I've saved the Sweden and UK trips as drafts cos I really wanna write about this past weekend first!
so, me and ben really wanted to do a roadtrip cos it was our last free weekend in Germany before we start out on our trips to Spain and Ireland, and then our split trips. Basically we wanted to rent a car to go to Stuttgart to do some shopping and our car would comprise the two of us, Conrad(Canuck), Geno(Belarussian commie turned canuck) and Pili(Princess María del Pilar Hernández Padillaof Mexico, with the free apartment, that (hah!) doesn't have hot water in the sink. =P). We tried getting a BMW 3-series but somehow they didn't have a manual. Thanks to the fantastic persuasion of conrad and geno, and I quote "if we don't get a manual, we're going to Avis", we got a free upgrade to a cool new 6-gear, 192 horsepower BMW 5-series.Where do I begin on the fantastic road adventures? Got the car on the afternoon of Friday the 12th and first came back to EBS for some pictures...next, we decided to take the car on a spin to pretty much nowhere. Went first to Kloster Eberbach (where In the Name of the Rose was filmed) Then, with the use of pili's roadmap, we located the nearest village, IDSTEIN and went there for a walk and dinner. Idstein was totally random but yeah it was sooo pretty and we had some homemade apfelwein with a smokey tasting additive that made it less bitter.Took a pretty relaxing drive at about...ahem...160km/h back for some wine (where geno proceeded to break his glass by biting it. good job dude.) and an early night, cos Stuttgart, Metzingen and Heidelberg was a very early day away!
Met up with the gang the next morning and off we were to Stuttgart. Took a little drive before we made a major pitstop of 4 people changing places. Finally we hit the target of 240km/h on the A5(the longest stretch of the Autobahn with no speed limit), kudos to Geno for that. heh. Had just a couple of hours in Heidelberg for some really crazy photos... and series of photos as well...
HOVER AND PUNCH! FLYING KICK! BADASS PILI!
and then we went to Stuttgart to see the Mercedes museum. so, that was closed. tough luck. back on the road again to Metzingen shoppingggggg!!!! Just a quick list of what factory outlets there were - Diesel, Hugo Boss, NIKE, Puma, Esprit, Levi's etc. That said, most of the stuff wasn't very cheap so we spent most of our time, and money at Hugo Boss. heh. Conrad, Ben and I are now owners of some fancy garb which will be unveiled once we get back to our respective countries, albeit much poorer.What else to do but to find yet another random city to have dinner at. Heilbrunn was on the way back so we went there. Ho boy, the lasagne was probably the best I've everever had. A quick downtime followed that when we got stuck in a 3 hour jam on the A5, getting kicked off the highway thanks to a closing of a section, and then back to Oestrich at 3am, 4 hours of sleep, and then meeting once again at 8am for our final day of fun!
a typical day of an EBS student followed... breakfast on a balcony with our polo tees, collars popped, sunglasses on, waiting to get into our beemer for a trip tooooooo NURBERG! took a nice ferry ride across the river from Rudesheim and then full speed ahead to our destination, where we were passed on numerous stages by porsches and cars reinforced with cages.
