Category: Uncategorized

final destination: Hemmingen

Our new home in the countryside. Stuttgart is close.

Finally. After 12 weeks living a nomad life (we actually enjoyed again the simple & easy life we had for the last couple of weeks but now it feels like Christmas when you get all your stuff back)… our container has arrived. Yeah! It already had arrived 6 weeks ago but the German customs decided to open it up and check our staff… (somebody packed alcohol…!!!). Anyhow. Looking forward to an organized life including a wardrobe again 🙂

It was nice to get a first feeling of the Stuttgart city life. Now looking forward the daily view of the amazing fields of sunflowers, a garden (the BBQ season is on!) and parking spots in front of the door, just reserved for us 🙂 And no more screaming freaky people in the middle of the night (hopefully). And the best part: my way to work is much shorter.

First dinner in Hemmingen: American diner @ Hemingway

2 nights in an empty house waiting for the container to arrive.

Sunrise in the new home:

Somebody found already a new favorite spot:

We are ready:

Waiting for the container to arrive:

Espresso on moving days:

Traffic jam. Tight streets. Finally the truck made it with a 2 hour delay.

Unpacking 243 boxes. It may take some time. Happy to be here. For now: final destination Hemmingen. Visitors welcome soon. The first one already yesterday.


exotic

Exotic temperatures, exotic food. Feeling like back in Vietnam. We found this cute & tasty restaurant by chance walking through Stuttgart East. Wonderful refreshment.

So good. So delicious. So hot. Everybody finds their favorite place in these hot days.

Some cool days ahead. Rainy happy days.

Enjoy your weekend.

German summer

It’s the end of July. We are having record temperatures of up to 40C degrees. It’s summer. It’s great. It’s (one of) the best season of the year. It’s sunflower time. It’s ice-cream time. Aperol time. BBQ time. The color of my summer is yellow.

Things you can do living under the roof without A/C: hot yoga, make fried eggs on the window, make friends with your neighbors ground floor, run away to the beach or just chill out…

I love that it cools down in the night and you can sleep with open windows. Waking up to blue sky…

Tomorrow will be another beautiful summer day. Sunset over Stuggi.

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.

summer in the city

It’s summer and I am in Stuggi (I learnt that nickname today). I met my first people who are local. Born in Stuttgart. In love with Stuttgart. Stuttgart summer time is party time. This weekend: perfect weather. Open-airs. Festivals. Stadtfest. Many choices. We have been to all parties 🙂
Hamburger Fischmarkt: very delicious.

International Summer Festival of Cultures: from Argentina to Ghana, from the Netherlands to Kairo. Multiculti as its best. It was wonderful.

Young artists.

“Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache” – translated in many languages.

Bohnenviertelfest (Bean Quarter Festival) in the little streets in the center of Stuttgart. That was my favorite: good music, good drinks, good company, great party.

And the best: summer just started! Many more festivals to come, looking forward to it.

Frankonia

Wow! What a weekend back home. A wedding. A birthday party. And seeing family. Some of them I haven’t seen in a year or even longer. Wonderful!

Frankonia is home. My home. My brothers home. And beautiful. And that’s where he got married (and partied for the last 3 days…).

Wearing my wedding pearls.

We started the celebrations at a (rainy) vineyard.

I haven’t had Frankonian wine in a long time…

It was wonderful. And tasty.

And the (second) best part: we are now able to buy a box (or two) of my new favorite wine and take it back to Stuttgart 🙂 Yes!

The big celebration of love continued on top of Wuerzburg.

The bride & her godchild in partner look.

Best dressed men: the groom & my husband.

The groom’s suit was tailored in “tailor-town” in Shanghai.

And a quick trip to Bali for some relaxing time.

It’s wonderful to be back home, surrounded by people we love.

Stuttgart East

We arrived. Again. And hopefully the last time before the final settlement (soon). This time in Stuttgart. Stuttgart East. And the sun has been smiling since. The sky couldn’t be more blue. It’s summer. It’s hot. It’s wonderful.

We will spend our first 4 weeks (if our container will ever get released by German customs…) in an apartment on top of Stuttgart.

It’s a beautiful old building, top floor / 5th floor with a wonderful terrace.

Well… no A/C or elevator (first impression: there seems a lot of stairs everywhere in Stuttgart). Also neighbor houses are much closer than in Shanghai (you see things you don’t what to see 😉 ). Daily searches for parking spots included (still missing Mr. Xu!). Normal for Stuttgarter. New for us. No complains because of our daily evening sessions on top of Stuttgart. Sunset & Aperol Spritz included. And those sunsets…

We chose the apartment in the center of Stuttgart on purpose. Living in the city before moving to the “countryside” (already looking forward to the future garden & BBQ). And including the side effect of getting fit climbing the stairs frequently up and down.

