No, I do not Have the Swine Flu.

I finally made it to Stuttgart, the city where I'll work. It's been almost two weeks in the land of bier, punctuality, and bureaucracy. Hence, I'll focus on the better parts. (p.s. This is Germany. The red dot/arrow is Stuttgart)

I flew out on May 20th with the pleasant Air India. Well, first it was a 5:30 a.m. ride to the airport to arrive in Chicago as early as possible, because Air India kept changing the flight to Frankfurt. So what once was a 3 hour layover with time to get lunch and change airlines became a 20 minute impossibility.

While en route, I ran into Alex Moss in the airport and this guy, Kevin Daly, in Chicago. Listen up graduates, it must be true when the Carlson School tells us our network of alums is worldwide. (It might be a cheap plug, I realize.)




The flight was amusing. Here's my attempted photoshop recreation of the experience:
My window seat (with no window, just wall) placed me next to a priest and a hygenically challenged swear-to-goodness IT Indian male. (I figure I'd avoid using someone's name in vain because of that priest.)

The swine flu:
I arrived in Frankfurt and spent the night in a hostel in the red light district. As soon as I got to the hostel they, fortunately, let me check in to my room where I woke up this french girl. She takes a moment to become coherent and we converse briefly. In which she asks, "Do you have the swine flu?" Apparently all Americans probably have swine flu, because we had the most cases of it. You know how I feel about the French...add this illogic to my list of things about the French.

(note the room number--same as my home town area code. Woot woot for Southern Minnesota. It's not really that awesome, but it was small things like that and finding soap that was named "Sticky Ricky" that made me laugh--it made me not want to use the soap--but it made me laugh.)

So while in Frankfurt, I found the Houlihan Lokey office. Houlihan Lokey is where a good friend, Surbhi, is working full time (for those of you who might not know her.) And what do I without fail do when I find a cool office that I recognize, I become a tourist. Old castles, museums, sculptures, street artists don't motivate the photo, sweet offices do. It's slightly embarrasing to report, but I definitely have more photos like this.


After spotting all this, I stumbled into a market square where these stands were each selling a variety of foods. I ended up with currywurst and a beer; it made it official that I was in Germany.

Funnier yet were the stands selling Bowle. Bowle is the German form of Whop. Whop/Bowle is fruit soaked overnight in alcohol (vodka for calmer events; everclear for parties) and then mixed with a variety of juices and other alcohol. The fruit is so laden with the vodka, it is nearly the equivalent of a shot. The mix becomes fruit punch (uh, so I've read...). I've only seen Americans try this at parties, Germans are just selling this stuff on the street like it's an option equal to a coca cola. Yep, welcome to Europe, Rick.

So was the trip from Minneapolis to Berlin where I completed a 10-day program. That I can describe in the next post, which will certainly be sooner. A 10-day whirlwind with us busied between 7:30a.m.-9:00p.m. Following is the joy of German bureaucrocy and settling in to Stuttgart.

Until then,
Later Days!