To cut that short, when we arrived, I've never seen such a collection of cars. NO need to visit any bloody porsche museum in Stuttgart. I've seen my fill in Nurberg. and oh yes, there was a fancy ass ferrari modena there, along with a Hayabusa motorbike, a Viper GTS, too many BMW M3s, an M5, and the list goes on. Me and ben didn't take the car on a spin on the circuit cos we weren't that comfy with the left hand drive to go absolutely nuts. The strangest thing about this circuit is that you can just buy a ticket at a machine, drive your car in, pop the ticket into the machine and yeah, straight in you go. That means, a 16 year old could theoretically get in as well. the ride was quite a frightening one, to be honest. haha. 22km of road, 5 jumpy undergrads in the car, and crazy motorcyclists decked out in racing gear (kneepads, elbowpads and all) don't make the most fantastic combination on the track. That said, the rides were irreplaceable, and probably so are the worn-out brakes due to the cornering...Took a nice ride back through very beautiful countryside before connie went to pick up his brother while we had a couple hours of rest. Next up, the rhein for wine, or so we thought. we got into the car, decided that getting high before our attempt to break the land speed record fo 240km/h wasn't a good plan, thus we headed straight for the A5 again. heh. I have never wasted so much gas on a totally pointless venture (averaging 11.1litres per 100km). the highway was 50km away but would that stop us? hell no! Gene and Conrad took the car there but we never got past 240km/h unfortunately. I took the wheel back (not before having some cool photos taken) but couldn't break the record either. only managed to hit about 215km/h. damn. final stop, or so we thought once again, to the rhein. we had a couple bottles of wine and some snacks, sharing photos and doing very schnapps activities. Of course that was never enough and Team BMW was called to the fore. "paging for team bmw, paging for team bmw"... Just needed to have a last drive up to Schloss Johannesberg. Balls of fun. We said goodnight to Kat (as our car was christened) and went to sleep, superbly happy.
This was definitely the best ever weekend in germany to date. Team BMW, while we weep the passing of Kat, let us remember that she was a good car and damn, the entire weekend was schnaaaappppsssssss! 240 euros of gas on 1541km in 3 days. that's a bloody record in itself eh? Will definitely miss you guys... (and we'll all miss talks of FF, mister burns, encyclopaedia, uncle fester, mcgee etc.) cheers.
so, barely a week after my luxembourg trip, i was off for a two week trip. First stop? COPENHAGEN! dragged my butt outta bed at an extremely early time yet again in order to catch the 9am flight. I reckon it's my most expensive flight to date cos there're virtually no cheap flights to Copen. That said, I had a ball of a time over there. Met up with Christine and Sharleen there, and as you can see below, Christine welcomed us with superbly yummy cookies from Harrod's. Basically we dumped our stuff at her place and then headed out to......the Carlsberg Brewery and Museum. Seriously, I've never ever seen that many beer bottles in one place. WE got to see a bit of how the beer is made and on a more interesting note, the origin and journey of the Carlsberg brand. ... and what better thing to do than to head to the Carlsberg bar, of which our ticket qualified us for two free beers each. heh. the best part was that all of us were on pretty empty stomachs, besides the few biscuits we had. And as the pictures show, we were ok before the first beer, a li'l red after the first, and after the second, everyone was a little happy, some more than others! Me and Sharleen tried, in vain, to get Chris to skip class, so as that studious girl headed to school, the two of us went in search of Christiana in Christianhavn, a very dodgy area....
But before that, we walked the streets of Copenhagen and there's a fair bit of unique architecture here...
...believe it or not, this used to be the old stock exchange... ...and this church has a strange looking spiral tower that is accessible to visitors This area used to be fill with druggies and much more seedy but in recent years it got quite cleaned up, though not as much... If you remember the slums in those american movies with people surrounding huge tin cans burning stuff in there and trying to keep warm. That kind of sums up the place. There was one unique street in this area... ...Pusher Street, where we're technically not supposed to take photos cos there're guys there selling pot and hash among other things. Something strange abt that street that is similar to Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, you are not allowed to sell soft drugs wholesale but then the Coffee Shops can sell them. So, the question is, where do the CoffeeShops get their supply? Same thing here. There're stalls selling bongs, paper to wrap the weed etc, BUT it's illegal to sell the soft drugs... Police patrol PUSHER Street, but like that actually works. duh.
