View of Texas Strasse

Here's Brian at the end of Texas Strasse looking down towards our building and the highrise complex off-post.

Behind the Apartments

The sand had been taken out and replaced with some sort of sportcourt. The hill was still there, and they had taken out all that concrete between us and the Fla strasse houses. The ditch and path were still there, and a row of bushes had been planted. Looked smaller to me for some reason.

More 2407

The space between the buildings had been cleaned up and the patios enlarged. Much nicer grills out there now too. Notice no window where the 1/2 bathroom was. I wonder what the layouts of the apartments are now. Also, some of the buildings still had the colored trim, whereas ours no longer did.

2407-A Stairwell

As we approached 2407 we noticed that there were fewer mailboxes in C and A stairwells (3) but B stairwell still had 6. We opened the stairwell door to find that all the apartments on the right side of the stairwell had had their doors removed and walled over. We deduced that they had expanded the B stairwell apartments into the A stairwell space, to make some rather large apartments. We probably would have had one of those. Makes sense. Otherwise the stairwell looked the same.

Tour of Patch - Texas Strasse

After an hour and a half of walking behind Patch, we returned to the main gate and were able to sign on. We left the car off post, since we were going to be walking around anyhow. We first headed through the main gate and down towards Texas Strasse and Weicht Village, where our apartment was. Much of the cobblestone had been paved over, but otherwise not much had changed. I think they had opened up the road that went through the motor pool right as we were leaving and this road was still open.

Busnauer Rain Gardens

A view of the gardens that served as the starting point for the bike trails. It's typical for many Germans who live in residential areas and don' t have much/any yard space to rent or own space out in planned garden areas like this one. These gardens may actually belong to the folks who live over at the nearby highrise apartment complex. Dunno.

Brian at Katzenbachersee

When we first moved to Germany, we spent alot of that summer of '84 riding our bikes on the miles of trails out behind Patch. The center area was this big lake (see). We were hoping to rent bikes, but the weather wasn't cooperating.

Busnauer Rain Bike Trails

Woke up Monday morning the 3rd with a mission to get to Panzer Kaserne so Brian could register with them, thereby allowing him to sign me on to Patch. After getting there right as they opened, they informed us we'd have to wait about an hour before the system updated, so we decided to head back towards Patch but take a walk on the bike trails/paths behind Patch. We drove around the back way and parked the car at the end of that narrow road that goes down and back up. Just as we got there it started raining. Or maybe it had been raining all morning already. We were not to be stopped, though, and protected our camera gear under raincoats.

Romerhof Room

You know how smells sometimes bring back the strongest memories? Walking into the room at the Romerhof immediately brought me back to when we stayed at the Sonnenhof. I don' t know what the scent is, but it was immediately familiar. Maybe it's those big comforters you sleep under. The room itself was small, but more than adequate. Had the typical cool German features: radiator, window that opens from the side and the top, shower head on a movable hose, separate w.c., and those comforters!

Die Familie Renz

In 2005-06 we had a young exchange student from Germany staying with some friends of ours in the ward. Found out he was from Magstadt, which is just north of Sindelfingen, about 10 minutes from Patch. Of course, we became good friends and talked often of Stuttgart. We've kept in touch via email and once he learned Brian and I were coming over, he and his family invited us over for dinner.

After our wonderful Schnitzel lunch at the Romerhof we felt like we wouldn't want a big dinner. We walked around Vaihingen for two hours, then just couldn't make it any longer and slept for about two hours at the hotel. We then woke up and got ready to be at Constantin's by 6pm. Upon arriving, I realized that I WAS hungry and was not only looking forward to seeing Constantin again and meeting his family, but having an authentic, in-house German meal. Constantin's family is awesome, so kind and friendly, and his Mom made us a great dinner of Wurst, Spatzle, and Linsen (lentils), and a killer homemade chocolate tart. We stayed there for 3-4 hours talking and eating. They'll be coming over to visit the states, including us here for about four weeks, so we'll get to see them again. Thanks to the Renz family for their hospitality.

We got back to the Romerhof around 9:30 or 10pm, and were exhausted despite our two hour nap. I had been up since about 4am Portland time, THE DAY BEFORE, plus the time change. So, that calculates to 33 hours straight of being awake (minus the two hour nap). Brian not so long. Thus ended Day Two (or day one depending on how you look at it) of The Trip. B

Sonnenhof

The Sonnenhof is no more. When I was here in 1997 I think it was still a hotel and pizza place, but our trip in 2000 it had closed down. Now it looks like it's the Cocina Mexicana. Interesting. We weren't even tempted to eat there, mostly cause we didn't fly several thousand miles to eat mexican. The Esso station is still busy, and Brian was fascinated with the SmartCar, pictured here. We saw these all over the place on our trip. The street in front of us is Hauptstrasse (main street), which to the right leads to downtown Vaihingen and then veers left to Stuttgart. To the left, this street leads to the Autobahn exit and under the Autobahn bridge to the main entrance of Patch.

