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It’s been a long time since I last posted an article here and that is for a number of reasons. The key ones being work commitments, moving house and also lack of access to my own blog. Remarkably I had no access to the admin pages until very recently when my SQL database finally got upgraded by my host who I will not be renewing with! For name and shaming reasons, they are called ixwebhosting and they charged me $50USD for the privilege. I miss the travel write up and the video capture and over the last couple of years, I have been over to Germany and shot some videos but I still have them stored on an old redundant hard disk somewhere. I swear I used to keep this sort of thing up to date!
Life has been kind but work has been very busy lately. Since Social Media Week, I have spoken at 13 events and am now looking forward to resting my feet up on a motorboat in Lake Garda, Italy. I’ll be driving down with the missus and passing down through Metzingen, Germany (otherwise known as Outlet city) to stock up on the next years worth of clothes. It originally started out as a factory city churning out Hugo Boss clothes, but has somehow evolved into the biggest collection of outlet stores in Europe with many key brands holding their only sales items in this city situated near Stuttgart. Unlike most guys, I am actually looking forward to the shopping experience and I am really looking forward to catching up on some well deserved Sunday frühstück (traditional German brunch) although I haven’t found a decent venue yet. Any suggestions for Stuttgart would be most welcome. I’m after really good quality food above and beyond anything else. I’m also going to check out the well hyped Mercedes Museum that people seem to go crazy about. I like cars but I’m not sure that I will like them enough for an entire museum’s worth…
The wife & I are going on from Stuttgart straight down to Lake Garda to literally chill out and drift about on a boat for most of our stay down there. The beauty of being in that area is that if we want to venture out a bit, then Verona & Milan are really close by. I was really looking forward to watching an Opera at the open Colosseum in Verona but totally forgot that they don’t perform outside of Summer months. A major bummer but I’ll live. I’m still trying to remember where I got some killer Tiramisu in Milan but I’m sure I’ll remember where it was if I make it that way .
On the last leg of the journey before we head back home to the UK, will be a 2 day stop off in the crazy City of München otherwise known as Munich. Very much like Stuttgart, Munich is now surrounded by a huge ‘Low emission zone’ making it difficult to visit spontaneously unless you have applied online for a pass at the
Low Emission Zone Website well beforehand. Munich is very different to a lot of the rest of Germany – even the language is quite different with very few people able to understand my Frankfurt Hessen accent there. To be fair, very few people in Frankfurt understand my faux German lingo! A visit to the BMW museum in München will be in order to compare with our visit to the Mercedes museum in Stuttgart. My views will probably be skewed by my ownership of a BMW but I’ll still be focussing on the culinary delights the city has to offer a lot more than any motors on show. That will probably change on my trek back to the UK, when I will be bombing up the Autobahn to Aachen where I will have to revert back to slow Dutch speeds. Hopefully it’ll be a great holiday coming up! Stay posted for the highlights.