first night was pretty uneventful i guess... spent it watching soccer at a kebab place and then walking around near the huge theme park Tivolibefore we headed back to chitchat. (didn't get to see RQ but saw his missus who was visiting her own dorm. =P) Hardcore touristing commenced the next day! After some very excellent hotdogs (wrapped in bacon),Three of us walked the whole way to the National Museum (which has some pretty strange stuff like torture devices. Managed to get an interesting picture below as i accidentally overexposed my picture),Rosenborg Slot, where I managed to get a 5 minute free entrance and the royal treasury. Saw this really cool set of 1500 gold figurines which the King used to utilise for his 'war games'.the Marble Church,the Royal Palace which was really nearby(where we took fun photos along the way) and of course, the MARVELLOUS, INCREDIBLE, AMAZING, ONE-OF-ITS-KIND...mermaid. jeez. we knew we'd be duped but we just had to see it. it's just one of those things i guess. we pretty much walked across the city just to see that piece of bronze. and it wasn't even that nice. haha.the other photos we took were more fun i think... heh...we wanted to get another two beers at Carlsberg but thanks to my searching for a postcard, we missed the time (sorry girls!), but all was not lost. heh. we headed to this coffeeshop to get a hot chocolate. ho boy. that was excellent. a huge chocolate piece left to melt in hot milk... mmmmmmmm...Sharleen left that night so I hung out with Chris and her dormmates. I think that's one of the things that I am missing on this exchange. Dorm life does sound pretty cool but then Copenhagen is bloody expensive. tough call. Fantastic trip tho. See you two back in Singapore in July! Next stop: Stockholm
so, when i travelled from Heidelberg to Munich, they didn't check my Eurail pass, so that meant I had a free trip available. Tricky bit was that I had to complete using my day of travel before I left for Copenhagen, failing which it would lapse into invalidity. What to do what to do, do schoolwork or find another place to travel? With my unwavering focus on education and learning, of course I chose the latter! My pass had already taken me to Belgium and the Netherlands, and under the pass, I could go to the entire Benelux region. In order to make sure I felt fulfilled, I decided to check out the LUX portion, hence Luxembourg. Just 3 1/2 hours away, I hauled my ass outta bed at 5 am in the morning and took the train there. It was a good ride there by train and since europe was entering spring, the sights were nothing short of beautiful. I'd show the videos but then it's 12am now and I'm lazy to upload them to YouTube. Will do so sometime later I guess.
So i got in pretty early and the guy over at the tourist office told me I should be able to cover the place in abt 4 hours, excluding the Casemates (a network of underground galleries cut right into the stone walls of the fortress). Basically Luxembourg was formed around 1440 where this fella decided to create this fortress in the middle of nowhere. The place has been annexed by the prussians, the spanish among others and therefore these casemates have different portions to them, some carved into the stone itself, and some blown up at later stages. but I get ahead of myself, though not by much. Saw the churches and walked every possible street I could find in Luxembourg, and I still covered the entire area within an hour and a half, including the purchase of a shirt and some souvenirs. Back to the casemates. There're two sets of casemates in Luxembourg - The Petrusse Casemates and the Bock Casemates. The former has a guide, the latter is a walkthrough using a map. The following few pictures are of the Petrusse Casemates. We basically walked down a very long, uneven, steep flight of stairs down the height of the bridge (used to be the largest arched bridge in Europe) that you see there. Found something interesting in my pictures. Check out the one just below. If you see the white dot there, take a good look at it. I'm not a big fan of such superstitions but apparently such things are called orbs. I ever took a picture late at night with a friend at Sentosa's Siloso Beach and these orbs were all over the bloody picture. And we all know that Siloso Beach ain't the cleanest of places in the world. Well, it could just be a reflection of light from dust, as I thought it could be. But this 'orb' was very far into the distance, right up the flight of stairs. SOOOOOOO... I'm actually fairly curious abt this thing nowThis valley you see above which the bridge crosses used to have a major body of water through it. But then, it kinda dried up I think. 25km of Casemates, only 17km left, with abt 2km open to the public. Across the river, the casemates that are closed to the public now houses the vaults of the Bank.Went next to the other set of casemates, walking along this pretty area called the Grund in order to get there. Within those casemates, I was actually able to get a couple of good shots of the area, so sit back, scroll down and enjoy.After all that travelling, it was still only 1600h, so I took an earlier train back, met up with the chaps in Wiesbaden for soccer and drinks. A good day. A very nice one. Missing Singapore? neh.
