My soon-to-be-very-fit cousin Gaz is walking in the Oxfam trail walk in Sydney. It’s a great campaign, they get chumps .. people, to walk 100km over 48 hours through Sydney’s bush reserves, in order to raise money for Oxfam. And as you all know Oxfam are the good guys.

Gaz’s team is called the Kilted Chaffers, I don’t know why. You can sponsor them here, or you can sponser Gaz directly.

So get donating yuppies, and ease your middle class guilt. Remember it’s all tax deductable!

Jeremy and I found ourself in Böblingen on a Sunday with not much to do. The last time that happened we walked off into the forest, only to get lost and nearly die, I swear.

Instead we worked out how to buy all-day train tickets and spent the day touring around the place.

First we got the train down to Tübingen, eventhough we’d been there before. It was nice to get a bit longer to walk around and check it out, it really is a lovely little city. I guess it’s hard to say, but it seems like somewhere I could live for sure.

We climbed up a hill and found a flying fox. On the other side of the hill there was a couple of para-gliders trying to catch the wind. We watched them for a while but the wind never quite got the guts up to lift them off. One of them tried to lift off and got a few metres up before coming back down again – all a bit hairy.

Later in the arvo we grabbed another train to Plochingen. We were going to get off and have a look but it was a bit late, so we stayed on ’til Stuttgart hauptbahnhof. From there we took the U-bahn up the hill to the Fernsehturm again, this time for the sunset.

The view from the top was seriously speccy, and only got better as the sun went down. I made an über panorama, try the full size version and scroll right to see it in all its glory.

To end the day we got the train from Feursee back to Böblingen, and had a beer in what must be the only Spanish-themed bar in town. It was pretty cool though, we must spend a bit more time there next time we’re around.

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After flying all Saturday from Tokyo to Stuttgart we woke up to a sunny Sonntag in Stuttgart.

We bumped into Luke and André at the hotel, and headed into Stuttgart proper with them to just sort of hang around. We walked a bit and took a few pics, then settled in for some solid beer and pizza at the schlossplatz.

Later in the arvo we got enthusiastic and walked southish up a hill to catch a view. We were going to get icecream but the queue was insane. Eventually we headed back to the platz for a coffee in the rapidly cooling evening. A really nice chill out day.

Sometime midweek Arnd drove Jeremy, André and I up to the Fernsehturm. The view was awesome, I did a panorama which I really like. It was pretty chilly generally, but 150 metres above the ground it was really chilly. Brrrrrrr.

I also headed out one night with Christian to a rockclimbing place in town. It was this insanely busy tiny little gym, with some really great routes. They even let you lead climb, it was awesome. I hadn’t been climbing for a while, but I wasn’t too terrible. I did a couple of nice routes, but backed off a few times before piking on a massively overhanging lead route, it was good practice for backing off on lead at least 🙂

Afterward we had a few beers at the gym (rock!), and then headed to the Oblomov for another. Unfortunately we made a minor timing mistake and I missed the last train back to Böblingen – the train workers at the station thought it was very funny when I asked in bad German “the train didn’t just leave did it”, oops.

But if you’re stuck in Stuttgart overnight there’s not much to do other than go back to the pub, which isn’t all bad! Sometime in the wee hours we headed back to Christian’s apartment, where we needed to break in due to a lack of keys, except we couldn’t manage it – so we ended up waking up his housemate instead, sorry!

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After hanging in Japan I flew to Germany. Unfortunately there’s only two ways to get from Tokyo to Stuttgart. One is via HEL, which in February I thought might be a recipe for getting snowed-in, and the other is via hell. OK it’s not that bad, but after my last experience I was wary.

The fun part is you get to fly over Russia, which if you think about it is completely insane. Forty odd years ago you’d have been in a U2 getting shot down. Even if Russia has friendly skies I’m still not sure I’d like to land, it looks pretty freakin inhospitable down there.

In the end the flight was pretty good, and I didn’t get stuck for two days at Heathrow, which was nice. A taxi ride later and we were being offered schnapps at the lovely Hotel Böhler.

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Back in February I headed to Japan for ten days or so. I had my nose to the
grind stone most of the time, but I got to see a little bit of the place.

I’m not sure I’m a big fan of greater Tokyo, it’s certainly amazing, but there’s not really enough swathes of bushland for my liking. There’s just buildings everywhere, it’s insane!

The overarching feeling I had while there was that I was foreign. Not because people were nasty to me or anything, but just because I didn’t get it, I didn’t fit in on every level. That’s not a bad way to feel every now and then, it certainly cuts you down to size a bit.

The folks at work who looked after me were wonderful, really hospitable and friendly. We had great lunches everyday at the work cafeteria, with me generally saying “what’s that?” a lot. It was all pretty good though.

We headed to a proper fancy restaurant one night, for Sushi and Sashmi, which was really awesome. There was really cold excellent beer all round and the food was all beautifully fresh. And it was great to sit around a joke with everyone, a really friendly atmosphere.

On my last night we went to a BBQ place, where you have a little grill in your table and you just cook the meat there and then. It was incredible, probably some of the tastiest meat I’ve ever eaten without a doubt. I must see if there’s such a place in Sydney sometime.

I had a pretty decent view of Fuji-san from the office on a good day, sure would like to climb it one day.

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.. to the same little house on the prarie, where we’ll sing you some country rock ballads and comb your hair.

By day.

By night.

Tonight in Stuttgart.

“They’re kidding right? … They’re not? Oh.”

This is one for the nerds in the audience. See if you can guess what about the following screenshot impressed me:

Got it?

Despite being offline, it still notifies me of my appointments. Now that I think about it, it’s not that hard to implement, but I think you have to give them credit for being thorough.