I went to Italy on this trip, but I also took a quick trip to Ingolstadt, Germany to meet a person who has been a penpal for about 15 months.

It was a frustrating weekend in a way. It took us a lot longer to get to München Hauptbanhhof than we'd planned and we didn't have a lot of time. What's worse was I had woken up the previous day in Siena with the start of a cold/mild flu. Further, I had to get back to Turino that day with the strike. I was exhausted by the time I pulled into Turino's Porta Susa station that night after a twelve hour ride. However, the warm German hospitality shown myself and Dixie by my friend and his entire family the next day and for the entire weekend was truly heartwarming . They made us feel welcome immediately, which was great given the fact that we were really just complete strangers to them.

But, I am getting ahead of myself. I met my friend through that wonderful commmunication conveyance the internet, specifically a corner of the internet most people don't know about called "usenet". Usenet is the true spirit of the internet. If the Web is a city slicker from back East usenet is the rough-and-tumble Old West. The Web has devolved into money making, usenet is anarchy. But besides that, usenet is a series of "bulletin boards" wherein people post questions an answers or have conversations with other people via an email-like user interface. Any topic you can think of has an existing usenet group for it, including recreational European travel. The usenet group for that topic is rec.travel.europe, a place wherein I hang regularly.

Someone had posted a question about driving in Germany and I answered in an observational humor vein, meant to convey information and maybe be funny, too.

At least one guy thought so, a German fellow. He responded to my response with some more information, made a slight correction to something I'd said and had the same sense of humor about it I hope I have. Of course, we then traded a few emails and became friends quickly.

We have many things in common, my friend and I. We are both networking and computer guys. He does more programming than I do, I do more systems engineering and integration than he does. He has a great house in a pretty German city that's been around since at least the middle ages; I have a flat in Campbell, CA (the original farmer built his house here in the late 1800's). He works for himself; I suck off the corporate tit. He speaks German and English, which he claims he's learned by watching American movies. I can negotiate a room price with a gasthausfrau. In German. Or at least something that passes as German. In my mind anyway.

We have had a very enjoyable year plus of correspondence, so the actual meeting was very exciting for me.

We ended up doing many great things; sightseeing, walking around the füssgängerzone (pedestrian zone in the downtown area). We were led around by his two sons (little ones, 3 and 5 years I think) in the city museum, with a nonstop (and one-way) "conversation" in German. We drove out in to the country side to see the Danube (Donau in German) River and explored some beautiful areas in the Danube River valley. We had a great bar-b-que at their place, with German beer and sausages and wonderful German food. We ate breakfasts together and had some long revealing conversations.

We learned a lot about them and their life and they learned a lot about us and ours.

And we watched a few of his "Thunderbirds"¹ videos, a show I haven't watched since I was 11 years old.

It was great meeting him, his cool wife and their two hilarious kids. I hope I can do as well by them someday as they did by me.

1 - "Thunderbirds" was a great show out of England in the mid-60's and shown in LA on an independent station (probably KTTV channel 11 or the former KHJ now KCAL channel 9) that featured marionnettes as the actors. The show's premise was a family-owned search and rescue team, run by the patriarch and featuring some great machines that fly, swim, orbit, drill, bulldoze; all kinds of things. I think this show and the Apollo program are what made me want to be an engineer. I used to build the various Thunderbird planes and ships out of Legos and assault my Dad with them when he came home from work.

Back to the Italy page.