Tag: stuttgart

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Diploma, at last!

The day before my birthday, there was the official handover of our diploma documents. So I left work a bit earlier that Friday and headed down to Stuttgart. After some speaches, during which Martin and I took the small quadrocopter out for a flight, all the former students gathered at the front of one of the auditoriums and got their documents handed over.  Afterwards there was a small barbecue party in front of one of the institutes.
Once this sort of official part was over, people started moving into the city to celebrate, which for me coincided with my 28th birthday as well. As many people came to Stuttgart for this event we were quite large group and partied at various locations (Palast, Schocken, Oblomow, etc.).

The next afternoon, Martin and I met at the beergarden in Leinfelden. After a laid back late brunch we went to Vaihing to get drinks for the party at Flowrider’s garden that night. At the mall we stumbled into a store selling nonsense gadgets like Hawaii flower garlands and soap bubble toys, of course we couldn’t resist and bought a bunch of the garlands and bubble toys for the party.
As things already got late, we drove straight to Flowrider’s party in the fields behind Vaihingen. The usual crowd barbecued and partied all night, getting eaten alive by the mosquitoes from the nearby pond.


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back home

Yea I know … it’s been a while since my last post.

Local Culture

I made it home well, right in time for quite a few late summer / autumn festivals. The first and biggest was the traditional Wasen, a few weeks later I visited the Fellbacher Herbst for the first time. A pretty nice wine festival in the heart of, you guessed it, Fellbach with live music and many booths selling local wine and food. The last local festival in that row was the Krautfest, a festival around Filderkraut, which is typical for the Filder region and only produced here.

Good old Friends

Two weeks after I returned back home some good friends from highschool times and I went to Switzerland. The first day and evening we spent in Basel, joining with one of our friends who had worked there for his studies. After we finally decided on a restaurant I had a really nice wild boar roast which I won’t forget for quite a while.
The second day we drove to Luzern and started hiking up the Pilatus with fog all around us, one could barely see 50m. Overall the elevation difference would have been 1600m in one day, but in my corrent condition I gave up at about 1000m and took the cable car to the top. There we had a reservation for the hotel and enjoyed a relaxed evening (the others were totally tired as the last 600m were the toughest part).
Sunday the fog had cleared and the view was really marvellous. After a brief sunbath we took the cable car back to the lower station where we had parked the car and spend the rest of the day browsing around the inner city of Luzern.

panoramic view from Pilatus

The Studymates

The last weekend of October my group of best friends from the aerospace studies in Stuttgart gathered in Hamburg. The first day had a bar crawl through the Schanzenviertel and along the Reeperbahn.
After everyone had recovered from the night before, we went down to the pier (Landungsbrücken) and took a boat trip around the warehouse district (Speicherstadt) and the harbour. After that we just walked around downtown a bit and found a really nice and small mexican restaurant where we managed to get a table for the nine of us. After a good meal and some Tequila we retreated to Oli’s place where most of us stayed and had a rather calm last evening.

My Grandma’s 88th Birthday

As we planned the gathering in Hamburg quite a bit ahead, I could arrange that it would be the same weekend as my grandmother’s 88th birthday. So Sunday I got up a bit earlier, took the bus to the main station to get a few fresh flowers and visited her. It is truely amazing how clear her mind is, everytime I really enjoy talking to her. As usual I ate quite a bit more than I had planned, but I guess that’s a universal fact for grandmas all over the world!

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enjoying the autumn in Heslach

As the autumn is really nice and rather warm, Santa and I went for some short hikes around Heslach this weekend. The longer I live here and the more I see, the more I begin to love this part of Stuttgart.


Santa and the view on Heslach


a small puppet-theatre we discovered right around the corner

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busy Germany/amazing KL

Two weeks compressed Germany
After 26hrs from door to door, I arrived back home on my fathers 60th birthday! Feeling a little weird in my own room after 4 months, I unpacked and made myself comfy. The day we had a really nice relaxed family birthday, joining around the presents. The next weeks should be busier!
Briefly: Do:concert in Stuggi, two great local musicians (Stefan Hiss & Ralf Groher) Fr: Drehbar with Holger & GF and John, afterwards big party at the Tennishouse, meeting LOTs of friends. got home around 6. Sa: hangover, leaving for Esslingen, where the big BD-party will take place, ppl show up around 1900, taking fotos, telling my stories a thousand times, getting amazed by the great plays. A really busy evening. My dad, mum and friends danced mith live music till 2! So: brunch with the guests from further away, preparing my stuff for Hamburg in the afternoon, jumping on my plane in the evening, resting in the jouthhostel in Hamburg. Mo: Spent all the day with my granny! Talking all the time, just with short breaks for lots of good food(porree-pampe 😉 thumb-up!)! It’s so nice every time again! In the evening I met Chryschdl and Tilli at the Reeperbahn, where we had some beers and good engineering talks 🙂 Tu: Walking around Hamurg inner city, working on BETPAT a couple of hours in a nice cafe. Meeting Chryschdl again in the evening. After some confusion we ended up at some liveconcert with more experimental ambient music, really weird stuff. We: leaving for Stuggi. Feeling a little ill, I stayed home the next days. Sa: Vienna, walking around the city in my typical chaotic way, enjoying nice cafes. Little tired in the evening I stayed in the Hotel and got me some Club-Sandwich by the roomservice. Su: Flight to Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur
Arriving in KL at 6 in the morning I got me a cheap cab to the hostel where I had a reservation for a room. Surviving the crazy cab-ride, I faced some confusion about my e-mail reservation. But everything went out well and I got a nice single room for about 6 EUR a night! Sleeping all day. In the evening a walked through chinatown around the corner. Coming home I just asked some guy (Owen from Melbourne) sitting in the lobby where he got his power adaptor. Beeing openminded travellers we ended up drinking way to much beer till 5 in the morning 😉 He was working on a malaysian cookbook, with lots of nice pictures and an attached CD with the sounds of the country. Nice idea!
The next day I spent the evening with another group in the backpacker, as Owen was still working on his hangover ;-). Sitting in the comfy lobby we watched some musicviedos from the laptop. Afterwards Kristi (a photographer) asked to have some walk outside, so four of us went to the reggae bar I discovered the day before. Arriving at there three were left and after another hlf an hour only me and Kristi were left. We talked till the bar closed, talked on in the lobby till late …
The next days we sticked together, doing some touristy stuff like visiting the twintowers, having a view from the TV/Radio tower, went to the zoo and some nice temples. The evenings we spent with the crowd in the lobby, going out for some beer, a indian show-dance or a transvestite show.
In the end it was kinda hard to leave, but we had more like opposite directions. She just left Sydney (after living there for 4 years, so we lived some months aside each other without knowing!), taking the long way home to Atlanta.