After a pretty decent night sleeping on 4 seats of the train, we arrived in Hamburg. Once again, it was rainy on the first day. BUT, does that deter the intrepid duo from going to the Sunday Fish Market? Hell no. so, we dropped our bags off at the hostel since our rooms weren't ready and we headed off in the rainy weather to get ourselves some much needed fish. I think Germany must be the only place in the world where you can find a pub-like atmosphere early in the morning and their people drinking beer at bloody 9am in the morning.the weather was quite shitty so after walking ard just a little and realising our pictures would turn out quite shitty anyhow, we went back to the hostel and waited for our rooms to be ready. We were quite lucky in this case. heh. We booked our 6-bed DORM for 16 Euros each and somehow the system screwedup and we were each alloted a single room. Ah, the wonders of technology. Embrace it. Post-nice long shower and a quick shut-eye, we made another decision, i.e. to make full use of our Eurail pass to visit another city nearby, called Lubeck. Pity it was a Sunday, and Easter Sunday at that, so most things were closed, but we had some sun when we arrived, so we did some walking around and phototaking. Lubeck is really pretty, for those of you chaps visiting Hamburg. Just an hour away, it's worth an afternoon's visit at best since the place is really quite small... That said, there's a St. Mary's Church there which has this amazing astronomical clock. I haven't quite gone to read about it and the lady at the church couldn't translate the german into english, but I'm quite interested to go find out the mysteries of my future... hmmm... got back to Hamburg that night and then proceeded to the Reeperbahn. It's the Red Light District of Hamburg and apparently really famous. Having had visited Amsterdam, our curiosity was quite piqued. To our surprise, when we got out of the train station, we appeared at the start of a... AMUSEMENT PARK! heh. To cut things short, we spent the next hour touring the park, and then having MORE fish - Herring with bread, Roasted mackerel... mmmmmmm... Ah yes, I just remembered the strangest thing in the amusement park. no, not the raw fish, nor the 1 metre long bratwurst, nor some rides which i've never seen before. There was this extremely strange pair of twins, which we reckoned were Thai. Passed by them couple of times and they were always hand-in-hand, with glares on their faces, and we think they were glaring at us (not staring, GLARING). bloody strange. Anyhow, we went down the Reeperbahn later, and damn, it sucked. NOTHING compared to Amsterdam. There was this club called the Chinese Club which had some party (we thought it was a college party). Two things were ironic about it. Turned out, we were pretty much the only Chinese there, and it was a bloody high school graduation party. We kinda upped and outed within an hour or so. Bright and sunny day came, and along with it, the hardcore touristing. I must say, when the sun is out and all, Hamburg is really very nice. There were buskers around playing the violin or singing (this counter-tenor chap was hitting the high notes so nicely that we thought it was actually a girl before we turned the corner and saw that it was a 30-plus year old fella). Of course we also did the normal sights such as the Rathaus (City Hall), churches, this tower of a certain church that had been hit by lightning and had most of it burnt down.More importantly, we went to the port for a cruise. The port, like Singapore's, is ighly important to Hamburg's economy. The cruise's commentary was in German and I couldn't understand 98% of it, that wasn't half bad. Some highlights included the seeing of this ship called the Freedom of the Seas. It's massive and if I remember correctly, this ship is pretty much an island in itself, having shopping centres, too-expensive rooms, swimming pools and pretty much any sort of amenities you could ever want...we then took a long walk along the pier. Two