I am rather in love with Stuttgart. Moni’s apartment looks like it came out of an IKEA catalogue, and her friends’ apartments are much the same: clean and bright, simple and uncrowded. The city is full of nice-looking buildings, beer-gardens spilling into the streets with cheery car-workers taking their lunch out amongst the sun and the passersby. You can’t go two blocks without finding an organic food store, and the bakeries have the most wonderful loaves imaginable, full of pepitas and flax and oats and rye, so that the bits on the crust tumble to plate in delicious crumbs — they even have multigrain croissants beaded with seeds.

The city is home to several car companies, but several years ago they did an unbelievable thing: they redeveloped the center of town to be less car friendly. So that even though you see a few more shiny Porsches than usual, there are little pedestrian streets and stairs all over. Stuttgart is also in a valley, surrounded by miles of forest and well-kept trails. The woods have flame-red squirrels and blackbirds in them, and chartreuse chestnut trees that dapple the sunlight and frame the blue sky. You just have to get up the formidable steps, which are even more numerous than Altea’s. The first full day I did a short tromp through the closest parts, and discovered a zip-line to my endless childish delight. And a few days ago I did a four-hour “tour” to the nearby Castle Solitude and back, joining hundreds of Germans at some points, all walking and picnicking and enjoying a day of perfect clarity and humidity. On my second full day, I borrowed Moni’s brother’s bicycle, and together we toured the city from top to bottom (literally), through parks and Epcot neighborhoods.

Moni herself is quite remarkable. I worried I wouldn’t recognize her, but I knew her at once, short-sighted though I am. Her hair is short and dyed red, her skin is freckled and thin like mine, and she dresses and moves and lives in what seems a totally relaxed fashion. She works with a few colleagues to produce short science videos for TV — she does the 3D animations. It’s been nice, the little routine we have going: I wake up to the sun in my eyes and go out for a run… or just climb the stairs, since even that takes half an hour… and I’m back in time to shower and break my fast with Moni. She works while I go exploring (Bauhaus architecture, check; Chinese Garden, check) or stay in her living room cum office to read; or else we go out to do errands, stopping every once in a while to look for good stuff in the inorganics (already some shellac records for a friend).

That’s another thing I like about Moni, she resourceful, and prefers old things — like her crafty manual drill, or the old cash register her dad fixed for her birthday, and her mom’s sewing machine which helped me make a new bag. But it’s not just her, I think, as the recycling bins on every block hint at a general consciousness about being friendly to the environment. Between that and the praise Moni’s friends give to the city, I’m practically ready to move!

Now, there is one more essentially important thing about staying in Germany right now, and staying with Moni in particular, and it is football. Not rugby, not tell-me-when-the-Superbowl-ads-are-back-on-ball, but soccer. Back in Japan, when my dad and I first met Melanie and Monika, we bonded over the World Cup final. Germany versus Brazil. So fittingly enough, it’s currently the European Championship, with a game on every night. And the most exciting match by far has been the one that pitted Germany against Portugal, two teams with exquisite ball control and team coordination. It twisted and turned until the end, when the whole bar leaped out of their seats with cries and hugs and flags — Germany won! Germany’s going to the semi-finals! And tomorrow night, they’re probably going to kick Turkey’s butt, because they’ve got a way better team, and because I’ll be there with Moni in a beer garden cheering them on.

Ole Ole Deustchland!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 11:46 am and is filed under Blog, Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.