: Titled: "making the lasagna from scratch doesn't make it taste better a year later either" Consensus: we begin to see a pattern.

Lasagna Cookoff 2009:
Matze: Title: frozen deliciousness Consensus: Good appetizer, best lasagna to get the crowd excited for the next lasagna!
Ashleigh & Jonas: Title: III Consensus: best lasagna yet. in three years.
Flo & Stefan: gold medal for participation.



Next Peach Cake Day should be awesome!

days 5-20

Ok, bad start to the blogging summer. 2 weeks is a little too long, but it can only improve! But there has been a lot going on in the past 2 weeks!
So about two weeks ago, we had to get a new toilet seat. I didn't think any bad things about the last one, but it developed this crack in it, so it was time to get a new one. I'll put in a picture...

Thursday was a holiday in Germany. I'm not sure which one it is because they have so many of them, but I got Thursday and Friday off work! Just to show how many holidays there are here, the next one is on Monday (the 1st), then another the following Thursday (11th) . It's crazy! Happy Memorial Day, by the way. I did have to work today, however. Nokia doesn't celebrate American holidays in Germany at least.

Thursday, the mysterious holiday, was pretty laid back. Not much going on, except we went to the giant pizza place in Deitenheim! It's the same one from one of my June 2007 posts. Is that ok to link to your own blog? I'm not sure about this blogger etiquette, but I guess it's mostly the fam and friends reading this, so whatever. Now you'll click the link and see what I'm talking about. The restaurant looks the same as the last time, but this year I went with Flo and Stefan's work collegues + families.


Friday I took a day off work and had a long weekend. Flo and I went to the Brot Museum! It's an entire museum about bread! I always pass it and finally went in. I had no idea how many exhibits you could have...about bread. In case you're interested, the main exhibit is about Jewish bread. Nevertheless, I forgot my camera, but trust me, there are floors of information about bread. It made me hungry. Later, we all went to see an English movie! It's Illumaniti to the Germans, or Angles and Deamons for the English speakers. I think I found the untapped English speaking people of Ulm - they're all either in Stuttgart at the English movie theater or at the 5pm English showing at the cinema in town.

Saturdays are market days!!! We bought some cheese and fruit for our picnic (see the next paragraph) and food for the spargel dinner. It's basically asparagus, potatoes, ham, and this Hollandase sauce that's poured over the asparagus. I think it's pretty German. We had it a few years ago...I can't find the post otherwise I would link to it again :)





Sunday was a fun day! Flo and I rented a Car2Go and drove to the Alps! We had all this food from the market and brought a blanket and had a picnic on someone's farm. The day started off kind of rainy when I got breakfast at the bakery, but turned pretty nice and warm once we reached Kempten, a town kind of south of Ulm. There was a carnival going on! We didn't stay for it, but it reminded me a lot of Lake Winnepesaukah in Chattanooga. We walked around the town, saw dead bodies (!!!) in the church, I still need to find out if they were real, and went to see the ruins of a Roman temple. The temple ruins were pretty cool, but nowhere nearly as awesome as the ruins of the city of Salamis in North Cyprus. After our Roman adventure, we took our picnic to a field overlooking a village and the Alps. Later, we went to tour some castle ruins in Eisenberg. We liked the castles so much we went back again later! But more of that a little later :) The castles were fun, there weren't so many people there which was nice. We came back to Ulm and had dinner at this Indian restaurant that was pretty good. I walk by that restaurant almost every day here and it's nice to finally go in.
Last night around 12, Flo realized he left his camera at one of the castle ruins. After an extensive search of the car and apartment, we gathered light-emitting electronics and headed back to the Alps. It's pretty cool to go wandering around castle ruins in the middle of the night. And Flo found his camera :)

days 1-4: ulm

I arrived in Ulm Saturday! It was a long flight: Chattanooga -> Chicago -> London -> Stuttgart. Whew. Flo and Jonas picked me up in Stuttgart and everything was pretty good until British Airways lost one of my bags. The bag with all my underwear and socks, so one of the first things Flo and I did in Ulm was go to H&M and buy some until my bags came back. I didn't know that at 9am the next day they would bring my suitcase to Ulm! I had some trouble with German customs, but hopefully all those charges will be cleared soon haha

So on Sunday I went to a bbq with Flo and Stefan and all the Ulm friends. We played Matze's game, Kubb. I forgot my camera so there aren't any pictures, but I'll post them next time (if) we go.