guys, walking along a pier. Farking gay. ahaha. but then, the boats along the way were damn cool. The ship below actually just went to the Arctic on some sorta adventure trip and then there were other types of humongous sailboats around which were just pretty to see.It was still Easter Monday and a public holiday at that, so most shopping areas were still closed. That's good for my buddy ben, of whom I took a picture of in Lubeck, decked out in all-new sartorial splendour. And with cup in hand.We wanted to take the earlier train back so we made a final walk around the area, and then to the Dom for somemore goodies (sweet roasted nuts) before heading to the train station. On our way, we found this huge monument to one of the Kaisers, and us being us, we had to climb up and take pictures. haha.As usual, the bane of trains came to haunt us. We were supposed to take the train at 1824h, but somehow it never came. A bloody Inter-City train that caters to international travellers, and noooo, the announcement was in German and even not a single translation. We asked around after a while and from we were told, the train just didn't come, and they didn't have an explanation for that. We had a long ride back on the 1924h train, sitting and sleeping in the corridors of the train. damn uncomfortable, i tell u. ugh. This problem compounded itself when we arrived at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof cos there was no train back to Oestrich Winkel at that time. We decided to cut our losses and take a train to Wiesbaden, and then cab back cos it was just too cold to hang out at the train station that night. Cost us 35 Euros. That's 70 SGD, for a not very long ride, even if it was in a pretty nice Mercedes cab... I slept well that night, just cos I was incredibly tired from walking and train chasing....
Munich was our next stop. We decided to get there early by leaving on the 0115h train the night before from Heidelberg. Curled up in our uncomfortable trainseats, we made it there at abt 0530h. That wasn't so bad cos it gave us a good amount of time for the two days. We started the day at well, the hostel... then we met up with Sabrina and went to the Olympic Stadium. It was in a really nice area, with hilltop views and a huge pond. Pity most of the stuff in Munich weren't open cos it was Good Friday. We spent the rest of the day walking around to the different outdoor sights. The Residenz was pretty darn cool, as were the English Gardens - where we ended up taking pseudo-cool shots!We also managed to hit the churches such as the Church of Our Lady (the main Munich Church) and St. Michael's Church (St. Michael's - Pre GEP era for me). We had the opportunity to just catch part of the Good Friday Mass at both churches, in different styles at both places however. The choir singing was sheer amazing (although I bet the acoustics of the church had something to do with that). heh.
The night was pretty awesome when we went to the Hof Brauhaus. Beer in one litre mugs (of which I am now a proud owner of) and the pork knuckles. sooooooo goooooodddddd!!!!!The next day we went to the Dachau concentration camp. It's not as shocking as the Auschwitz one in Poland, but nevertheless it has immense meaning. Briefly, it was the first conc. camp and served a lot as the 'education' centre for SS officers. For tourists, it might just be another place, but if you think about it, it was a place that served evil. very scary thought and i learnt a lot about history in one day. we took our minds off this when we got back to mainland munich, by going for a walk through the shopping street and then to another famous brewery, the Weisse Brauhaus. Had pork knuckles AGAIN and some of their home brews. shiok stuff. Last stop, Hostel. or so we thought. Had another couple of hours to spare, so we went to the Hof Brauhaus again for beer. Got to know some students there and we ended up making it just in time for the train, albeit with another 2 litres of liquid in the system. healthy diet, liquid diet. haha.
