This week has been the first "dull" week here in Stuttgart. On Wednesday I was thinking that "I havent done anything special this week". I only went to work in the morning, came back in the evening, ate and took a shower, went to bed. End of story.

So this was my first week working here in Stuttgart, in the travelling agency at the airport. First day was ok, I was observing my co-worker and her work and I even got to use the reservation system later that day. But that was only the first day. She told me that tomorrow we will be going to different office, that handles the customers via phone and email, I thought that I will surely get more work there, because I can take english customers via email easily.

I was wrong, so wrong.

In the upstairs where we went on the next day, Tuesday, they only used Amadeus as a reservation system, that is not teached in our school and is rather hard to "guess" how to use it, as it works via codes.
First day in the new office, I was just sitting there like a bozo for 8 hours doing nothing, surfing in the internet and I felt myself so useless, but still, it wasnt the company's fault because they didnt know that I couldnt use that system.

The problem is coming from the school, they have not informed the students or the workplaces well enough. And it wasnt so fun when you have to come there everyday, just to do nothing.
The company itself was awesome, I mean the spirit in the office was just great, and I liked that first they spoke english to me because my german is not so great, but when they noticed I can understand, they spoke german.

I've realized that I love to see the sun go down

I'd always liked to work on airport for some weird reason, and now when I was working there, I really liked it. It was so thrustraiting to hear the "I'm sorry we dont have anything you can do", from my boss because the fault is not his or mine, but still we are the ones that have to deal with it. Since it was an holiday week here in Germany, only thing I could do in the workplace is to go there each day with "hooosaaah" feeling.

That being the theme of the week, there was something else also included in my week. For example on monday there was a nice Karneval show on the airport with alot of different dancers and music. :)
I also went to see our soon new apartment in Ludwigsbourg, and it's great!!! I mean, great as a better than a box on the street.. Its ghetto apartment with MAYBE mold and MAYBE bedbugs there. :D

Looks nice, eh?

When I realised the fact that we are moving into a slum, I had to take some power from the firefighter-elf-beer(it's crazy I know)

I try to make something new every week I'm here in Stuttgart, discover the place more. Today I realized that I haven't been doing anything special this week, than gone to a new grocerystore nearby. So off I went, to further away from the centrum and took the Funicular to Stuttgart's graveyard, it's quite interesting the place where the funicular is, because in Budapest its close to tourist attractions, but here its "far away" from centrum. And the fact is that it goes to a graveyard. :D

a moving wooden cabinet, hooray

Funicular upper station

The funicular was.. well. A german funicular. It is handmade in Esslingen in 1999 by Esslingen Engine Works. Journey on funicular takes about 3-4 minutes /oneway and the funicular leaves every 20 minutes from down to up and from up to down. There are two cars operational.

The cemetry itself was a different story, I found it somekind of interesting. But. In my opinion it was just OK. Here is some pictures from there, some cool graves you can find there, but gotta have the time to search them.

Gladiator style helmet on top of a old "crate", there was no date on it but I think it is really old

Familygrave

There are also some celebrities and well-known persons buried to the cemetry, but their graves werent anything special compared to pictures that are show above. After a nice 1-2 hour spent on the cemetary, I drove back down with the funicular and headed my stomach to a food place, its sunday and it usually means DÖNER-DAY. We had some great döner some time ago with my classmates in the centrum, so I decided to go for the same place again and yeah, it was great.

Big chunk of döner there :D

I meet this cat from time to time near the hostel I live, it likes me, I think so..

Tomorrow is monday and time for school again, hope it will be better now than it was before but. I would not count on it... Another great thing is that I have to film my school project here, it will be my final work so if I have nothing else to do so I can always film something up. I have beeen working on some timelapses recently.

I have learned something new this week about myself, I really like to watch the sun going down, I never thought that I would, but I do. I also like to be alone quite much, I like people and to be able to talk with someone, but I also need time for myself from time to times.

My work look

Thats it folks! Back again next week with something new!

Just FYI, for some weird reason some pictures are not showing right on google chrome, put if you click them open they are fine. Did not even see this problem because I always use firefox.

Anyways.