Work at Nokia started today, it was fun to see all the people from last year, and meet all the new ones!

days 76-92: ulm

so it's been a while again since the last post. And I haven't taken any pictures with my camera since July 29th! So some of these pictures are from my camera phone. That needs to change. Starting today.

Lets see...Last weekend was the strangest thing. Flo and I went to a traveling French Village. It was so weird. But kind of cool. When you walked in from the outside it looked like the backs of walls (because that's what they were) then inside it's like a French village with fake stores painted on the walls and a miniature Eiffel Tower and Moulin Rouge.













The weird mushroom looking thing is a booth were the traveling French people sell...mushrooms...

This is my last week of work! Then a day of flying home, day of moving back into the apartment, then classes start...not much left of the summer. But 92 days so far in Deutschland is not so bad. Ooooh, and now it's day 2 of using my visa! wooooooooooooooo

days 72-76: ulm

No pictures this time since I forgot my camera in the car for Nabada 2! Saturday we floated down the Donau and had a bbq after. Something's missing without the pictures :(
Here's something random...noodles on my back...

days 52-76: ulm

So it's been a while since the last post...but a lot has been going on and I hope I can remember it all. At least this post is a little more interesting than last time.
Week 1 of July:
It was the Lasagna Cookoff 2008! Lasagna Cookoff 2007 was really good. Team Slackers vs. Team Make-Lasagna-From-Scratch. I think the Slackers team won. I think the Slacker team won again in '08, even with using the premade spices intended for another dish. That was on Tuesday...Friday was the 4th of July. I celebrated with Flo and the German band, Tomte in the park. They were playing at Ulmer Zelt...even though all the talking was in German it was still pretty good.
Then the next day Flo, Stefan and I went to their hometown in Edertal. The first night I bbq'd with Flo's fam, roasting bratwursts and making s'mores. It was kind of hard with the s'mores because it's almost impossible to get all the ingredients. I got "American style" marshmallows, chocolate and the closest thing to graham crackers I could find, but it wasn't the quite right. Next time I think I'll bring some Hershey's chocolate and real graham crackers from home. Monday we went to Kassel with some friends of Flo from back in the day. We walked up this trail in search of the fake castle, but ended up walking up a closed trail for a really long time then the castle was closed. But that didn't matter, it was still a cool looking castle, even though it was built in the 1800's. Good times.









(the cow is to show it was in the country)

Week 2:
Normal work week...That Friday I experienced my first festival-like event. I don't think I'm quite cut out for the whole festival thing. I like the music most of the time, but it was so cold and wet. The next day was really fun! I promised Laura if she came to Germany I would buy her a beer, so on the 12th I met her in the main town square in Munich and bought her a beer at the Hofbrauhaus. There was a Gay Pride rally in the square. Lots of drag queens and people in slave costumes...We walked around Munich most of the afternoon and she had to meet her group at some beerhall in the Munich suburbs. So after the Hofbrauhaus experience I tried to get directions to the other beerhall and could only find directions to another business on the same street. We took the s-bahn out of the city and got off at the stop and it looked like we were in the middle of a residential neighborhood and a factory...then we started walking through the neighborhood toward the biggest building we could find and somehow found the sign on a random road. that was really lucky

Week 3:

Now! It's been a pretty crazy week. Friday (18th) we went out to eat at Jonas' Asian place, Saturday we met Basti and Sarah for dinner then went to the Light Ceremony, the beginning of the Schwörwochenendes. We went to the Donau to watch thousands of candles float down the river at night.

The picture doesn't really show how pretty it was. Sunday was a pretty chilled out day. Then Monday was Nabada, (or NObada) because of the high water and random trees floating down the river it was cancelled :( So Saturday is Nabada 2, and we'll see if that happens.
Wednesday was awesome! We had our Team Event in Immenstadt. There was a high ropes course for 3 hours, then dinner, then an alpine slide down the mountain. I can't decide what was the best part...either the ropes course or slide...Right this minute I would say the slide because every muscle in my body aches right now because of the ropes. It was kind of hard at first because 1) the instructions were in German and when you're swinging around the trees it seems kind of important to know what exactly that guy was saying and 2) it was really really high.

1. floating candles down the Donau
2. the high ropes course
3. my coworkers, Sven, Michi, me