ok, the latter phrase has nothing to with my trip, and in sooth, neither does the former, but we basically did a trip around some popular parts of Germany - Heidelberg, Munich and Hamburg in 3 days! That was a load of fun! So, we set off at an obscenely early time of 0518h in the morning to haul our butts to Heidelberg, where we stayed at Alvin's auntie's place. The first day was quite rainy so we decided to postpone the main castle. We ended up walking around the main shopping street with super pretty toy shops...... and then along the river, taking really stupid pictures along the way... There was this interesting building in the city actually - the student jailhouse. Apparently students who caused trouble used to get jailed for a couple of weeks, and youths being youths, made this a rite of passage, marking their rooms and stuff like that. just look at the pictures and you will understand.It was also Alvin's birthday on the first day, so we ate at this greek place and I swear I've never seen so much meat on one plate. jeez, there was pork, frikadellen, lamb, etc. absolutely crazy. To add to that, there was the cake. -drool- This american lady made this cake for him and it was so damn good. Of course, both Ben and I did it great justice by eating a few pieces. haha. BEFORE:AFTER:Next day, both me and Ben headed for the schloss. Heidelberg is primarily famous for its castle ruins and damn, it's beautiful.When we arrived at the gardens, it suddenly dawned on me that I was there before, but the experience is not as deep thanks to stupid tourist buses which do not let the person really appreciate and soak in the feel of the area. We saw numerous people run to the places, just to snap a picture and say "I was there" and then run off to another spot "I was also there" and so on and so forth. We, on the other hand, tried to go down this spire, climbing over gates but were thwarted by other security gates. So we resorted to taking even more stupid and some might say, sacrilegous photos...The evening was spent walking around after our delicious apfel streudel mit vanilla eisand if you ask ben, that's about the time he became poor. haha. One G-Star jacket, one Diesel jeans, one T-shirt, one sunglasses, one pair of shoes etc. hahahaha. This was just before we went up Philosopher's Weg, which, I must say, gives an excellent view of the castle. Just check it out for yourselves...
somehow, i've made a miraculous recovery in record time. Been going to the opthalmologist pretty much on a daily basis, in addition to my hourly antibiotic eyedrops. Last Saturday, he told me I was almost ok, in an astonishing 3 days. What was even more interesting was when he told me that he had considered putting me in hospital when he saw my corneal ulcer.
Even after all that, the weekend hasn't been that much of a loss. We had some little party thingy going on Friday, and then a sports event on saturday before the much larger party at night! That was damn fun and I reckon it's actually the last uni-wide party for quite a long while...
We were over at the portuguese guys' place on sunday for an afternoon bbq cos it was guil's birthday. No pictures from that tho cos I didn't bring my camera. We're all jealous of their place. for 270 Euros, they have a washing machine, a 28 inch TV, a twin-bed, and an amazing terrace on the second floor... so.... we're institutionalising the sunday bbq. at least once a fortnight! haha.
Benito then came over yesterday on our random invite. There was basically chicken rice, ba hu and broccoli cooked with mushrooms and sambal chilli. That was damn shiok.... haha. Conrad will be over tonight for General Tsao's Chicken. Never heard of that damn thing before but we've managed a good attempt a couple of weeks back. Now, to perfect it!
Tomorrow we leave for Heidelberg, and to Munich on friday, and then to hamburg on sunday. That should be good fun. To top it all off, we might go to Maastricht to party next Thursday.
So, to cut the long story short, I didn't make it to Barcelonacos I have a bloody corneal ulcer in my left eye. It is a tad serious which explains why I cancelled the trip and am currently making daily trips for the doctor to check it out. For now, a hiatus. But tomorrow, we party.
well. I bet some of you immediately said in your heads "Not much" or "Nothing good"...
So, I disappear again tomorrow for a good 12 days, into Barcelona, Madrid, Heidelberg and Munich. Decided to scrap Stuttgart cos it's too expensive and besides shopping, I can't find a good reason to go there. Hence I'll wait for my buddy Ben and some other shopaholics to drive down together instead.
But I digress. 48 days and have I learnt nothing? geez. After my 15 minutes of sleep last night at the Mainz Hauptbahnhof (Train Station), I stayed lucid all the way till we were supposed to hop on our train. During that period, I asked myself simple questions on some things I've learnt to date. Lemme list them down, in no order of priority (well, maybe the last one is the most important)
1) Using the often annoying transport system and getting better at it 2) Snowboarding 3) Finance... right... I wish.. 4) Belgians suck 5) Vienna rocks 6) I dig hardcore touristing by walking and biking 7) Europe rocks 8) That despite being so far off in independent extended bachelor-night style, I still'd rather have you around.