You know in life you either want to go all the time or stay at your roots all the time. I'm a weird one. I like to go and see, but from time to times I just like to be alone and take it easy. 

This week I have been trying to go more and stay at my place less. 

Time flies here, can't believe already 2 weeks have passed and tomorrow I will go working in the travelling agency.

Start of the week was really laid back, by that I mean that I did not do anything interesting. On Wednesday I took my camera and went hiking to Birkenkopf. Yeah. Hiking. :D

The way there was a tough one because I had to climb all this random trail all the way up from the valley to the hill. Like 200 meters upwards. Exhausting. And when I thought that I reached my destination, there was some more uphill in front of me.

Standing on the highest point of Stuttgart!

 

So Birkenkopf is a place where are the ruins of Stuttgart's city centrum has been taken when most of it was bombed down during the Second World War. Birkenkopf is 511 meters above the sea level and on a clear day some people say that you can see the "Swabian alps" from there.

Known also as "Rubble hill" or "Monte Scherbelino", the hill is hiding 1,5 million cubic meters of rubble inside of it from Stuttgart's ruins. That increased the height of the hill for over 40 meters. One of the stone shards has a plate attached to it that says; This mountain piled up after World War II from the rubble of the city stands as a memorial to the victims and a warning to the living. (translated from german).

Some of the rubble has been left on top of the mountain for people to actually see it

Isn't this the best tree you have ever seen?

People also have some religious events on Sundays at Birkenkopf

Overall Birkenkopf gets 4 points out of 5 for me. But that is just because I like the WW history and the sunset was really awesome to watch from there. The views to the city were only OK. It is little bit too far away from the centrum to be a good spot to take pictures over the city.

Hey mommy, Its me!

Some geographical stuff about the place, picture is little shaky tho

Views to the city

So actually I spent my whole Wednesday after school in Birkenkopf and went home with big bowl of salad from lidl. x)

Birkenkopf was so high and on the shady side of Stuttgart, so I think thats why there was still some snow when I went there.

Because next day I went to Bad Cannstatt for the Aussichtsturm Burgholzhof and it was like a start of a summer there. Only downside was that I could not find so much information about the tower and did not know if it would be open or not. 

When I got there, it turned out that the tower will be open next time at May, so could not go in there. Also this time my own timing was not so good as with the Birkenkopf as the sun was already down when I arrived to the tower.

Some shitty panorama

Wild killerdog approaching

Winefields both sides :)

THE tower

In overall the place was 2 out of 5, but I think it was because of the tower being closed, sun had already gone down and nothing was particularly special there. And also, it was quite hard to get there. I still give some credit for the place, I think that in the right time of the year and day, it would be atleast 4/5.

On Thursday I was still eager to do something with my freetime after school, so after few hours of resting after school me and Taru went to Killesberg aussichtsturm, actually Taru had just been there a day earlier but she said she wanted to see it again. And I did not wonder why, the Killesberg park is really nice and the tower stands in the middle of the Killesberg park. You cant really miss it. :D

Killesberg aussichtsturm

back to black

Darude und Jusi

Doing my thing

One step away

We spent quite a much time in the tower, it has nice views around the city and the location is quite easy to get into. The killesberg park is also cool place, it was getting colder as the sun went down from the sky so we did not spend so much time in the actual park but below are some pictures from there. :)

Oh Hi, did not see you there :> 

Donkeys<3

They came to see if we have any food

So that was my week number two in a nutshell. Yesterday we went to my classmate Kris's place and had a nice evening there, did not really took any pictures in there but some of the people were playing this airplane boardgame that I used to play when I was like 10 years old or something so I had do take picture of that!!

We left there quite "early" but already so late that we had to order a taxi. Quite interesting for me because I drive taxi in Finland too, so it was funny to see german taxi driver and first I thought that the taxis are not so expensive than in finland, but as I was calculating today the trip from Kris's place to ours and the price that we payed... Its almost the same than in Finland so not a cheap one.

German taxi is also slightly different from the instrument panels than in Finland :)

Thanks again and we see you again next week :)

Life is full of choices and routes, you are the one who decides where to go. Only you can make your trip worthwhile, don't wait for miracles or you will get lost on your journey to awesome experiences!

