Since there has been little here updating what I've actually been doing aside from eating. I figured I would do a rundown of my vacation with Andy. This will be in parts, since he was here for a while, but it won't be a day by day - except for the long days like day 1.
His trip here started out with an overnight stay in Zürich. Unfortunately, not in a hotel. I had planned on hanging out at a bar or at the train station overnight while waiting for his plane to arrive first thing in the morning. I went to a lovely Scottish pub called the Bonnie Prince Pub to have a couple of drinks. I checked ahead of time to see what their opening hours were, and I knew that they were open until 1am, and that there were a couple of other places that were open later - but they turned out to be clubs - like dance clubs - and in my jeans and with my backpack I was not quite dressed or up for a dance club. Anyway, there was a guy in the bar that was talking about how he was headed to the airport for a flight, and I assumed that he was catching the last train there. Unfortunately, I think we all know what happens when you ass-u-me. (You make an ass out of u and me - if you haven't heard that one, you've been under a rock for the last 20 years.)
So when I got to the train station, I realized that I had missed the last train to the airport and would have to wait until 5am. That was only 4 1/2 hours. Really not bad if you think about it - especially if you have a book and can read the whole time. The problem was, that apparently the Zürich train station closes. Who would have thought? I mean I was in Salzburg with friends 12 years ago, and we hung out at the train station all night without it closing. But that was Salzburg, and Zürich is far less homeless friendly. So I got kicked out of the train station by some lovely police officers and proceeded to wander the streets of Zürich for the next 4 hours while I waited for the train station to re-open.
Let me just say that 4 hours is a long time to wander around a city. It's even longer if you're trying to avoid the police officers who clearly do not like people who look like homeless people wandering around their city. It's even worse when it's freezing and starting to snow. Actually, it may not have been snow. It may have just been that it was so cold that the moisture in the air was freezing. Who knows. Eventually I found a McDonalds that was open until 2am - which was nice, warm, and selling coffee. That meant that I only have 3 more hours to wander. I made it to the train station just before the first train at 5 something and headed to the warmth of the international terminal where I napped for a bit and picked up Andy.
We headed back on the train - first to the main train station in Zürich and then to Tübingen. Once arriving in Tübingen, we headed to my dorm so that I could take a shower and was the train station/airport off of me. That afternoon we tried one of the two Chinese restaurants in town and went to Collegium, the bar right around the corner, for a beer or two. Then we tried to fit two people into my bed.
The beds in Europe are obviously in the metric system, and while the bed is about the size of a twin, it's slightly longer, and slightly narrower than a twin. It's been a long time since Andy and I have had to share a twin bed and it was not the most comfortable experience, but eventually we found a comfortable position and got almost a full night of sleep.
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