Challenges

New in Stuttgart. Anywhere new and moving always includes some challenges in the beginning. Even (or especially) moving back to Germany.

– Driving within speed limit (never seen more speed cameras than along the B14 and I just love racing my little go kart).
– Not eating pretzels (they follow me. Everywhere. And around the clock. And they are so delicious, cannot help it.).
– Not to fall asleep before 6pm (first weeks are always exhausting).
– Using a German keyboard (y and z mixed up, all of a sudden there’s ü’s and ä’s again…).
– Remembering that almost everything is closed on Sundays…
– Remembering where I parked my car (at work as well as in Stuttgart; yesterday I couldn’t remember and felt like an idiot…searching and walking… and finally successfully finding it).
– Driving in, around and especially through Stuttgart: how can you limit your speed to 80km/h when you are allowed 120km/h? And why do drivers from Heilbronn or in a Mercedes think that especially the third lane belongs only to them? And those smartphone addicted people who seem to have forgotten that they sit in a car… and then the traffic light is green…. and they don’t move… and it turns red again… arghhhhhh! And yes, I’m still missing Mr Xu. Truly regretting to not have offered him a job… but I’m proudly adapting his driving style… Is this already the culture shock kicking in? I am hopeful, we are moving out of the city center soon…
– Returning bottles to get the deposit back (not sure if there’s anything more annoying, focusing on tap water and looking forward to Scott’s self-brewed beer…).
– Recycling (we decided to delay our start to August…).
– Commuting on Thursday’s – Thursday is the new Friday (Friday is home office day for most Stuttgarter).

Dear Stuttgart city, maybe you have to make a decision if you want to be a proud city of 2 OEMs (and people love driving their cars) or you want to be a green city (and then you can continue closing more and more lanes). For my part I’m counting days and cannot wait to leave you already after only 4 weeks… driving here is not fun. When I compare you to a 27mio citizen (and car owners) city… the way you control & monitor your traffic is really bad and not state of the art.

I believe Stuggi is a wonderful city and much to explore… for sure we’ll be back for the weekends but either on a motorbike or using public transportation, as you wish.