Hildrizhausen, here we come. This small town is located near Stuttgart - it is a rural village. Helmut's cousin Achim Hasselhoff and family live in this place. As per usual it took us a while to locate the place but we were there before the agreed ed time - Achim was just a little late getting home from school for lunch time. On the day we arrived he only teaches half a day.

After lunch Achim purposed a trip to a nearby castle called Hohenzollern. Helmut asked Achim to drive but we went with our car. Achim is a speedy driver and I was not happy riding with him - but what can one do? In one of the pictures you see Achim and me standing in front of on of the buildings of the castle. The guide in this place talked a lot about the various paintings on the walls.

Next, Achim drove us to Tuebingen a university town. This is the university where he and his wife studied 20 or more years ago. The town also has the usual Altstadt - you can see me in front of some of the buildings.

Achim wanted us to see a Roman ruin/museum but when we arrived we found it closed on Mondays.

Back at Hasselhoff's we met Suzanne, A.'s wife, Eva their 17 year old daughter, Matthias their 12 year old son. Their oldest son lives in Winnipeg temporarily so we already know Johannes.

We had a late supper and then visited for a while before bed time. Our bedroom was on the third floor - the staircase is a spiral with open risers and difficult for me to navigate. there was a bathroom on the third floor - i was really glad about that.

Tues. the family were all occupied most of the day so Helmut and I decided to go to Stuttgart by train and visit the Mercedes-Benz Museum. We were supposed to drive to the train station in the next town to Hildrizhausen and get on the train and in Sttutgart change to another type of transport to MB. It took us most of the morning to find the train station - well we finally got to the museum. It took us 4 or 5 hours to get all through the place. See Helmut standing in front of this ultramodern building.

Wed. was a regular day off for Suzanne (she is a teacher also) . She went with us on the train to Ludwigsburg Castle and going with someone who knows how to use the train is much less frustrating than going alone.

Wed. evening Suzanne's mother came to their place for over night as Thurs. was a holiday. The picture of three gals is left to right, me, Suzanne's Mother and Suzanne.