DAY 18 SMART WINDOWS and CLAUDI'S SURPRISE

Wednesday, October 5th

Now, in the interests of not overloading the all-important blog, I have declined from posting some of the more eccentric or quirky photos that we have been indulging in during our travel adventure. And in the interests of time I have not crapped on too much with my anecdotes (post-trip note: well, not yet anyway)


But now that I have a free morning on Claudi´s pooter while she and Sharon are off at the Hospital in Dippoldiswalde for her regular checkup, I thought I´d jot down some ditties.

As we have discovered, being overseas is cool and all that, but you still bring all your oddities with you.



For example, from the moment we ventured into Frankfurt's old section in the morning of day 1, despite the awe of being in Germany for the first time, Sharon discovered a strange new obsession. The rather expensive Canon digital that we purchased can clearly make out the washing instructions on the clothes label of a person 100 metres away. Yet Sharon has mainly used this high tech marvel to take pictures of.....windows.

Nup. I can't remember where this one was either. Nice flower box though.

Now, since we have officially hit the 1000 photograph mark, I cannot begin to estimate the proportion of this massive number which consist of photos of cute little windows with their half timbered surrounds, a quaint German word, the meaning of which we have no idea, and flower boxes.

Just look at those louvres

Oh, and I can forget my grand scheme to profit from this by publishing a coffee-table book of German Windows (don´t laugh- let´s face it, there are coffee table books about some pretty weird stuff out there). We have made no effort to document any accompanying facts for each one of these plethora of panes, such as the street and the town. Even quaint, trivial coffee table books need to have captions more interesting and with more variety than "Another German window...possibly in Munich, we´re not sure".

Okay, I admit they are rather special. And a worthy photograph subject

Sharon justifies this eccentric interest by saying "but we don´t have windows like this in Australia". I tried to convince her that we do but I didn't believe it myself. It was true. These were magnificent windows. So, I needed to find a similar personal quirk or obsession all of my own.

Aaaaahhhhhhhhh! Run away!!

And I have. At the Melbourne Motor Show in 2003 I think, I first laid eyes on the then-latest motoring fad, the Smart. This little urban and inner-city assault vehicle is not so much a car as a single roller skate with an engine and a roof. It has barely enough room for a driver let alone a passenger and a small amount of shopping.

Yet these little auto vermin have infested European cities starved of decent fuel prices and parking spaces.

Note midget driver. Sorry, "vertically callenged"

Upon seeing this contraption I vowed I would never be near one again. However, here in Germany there are so many you have to be careful not to tread on them and get them stuck in your shoe.

Those of you unfortunate enough to be subjected to my 7 hours (and counting) of video footage when I return, will note the ongoing theme of Smart cars appearing in almost every scene. I guess since I fancy myself as a movie maker, I may as well have an Alfred Hitchcock- style signature.

This nasty little Noddy Car even managed to push this other, slightly larger car out of it's parking space. Perhaps they suffer from "Little Car syndrome"

Now, speaking of cars, we went to Dresden for some more sightseeing yesterday (Tuesday 4th). Claudi stayed at home for some rest but picked us up at 5pm and said gleefully "I have a little surprise for you on the way home".

It was not so much a "little" surprise, as a large-ish, jet black surprise with four wheels, a badge with the intitials "BMW" and "523" and hardly anything on the clock. Her sister´s boyfriend is a top cahuna with BMW Neiderlassung (that means Head Office) of Dresden. She swung it for us to have this brand spanking new piece of sheer driving pleasure for three days and 300km.

And yes, it has SatNav. This means an English-speaking computer lady tells me where to go, slightly more politely than Sharon does when she is trying to read a map while I am yelling at her.

Did I happen to mention we had a 5-series Bimmer?

This Five-series wagon may be "bottom of the range" technically but it still has a 2.3 litre 6 with around 150 kw, a tight little tiptronic transmission and handling to die for (okay, that was a poorly-chosen analogy but you get what I mean).

See the badge? B-M-Wubble woo! Speedo reads about 60 here, but it did read 180 at one stage. Really it did, I promise...

Claudia still has a very un-Germanic deviate sense of humour, and she did consider finding me a Smart to drive around for a few days, but, God bless her, she is too good a friend for that. She has got me sussed right out and knew that for me to enjoy a piece of German engineering in Germany would be the ultimate.

Back in Hochschulstrasse, our first meeting point! (But this time, in a BMW...)

She even took us home from sightseeing via the autobahn so I could let my hair down on the way back from Moritzburg. Even in peak hour I managed 180km/h. I was very proud of this and boasted it to Marko later that week. He responded with "180? What, was there a speed limit on the autobahn today?". And I thought Germans didn't do sarcasm.

I gotta go now. Sharon wants to take pictures of some windows in Leipzig.