Thursday, May 26 -- from Belgium to Germany

This was the last morning to welcome in Renata's and Patrick's bed. We had another Belgian breakfast of everything that is sweet. We had checked the trains, and the plan was to change from a local train to a less local one in Unpronounceable, which Patrick translated to mean Liège. Patrick gave us a ride to the station, where we had the chance to marvel at the paintings on the walls and ceiling once more before catching the train. A random blind guy played Pippi Langstrump and some classical piece on a tiny synth, almost as poorly as the violin sawist in Ghent. No, we didn't pay for this one either.

Again there was something odd about changing trains. We would almost have caught an ICE, but since we had to look for a mailbox, we narrowly missed it. In exchange, we got a sample pack of cereals and the most local train ever. It arrived in Aachen after the ICE was already in Cologne.

Aachen met us with Arne and the all too excited Iffi. Arne had complained about our broken memory card at MediaMarkt, and got a new working one. We only had some quick bagels because Arne only had a short break from work. He told us that this place was common among students. There's a blackboard painted on the men's room door, usually filled with equations, but sadly cleaned just when Timo wanted to take a look.

The eighth train we tried to take never left: it was 35 minutes late, and the next one ran in 30 minutes. Impressively three of the eight trains on this trip had had some problems. Anyway we caught the ICE in Cologne, thanks to the Reiseplan we had made on the ticket vending machines. On the train we studied Ihr Reiseplan for local trains and maps for the most beautiful place available in the Rhine Valley. Maybe we'd get lucky as often happens on our random trips? (Ihr Reiseplan is a guide available in all the non-local trains, listing not only the stops and the timetable but also numerous pages of connections and services at the stations.)

It turned out to be stupid to worry about the accommodation in Bacharach. About half of the village consists of hotels, hostels, pensions, free rooms, and of course there was a youth hostel in an old fortress. We took our time walking the narrow street and comparing the prices, and finally chose a pension that welcomed especially bikers and motorists. For some reason the lady wanted to put us upstairs, on the third floor, but the backpacks were light enough to carry up there. Tiiti spoke quite fluent German but was surprised silent by the question if we want a breakfast egg.

Good to have a bed and close your eyes for a while, but after this while we got up to take a further look at the town. It was pretty and quiet, thanks to the medieval people who built the roads too narrow for big Mercedes Benzes. There was a path on the city walls, marked with a sign 'Public road.' The water in Rhine was warm enough for a swim, which we didn't take this time. In the times of real high water, the cars on the main road could swim about a metre deep.

We ended up having dinner in a cute restaurant that looked like a real family business: the mother was playing solitaire on the laptop while the daughter kept herself busy in the kitchen. The authenticity! These people really live in this village in the midst of all this history, but don't overdo it by wearing historical clown costumes. The local radio was playing in the restaurant instead of 'music to make the atmosphere complete.' Tiiti's German was much worse than the English spoken by the family, but doesn't this just mean that she has to practice? We wondered how any of the local restaurants can make a difference when tourists come and go. It turned out that the same tourists returned to the restaurant night after night. While Tiiti paid the bill, Timo chatted with other tourists about the new baby and how it's going to be fed.

The old fortress above the village serves as a youth hostel, and of course we had to climb there just to show off. Luckily some magnificient views were planted along the path, and we had a good excuse to rest a bit. There was half a church on the hillside, destroyed somewhere in the history. The walls were still erect, and all this made the sight about as unreal as all the ruins in the Lord of the Rings movies. The castle was crowded with schoolchildren, and someone else would have hated the noise. We wondered whether the children even noticed the fortress, or whether the main things to remember were the ice cream and ping pong. On the other hand, there's nothing wrong if ping pong is fun.

Since we were in the wine region, we went for a glass of white and a herbal tea in a wine house. This family has made wine since 1505 and produces 60 hl/ha on their 3.5 hectars. Numerous diplomas showed how special and precious their products were. This was also noticeable in the taste. Out on the terrace there was a noisy crowd laughing like the Danes in a conference. Football was on tv in the kitchen. Again, a hint of real life adds to the authenticity.

Friday, May 5 -- Bauhaus in Stuttgart

It was obviously all too light in the night, but Tiiti learned to use the blinds already in the morning. The lady ushered us to have breakfast around the corner, and there we were, trying to have one piece of everything while listening to the local radio. It seems that all the countries have their own set of singers that sound alike, and there are always certain types of local radio stations. The night cost 55 eur/night for the two, cash only. The lady never took our names nor gave any receipt.

Walking to the station we congratulated ourselves of being as clever as to check the train schedule in advance. On the train, we continued admiring the scenery. Not every village boasted a fortress, and it seemed that our random choice of the stop to jump off had been a success. A group of pensionist hikers got on the train at Bacharach and off at the next stop, obviously aiming to walk the 15 kilometres back on the mountain paths. As a replacement, we got two suspicious looking and smelling guys with large dogs. Exhausted from something, the dogs immediately fell asleep in the middle of the corridor. The trip continued with the toilet door sliding open and closing again with the train tilting left and right.

