Advertisement
Published: April 15th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Mim Alice Lilly
on the way to germany So! From Prague our route begins to change a little - we decided that as we were getting bored of just doing European city after city and they were all blending together, we would continue on to Stuttgart to stay with Mim's aunt and uncle, and then head down to James' parents house in the south of France, near Montpellier for a week of relaxation. We went to Stuttgart via Munich, where our train never made it to the station due to some accident on the line and Alice's German was tested to the limit (i.e. we found some bilingual americans who translated for us haha), and we arrived at Huttenstrasse at around 8.00pm. We were very warmly welcomed by John and Helen, Mim's cousins, and her aunt Catherine, whilst her uncle Christoph was still at work. We settled down to a lovely dinner, then had showers and went to sleep - we were knackered!
The next day Catherine had printed out some information for us about things to see in Stuttgart, and we decided to try the thermal baths. We walked through the lovely big park in the middle of the city and arrived at Leutze, the baths, just
after lunch. We spent a very relaxing 2 hours there, soaking in the mineral baths and (to our intense amusement) also trying out the communal clothes-forbidden saunas! Well, mim james and i did, alice read in the changing rooms :P but we had an excellent time after we got over the initial shock of so many predominantly aged naked bodies hanging (literally..) about, and made full use of the 10 or so different saunas at varying temperatures and with different herbs and things.
That afternoon when the kids got back from school we had banana milkshakes (IT WAS SO NICE TO BE IN A HOUSE AGAIN WHERE MILKSHAKES AND COFFEE WEREN'T CONSIDERED EXTRAVAGANCES!!) and played chess lots with John, who was a bit of a prodigy and soundly beat us all! (he's 9....). Again we ate an astounding dinner, so much appreciated after our attempts to be frugal and eating only just enough to fill us up, and chatted for a while before heading off to bed. I forgot to mention by the way, that they have these amazing shutters that completely black out any light, so you wake up at 8 in the morning and think its 3am,
The cube
an art gallery a bit like the tate - but you have to pay to go in so we just went to the free bit at the top and sleep even more 😊 tis bliss.
The next day, Saturday, we spent with Catherine and the children seeing the sights in Stuttgart town centre. Christoph unfortunately had to work again, but we went into town and visited a pirates exhibition in a museum in the old castle. it was amazing 😊 aimed at kids and interactive, so the 4 of us of course dressed up in the outfits and ran around with wild yells of "ahoy!" and many a swashbuckling swagger etc. twas great. After that, we had our picnic lunch on a bench in the park, before walking to see 'the cube', a modern art gallery. at the top is an all glass viewing platform with very good views over the city. we then wandered around for a bit trying to find James a German flag for his bag collection, but failing decided to head back home. There, the afternoon was spent very relaxedly playing chess and chatting before another excellent meal and bed. we were definitely getting into this lifestyle!
We had originally planned to leave on Sunday, but after looking at the timetables we realised that that would entail an overnight stop in Paris
(as we were heading down to France) which we would rather avoid as it was very expensive, and so decided to impose on our kind hosts for another day and night, and leave first thing Monday morning. So Sunday morning we headed off to the Gospel Forum, Germany's biggest church that was just 15mins drive away. It was very exciting - we had little headsets with translators in boxes behind us so we could keep up with the sermon, and I very enjoyed singing Father of Lights in German - really reminded me of Mr Christopher Hanselman that did!! This was the first time we'd managed to get to a church service since leaving, a shameful fact really, but we all felt much better for doing it. We then played an exciting new version of netball involving tackling, tickling and all sorts of rule breaking in the garden with John and Helen, and I amused my sad dorkish nature which had been sadly neglected by reading Jamie Oliver cook books in the sun 😊 In the afternoon, Christoph's mother Liesl came over to hear about our travels so far, and we sat down to our last huge filling meal before
packing, making a packed lunch to take with us tomorrow, and finally saying goodbye to the kids and heading off to bed.
In the morning we woke up around 5 to pack the last few bits, grab our packed lunches, say fond farewells and head down to the station to get the 6am train into Stuttgart. We managed (after a minor panic when we couldnt find a ticket office) to book places on the fast train to Paris, and headed off on the next stage of our journey!
xxxxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.151s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 14; qc: 44; dbt: 0.1232s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb