| From the Outback to the Arctic Circle Christmas in Europe |
| "travel is glamourous only in retrospect" (Paul Theroux) |
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| 4 me |
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| 4 Stuttgart |
| Last updated: Thursday, 17 April, 2003 |
| Epic Adventures My first journey was in the summer of 1996. I worked in Nashville and travelled from east to west USA The following summer I travelled by train around eastern and central Europe I spent a fantastic year studying in Germersheim, Germany in 1997/8 1999 saw me taking to the railways of Scandanavia The grand Tour of the World took place in 2000, taking in India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, USA, Mexico and Canada |
| inside Ian's Website you will find... life is a real-time autobiography that grows as the years go by me is a name i call myself travel is from the outback to the arctic circle journalist is what i try to do but i can't hack it music is the food of love but you probably think i'm on a pretty poor diet books is what you should be reading and main index is where everything begins a bit like genesis |
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| Also don't miss 4 Ian's guide to getting stuck on trains 4 Around the world in A to Z 4 Breasts in Provence |
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| Stuttgart, December 2002 |
| Andrew W. Bryden is known to regular users* of Ian’s Website as the “man” responsible for the abomination which is the Mortuary Board. I hadn’t seen him since the ill-fated New Year’s Eve of 2001 (so ill-fated that there is no other reference to it on this website) but awaited encountering him again with a combination of “anxiety” and “longing”. When I finally stepped off the train at Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof I realised that what I actually felt was a combination of “shock” and “awe”. * I have just realised that Andrew W. Bryden is himself the only regular user of Ian’s Website. Andrew W. Bryden and I played “golf” on a very warm, sunny day in the pleasant, dare I say it, bourgeois, surroundings of Baden Baden, in Germany’s Black Forest, in 1998. From that time on he was known to everyone excluding me as Andrew, and to me as “Sir”. We also sang “When A Child Is Born” a lot that day. |
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| There would be no such light-heartedness five years on. Sir bundled me out of the train and took me, rather sheepishly, to an immigrant-run pizza joint. We went back to his flat to eat our pizzas, and he plied me with German beer. Sir’s flat befitted him. It was sparse, but homely. Clean, yet chaotic. Much history had no doubt been made under that ceiling. The next thing I knew I was in a pub. Sir made a reference to some “friend” turning up to meet us. He never did. My doubts about Sir were returning. We walked back to the flat where Sir started what was to become an all-to-regular routine of pretending not to look at my naked body as I undressed for bed. I say bed, I mean a very thin mattress on a cold floor. |
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| It was Christmas. The Weihnachtsmarkt was in full swing in the centre of Stuttgart. We drank Gluehwein a lot that week as we stood and mocked the Germans. The days passed by in a hazy mish-mash of fake snow, Irish pubs, xenophobia and Beck’s breasts. We went to Esslingen. Twinned, as it proudly proclaims, with Neath, where I was working. We walked up into the castle and overlooked the valley. It wasn’t very Neath-esque. But what is? We each ate a massive marshmallow / nutty ball because Sir thought the “girl” selling them in the Esslingen Christmas market had “nice tits” (his vulgar words, not mine). They were delicious and just of the right shape and size to get your tongue around. A hot wine ensured they slipped down with ease. |
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| Back in Stuttgart I nearly got duffed up by a rabid Irishman in the Irish pub who overheard me telling Sir that he sounded like the incomprehensible Geordie in Alan Partridge. “D’yo wanna beatin’?” he asked me, in a better Irish accent than that was. I said I didn’t, no. After a few days I was beginning to dread bedtimes. Sir commented that I had “the bum of a twelve-year-old”. Compare other bum descriptions in 4 Barcelona On the Sunday Sir and I went to the cinema, where we watched the soon to be Oscar-winning film, The Pianist. It is the most serious, miserable, pessimistic film I have ever seen about lots of “Jews” getting executed during the Second World War. The Germans in the audience still found plenty to laugh about however. A disabled “Jew” getting pushed off a balcony in his wheelchair to his death raised a particularly huge guffaw. As did the sight of the main character almost being shot through the head because he was wearing a second-hand Nazi soldier’s uniform. Unbelievable. |
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| It was soon time to go home. But not before one last knees-up in the Irish pub. Sir and I met some really weird people there. I soon discovered they were Sir’s “friends”. They started playing backgammon together. One of them started reciting the lyrics to “Thousands Are Sailing” by the Pogues. It was time to go. (Serious bit.) I stopped off in Heidelberg on the way home for old time’s sake and before long Germany, and all it meant to me was a distant memory, a distant land, once again. |
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| 5 It's Christmas in Stuttgart, and Ian and Father Christmas get together. |
| 5 Ian and Sir walk past a delapidated Christmas tree. |
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| 5 Sir tries to hide his face in his sordid den. |
| 6 Ian and Sir drink Gluehwein in Stuttgart's Christmas market. |
| 5 Sir eats a massive marshmallow / nutty ball. |
| 4 Ian is proud to stand beside the Neath - Esslingen twinning sign. |
| 3 Comedy of the year, Der Pianist. Went down a storm in Stuttgart. |
| 5 Ian injures himself negotiating a parked car one night. |
| 4 Sir samples the local fare while mocking Germans. |
| Click on each photo to see the ghastly images full size. Then press the back button to return. |