We could have changed to a quicker train to Mainz and saved a quarter of an hour, but didn't bother. In Mainz we boarded a dirty Swiss train and changed to ICE in Mannheim, and finally arrived in Stuttgart in the afternoon. Somehow the travelling takes much more time than ten years ago. The left luggage lockers cost 1.5 euros per hour, insane, but this is what we had to pay if we didn't want to carry everything. Outside the station there was a non-stop demonstration against the plans about a new station, this time only signs and no people to carry them. We wouldn't give up a station as marvellous as this, either! Later, we noticed that the station building was waiting to get its monumental and progressive architecture on the Unesco list.

We found everything we needed: burgers, shakes, and city information. At this point Tiiti's German was so good that we didn't have to use any English except in Burger King--it would sound too komisch to order Americal burgers with English names using some German words to bind the order together to a complete sentence. We headed to the Weissenhofsiedlung and a couple of notable buildings in the city.

Timo made up a guided tour in the city. Walking the main shopping street, we found Stuttgart all too big after the sympathetic Belgian cities and especially Bacharach. When we bumped into an evangelical church (Stuttgarter Stiftskirche), we thought of not going at all, since protestant churches are usually not very impressive. Luckily we went to see the most modern and fiery glass paintings that we had encountered in a while. They were obviously post-war. Tiiti spent some time decrypting the biblical references, bought a book about the windows, and had a nice chat about architecture with the lady behind the counter. Then a quick peek inside the Art Nouveau style market hall, and to Weissenhofsiedlung.

With the housing shortage in the 1920s, some progressive architects proposed building out of concrete and that the houses could be made beautiful, full of light, healthy, and even cheap on top of everything. To show the idea to the public, an experimental suburb called Weissenhofsiedlung was constructed. Everything was built in a tremendous speed: white buildings appeared on the hill like mushrooms after rain.

Both the Bauhaus buildings and their younger neighbours were terrific. On the other hand, it felt a bit like walking in the hospital area where Tiiti grew up: functionalism was pretty popular in Finland. The floor plans and other solutions were stunning: using clever elevations, every apartment gets a roof terrace and a balcony towards the South. Had we entered the buildings, we would have grasped it all even better, but naturally the buildings were inhabited, as they should be.

The semi-detached house designed by Le Corbusier served as a museum, and there we had the chance to understand all the technical and architectural ideas in the buildings. Suddenly we also realised what we want in our own future house: a cosy nest lit by sunlight, ideal for reading books. There were surprisingly few doorknobs or other details designed specially for these buildings, or maybe we just didn't notice. While the first half of the building was white and hosted the museum exhibition, the other part was painted in original colours and furnished in the 20s style--almost to bring you to tears. When do the copyrights to these buildings expire, and can we then copy one of them to Finland to live in?

Next, we headed for a park, and with the map in our hands, we were first spotted by someone to ask for directions and ten metres afterwards by someone who wanted to guide us. The Stutt-garden was almost as massive as the nazi buildings we would later see in Nuremberg, and suddenly we weren't enthusiastic to walk there any more. Studying the map for interesting places reachable by the tram, we noticed a stop called Sommerrain, and at this very instant the first drops fell on the map. In a minute it was raining as hard as ever, and it wasn't difficult to decide where to go next. Even under umbrellas after the hundred-metre walk to the tram stop we had our pants wet up to the knees.

The DB propaganda machine tried to counteract the demonstrations by a science fiction movie about the new Stuttgart 21 project to connect Ulm and Stuttgart with high speed tracks. The artist behind the movie had carefully studied his Babylon 5 and Star Trek, and everything down to the music was perfect. Let's see if this can change the public opinion, or will we board the trains from the old station on the next trip in ten years. This time we did, took a slowish train to Nuremberg and switched to ICE for the one stop to Erlangen. Somewhere along the way we saw a thing that looked like a Christmas tree on top of a Midsummer pole (Finnish Swedish tradition), apparently a monument for all the seasons.

Kaisa is Tiiti's old student friend from TUT. She studied optics, and went to Erlangen for post-graduate studies. The local boyfriend Michael was found later on the spot. Based on the previous visits, Tiiti had some idea where they lived, and with the map in Timo's tiny phone we managed to reach the doorbell by ourselves.

Kaisa had spent some days in Paderborn with her thesis supervisor, and Michael was still at work. The three of us were all in the verge of collapsing to bed, and we didn't talk much over supper. Luckily Kaisa is Finnish, because it takes another Finn to understand the the tired Finn.

Next Stop: Nuremberg.

Leave the train.