Heading to SF for a California trip & engineering conference …
Holidays
Yea, it’s been a while, but I made it back to my parents place in Spain!
“Class Reunion”
As every year, my group of friends from studies managed to organise a “class reunion”, this time at Oli’s parents house in the beautiful wine region Pfalz. The first evening we had a nice barbecue at the pool and later went to one of the winefestivals this region is famous for.
The next day we enjoyed the beuatiful weather in and around the pool, just relaxing and talking, playing some garden games (Boule, Beachball, Water-Volleyball, …) from time to time. We even witnessed a partial lunar eclipse that night!
Burgenstraße and Odenwald
Driving back home to Darmstadt on Sunday, I had to stop in order to check the nuts in the wheels (I lately managed to change from winter to summer tires 😉 ). At the restarea a biker from Hamburg asked me about nice sidestreet routes in the area so I told him about the Bergstraße. Just after this talk I realised that I really was not in a hurry and that there was no need to take the big highways. I left the Autobahn near Heilbronn and followed the Neckar river up north along parts of a route called Burgenstraße. At the Burg Hornberg near Haßmersheim I had a nice lunchbreak with a marvelous view over the Neckar-valley. Afterwards I went on a short trip through the remains of the castle. The climb up some rather old wooden stairs into the keep was quite adventurous.
Derby, UK
This time my job brought me to Derby, a quite sweet town in England about 45mins from Birmingham. As it would be quite hard to get from the airport in Birmingham to Derby and then around town by public transport only, I reserved a rental car. My luck started at the airport, when the class of car I had reserved was not available and I got a car about 2 or 3 classes better for the same price :-)! Even though I drove on the other side of the road before (in NZ) I was a bit sceptical about it but it all worked really well.
After all the meetings and work done during the day, the local colleagues and I went out in Derby, enjoying the local pub culture.
Another big luck was the beautiful weather I had for the whole stay, just as I arrived at the airport on my way back home, it started raining again.
Cheers
Tim
Bilbao, Spain
I was planning a trip to Bilbao, Spain, for the project and just a few days ahead it turned out that my father would be in the same region at the same time, so we adapted our plans and spent a weekend in that very beautiful city. Of course we visited the Guggenheim Museum appreciated the very diverse architechture and enjoyed the local Tapas.
Bilbao Airport:
Guggenheim Museum:
The City:
