Day 18

I didnt get to sleep until pretty late last night so i slept in until something crazy like 12 or something today.. seemed like a bit of a waste of time.. but oh well it was also nice none-the-less :). At 2 o'clock i was due in Esslingen to get shown around the technical institue a bit.. but first i wrote yesterdays blog, and then had lunch. Lunch was fantastic as always! A beautiful pork schnityel (pretty popular over here) but done like a cordon bleu, so it was crumbed and had ham and cheese in the middle. This was accompanied by a nice salad and some hash brown triangles.. Yuummy!

After a little while we headed into Esslingen to the Automobile Engineering school.. MAN was it impressive, I got to see a few (mainly electronics, and testing - stuff like hydrolics n all) labs and peek my head in the door of a bunch of other rooms. I guess Stuttgart is pretty famous for its car-making, so you would expect pretty good automobile engineering schools.. but it was still very impressive!! Around 2.45ish we were done and headed back home where I loaded a couple of photos, did some sudoku, a little reading, helped Mrs Kirste pick some cherries, then tried to send off some videos to Roydon so he could put them online.. but most of them failed which is dumb and confusing..

Anyway, after that Mrs Kirste made a cherry cake, and once it was out of the oven we went to Ariane's old (and Arnulf's current) Gymnasium (High School - ish - place) where he was having tennis training. We watched for a little while then went home via Denkendorf.. another village like Esslingen (but smaller). In Denkendorf is an old monestary, like in Blaubeuren (but smaller, and not the awesome setting like Blaubeuren.. but still great). These places are always pretty cool. You can just imagine the people living there all self-sufficient and all. The church was very old, and underneath was a creepy as crypt.. We drove around Denkendorf a bit.. which is a very beutiful place, with gorgeous houses.

Then on the way home we stopped off at the Graveyard so Mrs Kirste could water the plants on the graves of Mr Kirste's parents, and aunties.. The graveyard was quite different to NZ ones.. the grave plots were often quite large.. and they all pretty much had a little garden of their own growing ontop of them (bordered by stone tablets to walk along. The writing on alot of the gravestones was often also this rather large.. kinda almost comic-book style writing.. I found that kinda weird, but kinda nice at the same time. Its very hard to describe. I took a couple of pictures.. but I dunno if you My description along with them really gives you a feel for it or not.. But yeah.

Once home around 8ish I had some leftover Käsespätzle for dinner with some chopped ham ontop (mmmm), and then i watched some poker on tv.. I know its quite popular, but id never seen it before. It was ok.. kinda cool how they put the liklihood or victory up after each round of betting and stuff.. but it was a bit tiresome really.. Anyhow, around 10.30 that finished and the TV went staight to some dodgy, pornographic ad with topless ladies rolling round in soccer nets and stuff, so i made a hasty exit to my room and off to sleep.