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Snags' long lost relatives
Entry 34 of 74 | show all | print this entry |
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Leaving Munich far behind us, we struck out for Stuttgart. Our journey went well for all of 5 minutes, at which point we found ourselves well entrenched in a German "stall" (ie traffic jam). We had received due warning about this phenomenon, including the fact that they can even go on for days at a time! We felt oh so fortunate that our little ditty only consisted an hour or so at less than 10km/h. I had once again taken up "easy rider" position anyway, so I didn't see it as much of a drama from where I was snoozing. Back on the road again we made it to Stuttgart without a problem, but obviously this was no good for our track record so we proceeded to get completely lost up some hill somewhere. We pissed on the side of the road like animals, and then concentrated on getting the hell out of there. It's probably worth mentioning that a contributing factor to our getting lost may have been that the usual "navigator" seat up front had been vacant since the boredom of the "stall" - Brett, Mark and I had chosen to get blind playing drinking games in the back instead.
Not long after that, we realised that naturally we were making little or no progress. Perplexed, Snags called on our ace up the sleeve - his extremely distant relatives. Somehow we found what seemed like the only south road out of Stuttgart, a traffic-infested winding road that made it's way uphill through seemingly hundreds of traffic lights while dodging bloody trams. Eventually we left Stuttgart far behind and arrived in Reutlingen to the welcoming home of Snags' relatives (whom none of us had ever met). Given that they had no idea we were coming until a couple of hours before we turned up on their doorstep, we were more than a little grateful to receive dinner, showers, and even comfy beds inside their house - a reprieve from the bloody van!
Next day we were greeted with a breakfast of juice, bread, meats and coffee. Sensational sleep after I had employed the use of my earplugs, but a little difficult to stomach fresh food instead of our standard breakfast of stale bread. We struggled through it. Traut offered to drive us to a small, nearby castle overlooking the town, which we gladly accepted seeing as we had no other real plan. While I found it quite interesting to look through, Mark seemed less impressed judging by the rolling of eyes and comments of "bullshit". You see, this is what happens when you travel through Europe - if it's not the biggest and/or grandest castle/cathedral/lake/brick/shoe etc then it just gets brushed aside. Such is the life of a travelling connoisseur - for example, I have several photos of cathedrals that I simply couldn't recognise if they were shown to me randomly. They all look the same, and there are literally thousands of them. I for one stopped taking photos out of dismay.
After the castle it was game time, a Germany game no less, so it was off to the pub for us. Jakob had just completed his final exams, so this really just compounded the impossibility of getting through the night sober. We met up with some of his friends, and then got some prime seating at the hottest outdoor screening of a football match in the history of the world. Some genius had obviously ignored the consistent 35 degree days, and so erected what would commonly be called a 'greenhouse'. Sure, it was dark enough to see the projected image, but only for a few seconds before sweat crowded your view or resuscitation was required. The only other feasible option was of course to drink copious amounts of beer to rehydrate, which naturally was the one we opted for. Very fortunately for them, the beer was quite cheap and served in buckets of ice, accompanied by free bonus t-shirts for each one ordered. It doesn't really matter what happened in the game (besides I don't remember right now), because Germany won which meant everyone was happy - including me because I had defected to support Germany for one day. I was supplied with flag and hat, and donned them proudly through the streets while yelling various scripted German slogans.
With that match out of the way, we proceeded to find a reasonably temperatured pub for the next game. This turned out being an Irish pub which just happened to have a quiz on as well. Although we were initially assured it would all be in English, this was soon exposed as a scurrilous lie and we were made to look much more stupid than usual. Fortunately Sophia took on the unenvious task of translator which helped a bit, but let me tell you some of the questions simply did not come across well at all. Evidently we wasted more time understanding the questions than actually concentrating on the answering bit, and our score looked likely to suffer. Insert Aussie Ingenuity here, because we took up the challenge by stealing the answer sheet to blatantly cheat, and then topped off our unlikely victory when Snags belted back a pint of the local muck in a blistering 5 seconds (shattering the next-best 16 seconds). One of our finer moments of the trip.
This is where it got a little silly, because we headed back to the ranch and assembled all alcohol in our possession to decide how to get rid of it. Knowing full well the idiocy of the idea, we still selected "stupid drinking games" instead of "down the sink" or the unlikely "drink sensibly over a very long period of time". At some stage Snags realised Wolfgang and Sophia were in fact twins, and without hesitation blurted out "Are you the same age?" - this was met with a brief look of disbelief, followed by injuries caused by hitting the floor and rolling around violently while holding our sides. At about 1am we were deemed too loud to be outside, so continued on our merry way upstairs until about 3am when we could simply take no more. I should mention that when I say "we", I do not in fact refer to my lame travelling companions who had bailed out far earlier. Instead, I refer to only myself (naturally) and the surprise package Sophia, who was by far the lightweight of the group (in the literal sense only), but proved to be an astonishing drinking machine. We were all well impressed.
I don't think I need to go into much detail for the day after. I spent the morning attempting to spew (with no result), attempting to drink water (simply couldn't), and resigned myself to watching TV in bed for most of the day. In the evening I finally got out of the house in order to be treated to some icecream in town, followed by cooking some sausages on sticks by a campfire. Their concept of a BBQ unfortunately does not involve salad, so it was meat and bread once again (but yummy)! More thumbnails ...
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