Arrival and more transit blues

Blog entry 09/07/06 – Brigette’s Guesthouse

It’s now 8am Sunday morning in Germany and I have just woken up from a great 12 hour sleep. I’m still struggling with a bit of jet lag but I feel much better today than I have for the last couple.

Hong Kong, what I saw of it, seemed pretty amazing. From the air at night it looked truly spectacular and that bridge, well I forget the name of it, so huge! I have heard that the Chinese have a strange propensity for producing funny English slogans. I’m not sure if they do it deliberately or because of their poor English skills – I reckon their just taking the piss though. As you can see from the sign I saw in transit at Hong Kong:

I had a few dramas getting to my final destination once I got to Germany. For a start, my baggage never arrived with me at Frankfurt so I didn’t have a change of clothes after traveling for about two days total. I was then supposed to pick up a rental car at Stuttgart and drive to my final destination in Gomaringen. However, apparently it is mandatory for the driver of a car to submit a valid credit card. Anyway, they were trying to charge it for €849 which is about $1700 NZ dollars which exceeded the limit on my card. Therefore, I couldn’t pick up the rental. So, I ended up having to get another train from Stuttgart to Tuebingen, where I got a short taxi to Gomaringen and Brigette’s guesthouse: Brigette, pronounced bree-get-a, was really nice and helpful and despite not speaking much English we managed to communicate pretty effectively. She showed me around Gomaringen, pop about 8500, so not much bigger than Taihape in NZ. It is a pretty small but friendly little village:

I think I definitely underestimated how difficult it would be not speaking the local language. It gives you a whole new perspective on life when you realise how much harder life is when you can’t effectively communicate. I mean even a simple thing like going down to the supermarket becomes a bit of an ordeal and takes you like twice as long as it would back home.

I went for a walk yesterday around the village and to check out where the DIgSILENT office is. Turns out it is only about a 20 min walk from where I am staying so that is pretty good. Although, it will still be a lot easier once I get a car sorted out.

Okay, I’m going to go and start practicing my deutsch now.

Auf Wiedersen