Goodbye Karl and Susan. It wasn't just a "work visit", it was a case of being well looked-after. Even the leg to Stuttgart was taken care of. Since Karl sends regular parcels there we hitched a free ride with the taxi. It's like catching a taxi from Bendigo to Melbourne so I dreaded to think what the fare would have been. We were driven by an interesting lady who didn't speak english and kept offering to stop so we could take pictures of cute little villages and churches. The car was a late-90's Mercedes 190, which is the standard German Taxi in the same way HQ Holdens used to be in Oz.
Neues Schloss Stuttgart
With the exception of our brief look at Frankfurt this was our first stay in "big-city" Germany. It felt like we were on our own now, no help from nice locals. Here the adventure begins, as do the strained relationships and occasional mishaps.
For some reason I think this is a "Nazi-looking train station"
It wasn't too difficult to get a crappy hotel room near the train station, so as to be able to spring off the next morning (Saturday 24th Sept) to Freiburg, in the BlackForest.
We tried to get a simcard for Sharon's mobile so as to enjoy local call costs. The Vodafone shop sold us one for 20Euros, but it didn't work on account of the phone being purchased in Australia. I went back and began my first intense negotiations with Germans. I figured that "we're from Australia" was enough of a clue that they should have known to tell us that these things don't work. So, I made an Aussie-style fuss about seeing the manager, who was naturally too busy for us. So I waited, impatiently.
The good news was we got our 20 Euros back. The bad news, it took 40mins of intense negotiations and sightseeing time, and no chance of having a local mobile.
The big columns of Koenigsbau
Stuttgart's centre is spectacular. I had a special reason for wanting to see the huge park adjacent to the big (nazi-looking) train station. In 1945 my Uncle Frank, an unwilling Hungarian recruit in the German army services, saw the war end from a basement in Abensburg (Bavaria). To this day we thank God he was received by the Americans and not the Russians in the East. As a refugee he then spent the next few months wandering from Munich to Stuttgart, hitching rides on trains, travelling on tracks that he helped repair, scrounging food and trying to find work.
Punks at the King Wilhelm Jubilee column, Neue Schloss
In Stuttgart some time in winter 1945-46, he thought he'd hit the jackpot. A school had been converted to a hostel. It was warm, with soft beds and blankets. After one hour's sleep, American soldiers came in inspecting papers, and kicked all the Hungarians and Italians out. After all, they were the "enemy". So he found the Mittlerer Sclossgarten, adjacent to the train station and slept on a park bench, etching his initials into it.
Since emigrating to Australia in 1950, his first time back to Europe was with Aunt Judy in 1979, to see his family in Budapest again. They made their way through the Iron Curtain after first visiting Germany. They stopped at Stuttgart, found his park, and found his bench. His initials were still there.
Sadly, I did not. There wasn't much around that looked like it had been there since 1945. It was naive to think there would be, but I softly cried to myself anyway as I tried to imagine what this city would have looked and felt like in 1945 for a young Ference Baki.
So we wandered around the centre for a while, until I decided on another near-fruitless search for a little-known section of park on the outskirts of the CBD. It's called the Lapidium. It's barely half an acre of little stone structures. They are sections of walls and doorways left after WWII bombing. So, that's probably what this city looked like in 1945.
Lollies, Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof. I can't remember why we took this picture??
So onto Freiburg. The old city was even more cute than Heidelberg, and the 13th Century Munster (Cathedral) was absolutely massive and impressive in a scary gothic kind of way.
Menacing Muenster!
Probably the most amazing thing about it when climbing the (approximately 20-storey high) spire was the grafitti etched into it, presumably by the builder's workers, from as far back as the 1500's.
It's nice to know the folks who built it were literate
We got bumped from our Hostel's double room for Saturday night, which meant sharing with other travellers. But was this a problem or opportunity? That's when the fun begins! Finally, some "forced liason" with other travellers. So Saturday night was spent in a Freiburg Uni pub with Rob from Brisbane, Stacey and Andrea from Canada and Jess from the U.S. of A. swapping tales and talking about fomer East German politics.
Can we go back down now??
Sharon retired early but I kicked on for a while, trying to remember what it was like to go out with people in their 20's. Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea. We were simply begging, borrowing and stealing a four-week adventure after farming out three children to babysitters. These guys were travelling by the seat of their pants for months, no commitments and no plans. Sometimes I hate being sensible.
Still no luck with piccys. Even when I can insert a CD, like in the computers here at the Hostel, it is sooo painfully slow and times out. And that's time I could be off looking at Munsters and drinking Lowenbrau. Sorry folks. But you're all sophisticated enough to read things and not just look at the pictures.