Vaihinger Hof

Here I am checking the menu at the Vaihinger Hof. When we first moved here in 1984, this was our favorite German place to eat. We had to be coaxed in to trying German food by Dad, but after we tried Schnitzel and Gulaschsuppe, we were convinced. Plus all the wurst and potatoes. When I came back in 1997 and 2000, the Vaihinger Hof was still a hotel (stayed there both times), but no longer a German restaurant. It had changed to a Vietnamese restaurant, and I was majorly disappointed. On this trip, I was thrilled to see that it had once again returned to serving traditional Swabian food. In this photo I was looking to be sure they had Gulaschsuppe in case we wanted to come back later. We actually didn't, surprisingly.

Arriving at the Romerhof

Dang, the sky is still exactly the same. We were lucky this first day in that although the sky was pretty crummy, it really wasn't too cold and it didn't rain. The Romerhof is about 1/4 mile north of the Vaihingerhof in the north part of Stuttgart-Vaihingen. After checking in about noon, we went downstairs to get our first German meal! We both ordered schnitzel with fried potatoes (not pommes frites). The Romerhof restaurant is a little fancier than your typical gasthaus. It's more a "restaurant". The meal started out with a small salad (a slice or two of cucumber and tomato) and small slice of bread. Pretty dinky and I thought, uh oh, this isn't good. But the Schnitzel (which I think was pork) and potatoes were more than we could eat, and just what we'd hoped for. Washed that down with a Spezi! (Coke and Fanta combined) After eating we were trying to stay up as long as we could, so we started a walk around Vaihingen. We couldn't get on Patch just yet, as Brian hadn't yet clocked in with the ID Card folks, so he wasn't registered, so he couldn't have sign-on privileges (couldn't sign me on). We had to wait until the next morning (Monday) and go over to Panzer Kazerne to sign in, which ended up working fine.

Approaching Patch

Driving north on the A-81 Autobahn with the exit to Patch coming up.

Breuningerland

Another pic taken through the windshield. Breuningerland was a favorite place to shop, plus lots of good German food as well as a McDonalds. Got most of my ski clothes here. Located just south of Patch Barracks in Sindelfingen.

View from Schloss Lichtenstein

I need to figure out how to type the B that in German stands for ss. It's cool when you can properly pronounce SchloB. More about German keyboards later........we drove the windy road up the back side of the hill that the Schloss stood upon. Walked up to the Schloss entrance only to find that they didn't accept credit cards and I hadn't obtained any Euros yet. Oops. So we didn't get to go in. It was hard to see the castle from the outside, so not many shots of it. There was this nice little pathway around the side which afforded this killer view of the valley below (including the road we drove in on) and the town of Lichtenstein.

We walked around the grounds a bit, just to help fight off the jet lag, then headed in towards Stuttgart-Vaihingen via Tubingen.

Schloss Lichtenstein from the Corsa

Having a digital camera and 4 gigs of memory card is excellent for travel. My last trip to Europe, I was very judicious with the use of film. This time, we just snapped away at everything knowing we had space for nearly 1000 pics. We ended up taking 944, plus some 2 hours of video. I had another 1 gig of CF Card we didn't even tap into. I took all the pics on the highest setting, just in case I got some good ones that I wanted to blow up and print and place on my wall. I did. If I had set them on a lower setting, it would have offered like 3000 pics. I tell you this cause many of our pics come from the car, some with the window rolled down, others through the windshield. Like this one.

Anyhow, after procuring the Corsa, we headed south to Lichtenstein castle, about an hour south of the airport. It was Sunday morning and the roads had little traffic. This was good, cause I was still figuring out the manual drive, and we had major jetlag. We drove through the nice town of Reutlingen, and then had this view of the Schloss.

Renting the Car

The magnificent Opel Corsa. I think we took this bad boy and all it's 89 HP up to about 140 km/hr. Which is, what, 84 mph? This is the same car I drove in Brussels, albeit an older model. It was quite satisfactory for two people, although it took a hour or two to get back in the swing of driving a manual. I think I only stalled it out 3-4 times the whole week.

Brian at STR

Taken at about 9:30am under a seriously Central European Mid-Winter Cloudcast. We're looking at the main terminal and we're on a path heading to the parking garages where our rental car was located.

Flight 116

From ATL to STR was 8 1/2 hours or so on a Boeing 767, which had a 2-3-2 seat configuration. I tried really hard to select our seats so we'd each have open seats next to us. We both had aisle seats. Brian ended up with an empty next to him, but I had someone next to me. This plane was a cattle car. There was no legroom whatsoever, so I spent alot of time standing in the back galley. I think it was an older plane also, as there were no seatback entertainment systems like on all the other flights on this trip.

Departure

Brian and I met in Atlanta from separate flights (PDX and STL) and had about a 5 hour layover in the ATL airport before hopping on flight 116 to Stuttgart. As far as I know, Delta has the only nonstop from America to Stuttgart.

Beginning

As a gift to my bro Brian, I decided to sponsor a trip to Germany. We had lived in Stuttgart when we were younger, from 1984 to 1987. Although I had been back several times, Brian hadn't had the chance to return. We had been talking about a brothers' trip for some time, and to me this seemed like the perfect place to go.

You can talk about and plan trips forever without ever actually realizing them, so we pinned down a date. March isn't always the ideal time to visit Europe, but for us, it was the time to go.

This blog will be a (perhaps) large collection of photos, with commentary by both Brian and myself. We'll try to do this in sequence so you can follow along in the journey. Gute fahrt!