So, on saturday morningwe hauled our asses outta bed at around 5am so that we could take the 0607h bus to the train station where we then found our way to Semmering. The view on the way there was absolutely amazing, with the Alps in the distance and all. But this entry is not primarily about the beauty of the place. It's about snowboarding, and that's what the pictures will show.These are some pictures that show the slopes that were available and a chart of all the possible slopes...from the top of the pisteIt's really tough to illustrate how fun it was. But we're uploading the vids to YouTube.com for the viewing pleasure of everybody. In a nutshell, we started off at the beginners' slopes. Nevertheless we found ourselves very beaten up even before lunch. We then decided to do the "run before you walk" tactic, so we went straight to the slopes after that. Of course there was a price to pay, with incredible falls that winded me, sprains in my wrist, cramps in my thighs among other mini injuries... ...We were really fortunate tho, to have had a 15 minute lesson from this chap from the Czech Republic, which then allowed us to improve almost immediately! and to end off both days, we had nice beer after the amount of damage our bodies took. sheer heaven. And of course, our wonderful room, which never fails to get me fast asleep pronto......chilling outNow I pray that if I get posted outta town for a project, please put me in London or LA. Of course London sometime early next year would be good cos a certain MA training program will be taking place there, and then on a weekend, I'll just fly somewhere to snowboard. If I get the West Coast, then Whistler, here I come!
Where do I begin on the fantastic road adventures? Got the car on the afternoon of Friday the 12th and first came back to EBS for some pictures...
next, we decided to take the car on a spin to pretty much nowhere. Went first to Kloster Eberbach (where In the Name of the Rose was filmed) 
Then, with the use of pili's roadmap, we located the nearest village, IDSTEIN and went there for a walk and dinner. Idstein was totally random but yeah it was sooo pretty and we had some homemade apfelwein with a smokey tasting additive that made it less bitter.
Took a pretty relaxing drive at about...ahem...160km/h back for some wine (where geno proceeded to break his glass by biting it. good job dude.)
and an early night, cos Stuttgart, Metzingen and Heidelberg was a very early day away!
and series of photos as well...
BADASS PILI!
and then we went to Stuttgart to see the Mercedes museum. so, that was closed. tough luck. back on the road again to Metzingen shoppingggggg!!!! Just a quick list of what factory outlets there were - Diesel, Hugo Boss, NIKE, Puma, Esprit, Levi's etc. 
That said, most of the stuff wasn't very cheap so we spent most of our time, and money at Hugo Boss. heh. Conrad, Ben and I are now owners of some fancy garb which will be unveiled once we get back to our respective countries, albeit much poorer.
What else to do but to find yet another random city to have dinner at. Heilbrunn was on the way back so we went there. 
Ho boy, the lasagne was probably the best I've everever had. A quick downtime followed that when we got stuck in a 3 hour jam on the A5, getting kicked off the highway thanks to a closing of a section, and then back to Oestrich at 3am, 4 hours of sleep, and then meeting once again at 8am for our final day of fun!
took a nice ferry ride across the river from Rudesheim 
and then full speed ahead to our destination, where we were passed on numerous stages by porsches and cars reinforced with cages.
and oh yes, there was a fancy ass ferrari modena there, along with a Hayabusa motorbike, a Viper GTS, too many BMW M3s, an M5, and the list goes on. 
Me and ben didn't take the car on a spin on the circuit cos we weren't that comfy with the left hand drive to go absolutely nuts. The strangest thing about this circuit is that you can just buy a ticket at a machine, drive your car in, pop the ticket into the machine and yeah, straight in you go. That means, a 16 year old could theoretically get in as well.