So far I have not met a “real” Schwabian but other foreigners (from Frankonia, Berlin and Italy…). Yeah! We are not the only ones…

It’s funny and weird (I know) but I’m still surprised how many people speak German here. I know we are in Germany but for the last 8 years I didn’t hear many German speakers while walking around… so I’m catching myself being surprised and then remember that I’m back in Germany. Haha.

Supermarkets are open 7am till midnight 6 days a week! Wow! I’m impressed. The future alternative will be a supermarket delivering online shopping directly to my parked car at work – I love it!

Where else could you get ice-cream called “Schwarzwälder Kirsch” – only in Schwabia (it’s worth walking down the stairs to get an ice-cream from the shop around the corner 🙂 ).

Sunbathing girl:

Watching Tatort on Sunday night at 20:15 for real 90 minutes (not like 3 hours due to loading purpose and slow internet in Shanghai) – awesome 🙂

There’s pretzels around the clock, butter included 🙂
I had my first Maultaschen since we are back (sorry, but still not going to be my favorite…).

And the best part of being back: Meeting wonderful friends.

A little trip to neighbor city Karlsruhe: friends are really close now.

And knowing again what we eat…

So far we are enjoying our new Schwabian life! We love the fresh air (no more cough since arrival), the blue sky and found some really nice restaurants. I already hate the driving (2.5 hours return at the moment, Shanghai traffic was somehow smarter organized) and truly miss Mr. Xu. Nevertheless (after all road works on the motorway are successfully passed) I love driving fast and singing songs wrong and loud – pure freedom (how much I missed that!). And I am able to find in and out of Stuttgart without navigation. Yes!

I am still not used to have cash ready in my pocket for paying (and some Shanghai colleagues had to help me out in the canteen…) but I am carrying my smart phone with me (which is not so necessary anymore after all). I keep talking English to people and don’t notice it. It’s quite international here, especially in the office.

It’s really nice to be able to talk to family & friends in the evening time – no more timezone to be considered.

On top of Stuttgart. For now.

Erste Hilfe für Neubürger im Schwäbischen

Our second visit in a Stuttgarter beer garden including some very helpful tips for newcomers (like us) to Schwabia (of course only in German, I mean Schwabian language):

So, es hat Sie also in die Schwäbische Diaspora verschlagen?

Verzweifeln Sie nicht, ein faszinierender Landstrich wartet darauf von Ihnen entdeckt (und vielleicht sogar geschätzt) zu werden, vorausgesetzt, Sie befolgen einige wichtige Regeln im Umgang mit den einheimischen Ureinwohnern.

Schon die Wegsuche bei der Anreise (“Wo wellat Sie denn no, hä?”) zeigt sich, der typische Schwabe ist auf der Straße nur schwer auf den ersten Blick zu erkennen. Ist doch so mancher ‘Schwabe’ in Antalya, Bali oder Belgrad geboren und hat das vermeintliche Hochdeutsch ‘beim Daimler am Band’ gelernt. “Do fahret se am beschta glei do nuff, ond no do nieber ond dann inks in dui Gass nei, do isch’s” heisst ganz einfach “Sie fahren am besten hier den Berg hinauf, dann in die gezeigte Richtung und biegen anschliessend nach links in die gesuchte Strasse ein”.

Sollten Sie ein Haus gekauft oder gemietet haben und Handwerker benoetigen, warne ich vor der sprichwoertlichen schwaebischen Zuverlaessigkeit, “isch halt aellas nemme des”, jedoch wird Sie der eine oder andere pragmaische Vorschlag ueberraschen: “Do ganget mir mit ra schwera Walz ganz leicht drueber”.

Maekeln Sie nicht zu sehr an den Preisen rum und frangen Sie nicht “Warum ist denn das so teuer?”, weil die Antwort in etwa “Weil i no nemme so viel d’ra verdiena taet.!” lauten wird.

The food was delicious!

Schwaebisch fuer Anfaenger (food as well as language).

my new campus

It’s Monday. It’s hot. It’s the first work day.

The colleagues are super nice and we are a very international team with colleagues from Franconia, USA, Japan, Iran and Kazakhstan.

The plant is amazing: table soccer, massage, hairdresser, climbing, fitness club, fresh fruits and coffee/water for free… that’s my new work campus. Wow! I’m impressed. And it feels a bit like being a student again (well, maybe more like a google world, I didn’t have such a luxurious student life…) 🙂

And the plant is surrounded by vineyards. And a castle. First after work beer with colleagues:

I’m sure many more of such “meetings” will follow 🙂
That view…! Oh and by the way you can find the plant at the horizon… I think it’s a good idea to see work from a certain distance with wine in between for the beginning…