Hello to you, to you, who ever is reading this.

You may have read my journey in Budapest too, or not. It does not matter because every journey is a new one! But I know that I will be doing some comparison between Budapest and Stuttgart so bear with me.

So hard to think that one year has again passed by! 

Time to step in for a new ride..

Life from the suitcase,

Its strange because when you travel, you never come to think about it that if your luggage would dissappear it would be like losing your identity. I never thought it would happen to me, even if the odds would be bigger than ever, I could not believe it.

So when we came to Stuttgart from Copenhagen with SAS and waited for our luggage at the airport for a while, it came more and more obvious that our stuff is not coming. Where the hell is it then?

One of our group got called to lost&found desk at Stuttgart airport and when the luggage carousel stopped, we all went there. It took us one hour to get all the paperwork done and inform the airline that our baggage is missing. 

It was quite awkward situation because there was some people from our partner school who had come to pick us up and they had to wait for a long time before we could leave. 

Despite the fact that all the souveniers from Finland what were ment for those people, were inside my luggage.

So we came to Germany with empty hands, jackets open and looking like punch of homeless people after 3 flights from through Scandinavia to Europe. Great start for the journey, but hey, its not all just dancing in the stars!

People were really helpful and we bought some survival stuff for our first evening in Stuttgart. (well, night)

For the first two nights I could not sleep so well, maybe it was my consciousness worrying about the luggage but on Monday we got great phone call from the airport that our baggage has arrived Stuttgart and is delievered on the same day!

"Great!" We thought. Our bags were ment to be at our hostel at 14:00 local time. We went there little before 14 o'clock and waited until 17:30. Luggage never came and nobody never called to inform us about it. Taru also tried to contact SAS multiple times without getting through their fully booked lines.

On Tuesday we decided to go buy some clothes and bathing equipment etc because we were stinky and we would not like to give people the feeling that finnish people just are like this in everyday basis ...

When we got back from the school and back to our hostel with our newly bought stuff, the receptionist looked us differently than ever before and asked that are we looking for our luggage?

Those had just arrived before we came from the school (good thing that we gave the papers to reception on monday so they could take the luggage for us). Fortunately, SAS agreed to pay everything I had to buy because of the luggages arrived late.

Was great to get warm shower and fresh clothes on.

School has been hard, its hard to understand from time to time what we are speaking of and what is the subject. But for now, I have managed to survive the days in school. :)

Oh yeah, I did not mention yet that we have to be in school for couple weeks first and after that we go working. Dunno what it helps but atleast we get to see the german side of studying.

On Saturday we were doing a little sightseeing and exploring, dont really have any photos from that day thou because the places we went to, werent so special when conserning the views. Ok, I got one pic.

Also we decided to see the Stuttgart nightlife on weekend, on Friday we went to this really weird pub that was just too shady to stay on our "to go" list.

We bought the most cheapest 6-pack of beer ever, under 3€ a pack :D
In the (Saturday) evening we went to this club called "Village". It was pretty full and people were all 'blacked out', but we had fun, raving like hell but leaving home early :)

Some random pics below, taken during the week.. :)

Jorma Uotila -look

Hostel 'bar' officially tested

Nice views from the hostel

Here on Sundays almost all the shops are closed and my first plan was to go to Primark at Milaneo shoppin mall, but because of the stores being closed, I walked from my hostel to Olgaeck to get some food, drove the Ubahn to the centrum and climbed all the way up to the Hauptbahnhofturm for the views and pictures. :)

Fernsehrturm of Stuttgart

Shopping street

MB-City

I have been trying to get to know to the city and see some sights at this first week. Its so sad that the tv-tower is closed and cant get in it anymore, I can only imagine the views from it.

So instead of it, I went to the Hauptbahnhof tower today to see the city from above, it was really nice and I spent there like 20 minutes, It was cold as hell but worth it, to see the sun go down behind Stuttgart hill. I also circled around the centrum and went to see all different kind of places.

Shopping street from above

Thanks for reading, if you ever made it this far.

Comment me! :)