The
Schwanen
(September
28 - October 4, 1999)
Unfortunately, I can't seem to find photos from this trip,
so I'll put them up at a future date if we come across them.
Diane and I are the end of the sixth week of an 8 week trip to Germany
and England. So, you might ask, where are all the
travelogues?
I don't think I have a good answer for that. Writer's
block? ;-)
Actually, this has been a less than exciting trip, and certainly
nothing like our previous trips,
especially 'Vacation with Mom'. Maybe this trip back to a place
we just visited while on vacation in August was anti-climactic.
You know,
been there, done that, ho hum, back again. Good grief, are we
spoiled, or
what?
We arrived in Stuttgart on Tuesday, September 28 after an overnight
flight from Atlanta. We checked into the same Marriott hotel in
Sindelfingen. Christa was there when we arrived and laughed and
said, "See, I told you that you
would be back". I responded to her that we were "home".
They really
treat us great in that Marriott. The entire front desk is
friendly and helpful, not
just to Diane and me because they know us, but to our entire team of
five folks
who stayed there for this trip. The team this time was made up of
Tuan (a
Vietnamese colleague from Endicott, NY), Rodney (from Boston), and
Carol
(from Winnipeg) who was the team leader for this audit.
This hotel used to
be a Ramada
up to January 1 of 1999. The switch to Marriott hasn't been
without
growing pains, especially with the company they contracted with to do
their
housekeeping. It became sort of a joke as to just how many towels
and face cloths were
left on any given day. It seems like the cleaning folks don't
have a
checklist and sometimes would leave one, or two, or three, but never
the same number.
One of the first places we went to eat was one of the Italian
restaurants in town. I'm a pretty adventurous eater, but I should
have just
stuck with a bowl of pasta that night. They didn't have English
menus, so
everything was in German and Italian. I thought I was getting a
nice mix of seafood
prepared Italian style. It turned out to be such a platter, but I
didn't
expect to get prawns that looked at me while I tore their heads off,
plus whole
sardines. That wasn't the best Italian meal I had ever eaten.
On Friday of that first week, Tuan, Diane, and I went to Herrenberg to
eat at the Schwanen (remember venison goulash?). The IBM building
we
were in was cool, but I didn't particularly feel all that bad even
though I had
chills on Thursday and Friday. However, I knew that something
wasn't right
when I couldn't finish my venison goulash and mug of Oberndorfer
beer.
As the meal progressed, all I wanted to do was to go home and go to
bed. I
can tell when I have fever and, sure enough, when I got back to the
hotel and took my
temperature..... fever ..... about 100.5. Just enough to make me
not want to do anything. I rarely get fever, but when I do and it
gets up around
101-102, I just want to die. Luckily, whatever this was ended up
to be short
term. I crashed for about 12 hours, got up Saturday morning, went
to breakfast
with Diane, and then crashed again for most of the day. By late
afternoon I was much better.
There is a marketplatz in Sindelfingen and the Hamburger Fischmarkt was
set up that weekend. No, they didn't sell hamburgers at a fish
market. It was actually a traveling version of an outdoor market
that is based in
Hamburg. The attraction is fresh foods, beer, bratwurst,
clothing, music, etc,
as well as the give and take of some of the vendors who taunt each
other over microphones. Too bad we didn't understand German
because there
was much laughter. I did have a couple of bratwurst and beers,
and I
bought some CDs of traditional German music, what I call oompah
music. I wanted one
or two CDs, but the guy held up two boxes, each of which contained
three CDs.
I didn't need that many CDs of oompah music, but the price was
right. I
figured we'd do something with the extra box. It turned out that
Tuan liked the
music, too, so he bought one of the boxes.
On Sunday, Tuan, Diane, and I (Rodney had gone back to the USA for a
long weekend and Carol was doing her own thing) went to Stuttgart
although
it was a dreary day. I had been to Germany several times, but
never made
it into Stuttgart. Too bad. It was an enjoyable day and
there was
more to see than we had time. Oh well, maybe another time.
All in all, not a very exciting first week and weekend. This is a
different team mix. Since I was off the first half of the year
doing Y2K
audits with folks not on my regular team, I had missed that we hired
four new folks
on my regular team. Tuan and Rodney were two of them and I was
just
meeting them for the first time. I think they weren't sure about
joining me and
Diane for dinner, although we always asked. So Diane and I ate by
ourselves
most of the first week. That changed after Rodney and Tuan
realized that we
liked the company and it wasn't an intrusion to go along with us.
The second week came and went quickly. It was Diane's turn to get
ill the second weekend. We're pretty sure something she had at
the Indian
restaurant we ate in on Friday night didn't agree with her, most likely
the two
mango shakes. In any case, she was pretty much down for the count
on
Saturday, so we stayed in the hotel as she slept a lot that day.
We had one day
left from our Eurail pass we bought for vacation in August and had
planned to use it
for a day trip to Strasbourg, France. But Sunday came and Diane
was
still feeling pretty badly and couldn't make it out of bed early enough
to catch the
train, so we stuck around the hotel on Sunday, too. As I said, it
has
been unlike any of our prior trips.
The third weekend arrived and, FINALLY, a GREAT weekend. We drove
to Switzerland to visit our friends Peter and Yoko and, of course,
Naoko,
who is getting to be quite the talker. We got there in time for
dinner
on Friday evening. I finally got to meet Peter's mom after
knowing him for
six years. It seemed like every time I visited, his folks were
out of town.
They are retired and do a lot of traveling, including a six month
cruise around
the world. What a magnificent adventure. I'm sure Diane and
I
would have no problem doing something like that except, of course, the
cost. I
still haven't met his dad because he was at a tennis tournament in
Zurich that night.