Took a nice ride back through very beautiful countryside before connie went to pick up his brother while we had a couple hours of rest. Next up, the rhein for wine, or so we thought. we got into the car, decided that getting high before our attempt to break the land speed record fo 240km/h wasn't a good plan, thus we headed straight for the A5 again. heh. I have never wasted so much gas on a totally pointless venture (averaging 11.1litres per 100km). the highway was 50km away but would that stop us? hell no! Gene and Conrad took the car there but we never got past 240km/h unfortunately. I took the wheel back (not before having some cool photos taken) 
but couldn't break the record either. only managed to hit about 215km/h. damn.
final stop, or so we thought once again, to the rhein. we had a couple bottles of wine and some snacks, sharing photos and doing very schnapps activities. Of course that was never enough and Team BMW was called to the fore. "paging for team bmw, paging for team bmw"... Just needed to have a last drive up to Schloss Johannesberg. Balls of fun. We said goodnight to Kat (as our car was christened) and went to sleep, superbly happy.
Where do I begin on the fantastic road adventures? Got the car on the afternoon of Friday the 12th and first came back to EBS for some pictures...
next, we decided to take the car on a spin to pretty much nowhere. Went first to Kloster Eberbach (where In the Name of the Rose was filmed) 
Then, with the use of pili's roadmap, we located the nearest village, IDSTEIN and went there for a walk and dinner. Idstein was totally random but yeah it was sooo pretty and we had some homemade apfelwein with a smokey tasting additive that made it less bitter.
Took a pretty relaxing drive at about...ahem...160km/h back for some wine (where geno proceeded to break his glass by biting it. good job dude.)
and an early night, cos Stuttgart, Metzingen and Heidelberg was a very early day away!
and series of photos as well...
BADASS PILI!
and then we went to Stuttgart to see the Mercedes museum. so, that was closed. tough luck. back on the road again to Metzingen shoppingggggg!!!! Just a quick list of what factory outlets there were - Diesel, Hugo Boss, NIKE, Puma, Esprit, Levi's etc. 
That said, most of the stuff wasn't very cheap so we spent most of our time, and money at Hugo Boss. heh. Conrad, Ben and I are now owners of some fancy garb which will be unveiled once we get back to our respective countries, albeit much poorer.
What else to do but to find yet another random city to have dinner at. Heilbrunn was on the way back so we went there. 
Ho boy, the lasagne was probably the best I've everever had. A quick downtime followed that when we got stuck in a 3 hour jam on the A5, getting kicked off the highway thanks to a closing of a section, and then back to Oestrich at 3am, 4 hours of sleep, and then meeting once again at 8am for our final day of fun!
took a nice ferry ride across the river from Rudesheim 
and then full speed ahead to our destination, where we were passed on numerous stages by porsches and cars reinforced with cages.
and oh yes, there was a fancy ass ferrari modena there, along with a Hayabusa motorbike, a Viper GTS, too many BMW M3s, an M5, and the list goes on. 
Me and ben didn't take the car on a spin on the circuit cos we weren't that comfy with the left hand drive to go absolutely nuts. The strangest thing about this circuit is that you can just buy a ticket at a machine, drive your car in, pop the ticket into the machine and yeah, straight in you go. That means, a 16 year old could theoretically get in as well.
Took a nice ride back through very beautiful countryside before connie went to pick up his brother while we had a couple hours of rest. Next up, the rhein for wine, or so we thought. we got into the car, decided that getting high before our attempt to break the land speed record fo 240km/h wasn't a good plan, thus we headed straight for the A5 again. heh. I have never wasted so much gas on a totally pointless venture (averaging 11.1litres per 100km). the highway was 50km away but would that stop us? hell no! Gene and Conrad took the car there but we never got past 240km/h unfortunately. I took the wheel back (not before having some cool photos taken) 
but couldn't break the record either. only managed to hit about 215km/h. damn.
final stop, or so we thought once again, to the rhein. we had a couple bottles of wine and some snacks, sharing photos and doing very schnapps activities. Of course that was never enough and Team BMW was called to the fore. "paging for team bmw, paging for team bmw"... Just needed to have a last drive up to Schloss Johannesberg. Balls of fun. We said goodnight to Kat (as our car was christened) and went to sleep, superbly happy.
