What a Weekend!

Last weekend Philipp and I went to Karlsruhe for a party, and since neither of us had too much to do here in Stuttgart we drove over on Thursday - to make a long weekend of it. We arrived and went straight to lunch with Philipps dad and sister, Ina-maria, in a lovely Pizzeria somewhere in Durlach. The problem was that we arrived a bit late and by the time we had sat down and ordered the other two had to rush off. And because Karl (Philipps dad) had already payed the bill we could just eat and go. It was a funny feeling, to be able to go out for lunch, and when you're finished eating, just get up and go. This only ever happens at home, but there you still have to do the washing up and clean the table and blah blah blah!! The Pizza was delicious, just in case you were wondering!
Then we took Philipps car to a workshop, and went to Marie's new flat. We rang the doorbell, went upstairs and who is standing there in the doorway??? Seonaidh Reid!! I thought for a moment that I was in the wrong country, since she had told me that she wasn't coming over this Summer but later in the year! Such a great surprise!! I was smiling from ear to ear for hours after.
The Party was on Friday night, and it was just awesome. All kinds of great people, lots of laughs and a very amazing Camera. Seriously, you have never seen anything like it! It was just so great that I had to take a photo of it! Here it is, in all its glory:

The Best Camera in the World!!

OK, well its not the best Photo of it but at least you can see what I'm talking about! Isn't it great?? So I'm asking now; if any of you are planning to go to China or Japan and you happen to see something like this, please please please get it for me and I will give you the money and probably promise to be your best friend for life! Yes, I still use that childish saying but sometimes, juuuust sometimes it works!
Apart from this photo, I actually didn't take that many, at least no good ones. But then again, I think that's a good sign, it just means that I was off enjoying the party instead!
The weather was just amazing all weekend, and of course I packed for Autumn! All I brought with me was Black Jeans, a Jumper and a skirt which I didn't end up wearing at all! So as you can imagine, I wanted to use this opportunity to go shopping, after all there was a good reason. But in the end I decided, it was far better to borrow something from Philipps mum, for when it was too warm to wear Jeans, then to spend money that I should be saving. So for most of the weekend I ran around in Dagmars Leggings! Much better. On Sunday, Philipp, Dagmar, Ina-Maria, Becci and I rode to Ettlingen on the bikes to have an Ice cream. I was even allowed to ride the Peugeot ladies bike, which is just fantastic! The seat is super comfortable and when you ride it you feel like a Queen. The first time I sat on it, I fell in love! Anyway, eating Ice Cream was real fun, and because we couldn't choose which flavour to have, we had two!! I had 'After Eight' (which is just basically 'Mint Choc Chip') and Mokka (Coffee and Chocolate!). A few years ago I went through an 'I don't like Ice Cream' phase and only ate Sorbets and Juice Ice Creams but recently, its all gone wrong and I'm Lovin' Ice Cream again!

Photo taken by Philipp Linder

On Sunday evening Philipp and I met with Fionn, Seonaidh and Marie in the 'Kippe' for dinner. Its a really cool student pub, where if you order a dish off the daily menu, and a drink to go with it, you get it cheaper, its cheap anyway but this deal has all the students running. When we arrived it was nice and sunny so we sat outside, and then this Massive, (and I mean Massive) cloud rolls in and it starts tipping it down. Then we drove back to Stuttgart in a storm, it was kinda scary because it was such heavy rain so we could hardly see anything out the windscreen, but we made it home in one piece!
 So that was my weekend, it sounds like we did a lot less but mostly because I didn't include everything we did, I'm sure every detail would have bored you to tears!!
I hope you all had a lovely weekend!!
Madi xxx

Forget me not!!

Photo taken by Philipp Linder

I just realised that there wasn't a single photo of me in the last bunch, so here you are. Just to prove that I was there too!!

Hugs xxxx

Even more photos from Philipps visit...

In Strasbourg

Philipp and Jan praying in the Minster.

Jan asleep on the steps of the Minster.

The boys.

The (back of the ) boys.