We had a nice meal. Peter and Yoko have been trying to get Naoko
to say our names, but she wouldn't do it when we were there in
August. She
was a bit warmer to us this time as she probably figured that if we
came back, we
must be OK. Finally, she said 'Rich', but she just couldn't get
herself
to say 'Diane'. Those of you that know Diane know that she drinks
a lot
of Coke. This fact did not go unnoticed by Naoko. Out of
the blue, Naoko
referred to Diane as 'Cokey'. We all cracked up at that
one. She is a
real cutey.
We went to a restaurant on Saturday that we had eaten at with Peter and
Yoko years earlier. You would never think to look for a
restaurant out
in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by pastures and cows with cowbells
ringing constantly. But the place was packed. It
specialized in
pork dishes and they were delicious.
On Sunday morning, we went to Einsiedeln for brunch to the same
restaurant we went to in August. It was a pretty nice day, so we
decided to
walk around the grounds and up the hill behind the monastery. The
view was
dramatically different than when we were there in August. Much
cooler, leaves
changing color, horses with blankets on them. Any way you cut it,
still a
spectacular view. I love visiting that town. So peaceful
and quiet up
on that hill looking down on the huge monastery and the town.
We drove back to Sindelfingen on Sunday afternoon, probably in record
time, as I covered the 225 KM (about 150 miles) in 2 hours 20
minutes.
That's around 64 mph average and included non-autobahn roads.
Long stretches at
100-110 mph, and cars were PASSING ME like I was standing still.
It was nice
to have a great weekend before ending our stay in Germany.
We were also able to once again visit with our friends Manfred and
Brigitte. One evening we went to Waldblick's Restaurant in
Hildrizhausen, and a
few days before we left, they invited us to their home for
dinner. It is
always interesting, and a pleasure, to chat with them because they are
warm
people and have great travel stories. Mostly, they follow
different sports
events. They were to the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympics, and
already had tickets for
11 events in Sydney in 2000. They went to a soccer game in
Munich
between Germany and Turkey (we watched some of it on TV and it ended up
in a
tie), and they were going to attend the men's tennis tournament in
Stuttgart that
was starting the weekend we left. We also joked with them about
not
saying good-bye, but saying until next time. The two visits with
them were
most enjoyable.
One of our favorite places to eat was the Schwanen and we ate there
three times. The first time was with Tuan. The second time
was
with Rodney and Tuan. We had to go there again because Rodney
wasn't around the
first time and he was drooling to taste the venison goulash. We
went there in
the third week and Rodney ordered the goulash. He not only loved
it, we think he
inhaled it. He decided this was the best restaurant in the world
(but that changes
from time to time). At least for this visit, it was the
best.
You need to have a
picture of Rodney. He is BIG. Actually, he is HUGE. I
don't mean fat huge, I mean HUGE huge. He is around 6'6", give or
take an inch, and
somewhere around 250 pounds, give or take a few pounds. One
Saturday, Rodney, Diane
and I went for a drive in the Black Forest and we ended up in Pforzheim
for the
day. I'm always attracted to street performers and locked onto a
1 man band for
a while to take some video. I saw Rodney and Diane chatting off
to the
side and got them in my viewfinder. It was incredible to see
Diane standing
next to Rodney. She looked like a dwarf. I don't think
I've been
so close, for so long, to someone that tall and big. But as they
say, he's really
a pussycat and easygoing guy. I wondered if the 'mustard people'
of Buenos
Aires would have dared to approach us if Rodney was along. He's
new to the
group, and to IBM (only 23 years old) so he may get to find out during
his tour in
Audit.
As we finished our meal at the Schwanen, I told the lady who waited on
us, who owns the place with her husband (the chef), that we would be
there only
one more week and then leave. She remembered Diane and me from
August
because she remembered the small 'oma' (grandma) who was with us (my
mom).
She must have misunderstood because she had her husband come out to say
good-bye to
us. We were ready to walk out the door when he called us back and
insisted (it
didn't take much) that we share a glass of local brandy, the best in
the area
he said. So we did. It was a nice gesture and we
appreciated
the attention.
Well, as things would have it, we decided we needed to go back there on
one of our last evenings for one more meal, most likely venison
goulash.
We picked up a fifth person for this visit, Sam who was there working
for the
week. I explained to the owner that this time it really was our
last visit
because we were leaving on Saturday. We had paid the bill and the
waitress
(not the owner) told us to wait. Out she came with five local
desserts
prepared by the chef. A local favorite we were told. It was
vanilla ice
cream and a locally grown plum-like fruit. Both owners came to
see us and say
good-bye (and have a good life, as the chef said). We all walked
away feeling real
good about how we were received and treated each time we ate ate THE
SCHWANEN, clearly
one of the best restaurants in the world. :-)
The fourth, and final, week ended. Even though we did not get to
do as
much as we usually do during a 4 week trip to a location, it was still
fun.
We had some fun meals with Tuan and Rodney. Once again, we said
good-bye to
Christa and her front desk staff. But this time Christa said we
are not going
to say 'good-bye', but 'until next time'. She asked about my mom
when we
arrived and, as were saying so long, she said to say hello to my mom
and tell her
she needs a boyfriend. Uh huh. Right.
I'm not sure when, if ever, we will return to Sindelfingen, but it will
always remain in our memories as a great place to visit. The
beauty of
the area, the friendliness of the people, the entire ambiance.
It was time to fly to England for the final four weeks of this 8-weeker.
Until next time.
Return
to
International
Travelogues
Menu
Return to
Roaming America Main Menu