The end of an awesome but long and hot day discovering Strasbourg!

BBQ

BBQ in the back yard. Next to the bins!! Yuuuum.

Jan playing with Fire.

Mmmmmm Meat!!!

Phillo came too.

There was even Veggie stuff to eat!

All in all, a great visit from Philipp. We had heaps of fun and even though half of our group was missing we thought about you all the time.

Thanks for coming Philipp, maybe one day we'll make it to Canada to visit you! I'm already looking forward to it!

More photos from Philipps visit...

Here is a mixture of photos from Philipps visit:

In the Rosenstein Park

 

Photo taken by Philipp Linder

 At the Zoo

In Soho...

Philipp joined the Stuttgart 21 fighters!

Part 2 coming soon...

Visit from Philipp

Philipp Schulze-Garg arrived last Wednesday and because I had to work in the evening, the boys (Philipp, Philipp and Jan) went off to play Poker at our friend Philipps place! you can imagine how confusing that would have been - three Philipps in one room!
On Thursday we decided to use up the last of the good weather and went off to the 'Rosenstein Park' and lay about on a blanket, eating, smoking Shisha and taking photos for hours. It was great and strangely enough I had that Summer feeling for the first time since winter, stupid really, since the Summer is nearly over but at least I felt it once this year. Then we continued the lazy day with a film in the evening. It was one of those awesome 'dont have to do anything' days, where its actually OK to laze around, usually those days are reserved for Sundays. Here are a few Photos from the park...

It's been a while

It's been a few days, if not weeks, since I last wrote something and I just wanted to let y'all know that I'm not dead, and I haven't forgotten the blog. Recently I've been working every free shift so as to save money for a brand new Mac Book, we have also had a visit from Daniel Kearney and right now Philipp Schulze-Garg is staying with us for a week, so as you can see I ain't got much time for much else. But I promise that when I have a moment, I will tell you all about it and then maybe I'll finally get around to uploading the photos of the (tidy) flat!

Until then, I hope you all have a great week!

Stuttgart 21

Stuttgart 21 is a plan to move the existing Main train station in Stuttgart, underground. Our current 'Bahnhof' is an end station, so to speak, that basically means that the trains arrive in the station and then have to reverse out again to carry on with the journey. Now the local government want to dig under the city and build extensive new railways so that trains travelling from all over Germany will be able to save about 10 minutes of their journey time. In doing so, they will also dig under one of the large parks in Stuttgart city centre, and that means that they will be uprooting a large number of the beautiful 400 year old trees that presently stand in the 'Schloss Park'. It has also been rumoured that when they dig the tunnels, they are not exactly sure whether the city will hold up!! We have seen something like this fairly recently in Cologne, when a building literally sank into the ground. A terrible tragedy that really wasn't necessary, and that we do not want to see again. The entire project will end up costing more than 4 Billion Euros. Surely there is better things to be spending that money on!
Here in Stuttgart there has been a lot of unrest because of this Project, every Monday evening (in fact almost everyday now) there are large demonstrations outside the Station. All over the city you see stickers and slogans against Stuttgart 21.

This is the most common one, and they are stuck on every corner post box, bus stop and basically anywhere they'll stick.
On Wednesday, Philipp and I went to a massive Demo with Philipps father and his partner, who came in from Karlsruhe to show their support. In fact, they come almost every week. The mood in the crowd was actually really nice, mostly because it was a quiet march, and people were talking and passing around information that they had heard. I even heard one guy telling some people of a beer that has been specially labelled and sold in a couple of Bars here and that from every bottle sold, 21 cents goes towards general costs like the badges and stickers against Stuttgart 21. There were signs everywhere and lots of people had dressed themselves up to emphasise their point. There were Police everywhere, but no trouble. We walked from the Bahnhof up to the Schloss Platz (the square in the middle of the city) and gathered there for what I can only call a mass shouting session. At exactly 7pm, after a few speeches from the leaders of pack, the entire square erupted with the noise of between 20,000 and 30,000 people. The hair on the back of my neck was completely on end!!