Dashing Heights

Battling Uncertainty – Singapore

Singapore announced Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) with Germany in September 2021. Bel and I were excited that finally we might be able to travel again! Perhaps even take this as an opportunity to go for our honeymoon. At the same time, we were anxious on how will tourism related activities be affected by the ongoing pandemic. Will tourism spots be open? Will there be restrictions that makes tourism not as worthwhile? Will it be safe enough for us to be tourists?

Come October, a month after the VTL with Germany first started we decided to commit to the trip. We had roughly 1.5 months to plan for it. The days leading up to our trip was a hectic mess. Bel and I both scrambled to ensure that our workplace responsibilities are taken care of in the 22 days that we planned to be on vacation. Complexities were underestimated while possibilities overestimated. In the last week we were either just working, planning for the trip, or sleeping. Thankfully we managed to get the pieces together such that we can board our plane in peace.

We planned an open jaw a road trip, where we start in Stuttgart and drive our way through lower Bavaria through Black Forest, Füssen, and Garmisch then ending up in Munich. I like it better to end at a different point than where I start. This way I get to see more places with less back-paddling.

First Taste of Europe – Stuttgart – Day 0

Upon arrival, we were welcomed with then unfamiliar sight of a crowded airport and gushes of late autumn air.

It was not going too well. We had a tight timeline to get to our accommodation to drop off our bags then off to Europcar to collect our rental car. Our arrival was slightly delayed, then we had to figure out how to buy a train ticket. Given the delays, we had to go straight to Europcar together with all our bags. We made it to the location google map said Europcar was. But it was not after scampering around for nearly 30 minutes that we found it. I even ran around the area worrying that if we are too late maybe they’d forfeit our booking. Thankfully we still could get our car!

Our first stop in Stuttgart was the SchweineMuseum, literally translated as pig museum. Our fascination with pig-theme comes from Bel’s penchant for cute looking things and my Chinese Zodiac: Pig. She loves to find cute pig figures and boy we found many. My favorite exhibit there was a diorama of jurassic era but all the dinosaur heads are replaced with pig heads. This museum is in the Guinness World Record for the most number of pig-related collection in the world, and after visiting I think it’s true.

Driving in Stuttgart was not an enjoyable experience. Firstly, I was still quite new to driving. Many stressors such as keeping in lane, controlling speed, and navigating are still very much overwhelming to me. Moreover, I trained in Singapore and Indonesia where it is a left hand drive, while it is right hand drive in Europe. It did not help that Stuttgart city roads felt very small and chaotic. There seemed to be roadworks wherever we went. It was supposed to be a short 5 minutes drive from the Schweine museum to Mercedes museum, but after series of wrong turns and roadworks redirections landing us in several traffic jams it became 45 minutes drive. After which I could not find parking, which annoyed me too much that we decided to call it a day and drove to our hotel instead.

The street of the hotel was fully parked, so we had to circle around the narrow sometimes-one-way sometimes-two-way streets to find a parking lot, all the while trying to keep in mind the further we park the further we’ll have to walk and lug our bags. It was like playing a losing game of musical chair. We eventually found one reasonably near our hotel and parked the car. Then I realised I do not know how parking works in Germany. I have only looked up the traffic rules and road signs. Bel and I started looking around the other parked cars to get a clue on what people do when they park their car. Some of them have a round colored sticker with number on it, some have nothing visible. We saw a machine with a P sign above it and tried to decipher how it was but left clueless. We went ahead to check into our hotel.

We enquired about parking to our hotel receptionist. He told us that generally when parking on the street, one would have to find a parking machine, which must be the machine with a P sign above it, to pre-pay for the duration, and leave the ticket on the dashboard as proof. With this newfound knowledge, we went to move our car to an empty lot nearer to our hotel. However we could not see any parking machine in sight. Just when we were looking around, another car parked adjacent to ours. We wanted to be sure, so we asked the driver when she exited her car how people pay for parking in Stuttgart, and in particular how She would be paying. She said that if there is no machine around, then it should be free parking. Since the local does it that way, we decided to follow suit.

It was then time for dinner. After the full day of driving stresses, we decided to find dinner in Marienplatz with our legs.

Bel and I already came up with an economical strategy to eating out in Germany. Knowing how big their portions go, we would just order 1 dish that we both would like to try. Only if the dish came in portion that does not fill us, then we will order another one. This is so that we don’t over-order considering our tiny appetite in relative to usual German portion.

We found a Bavarian restaurant: Ochs’n Willi, and ordered their Schweinehaxe. When it came, we were flabbergasted. Not only it was mouthwateringly golden brown and aromatically welcoming, it was ginormous. We only managed to eat a third of it that dinner. We packed the other two third, which eventually fed us for breakfast and lunch the next day.

On the way back, I had to pick up my retainers that I left in the car. I was aghast to find a white slip of paper on our car’s windscreen. I had been fined for unpaid parking! I glanced to the car whose lady gave the earlier advice; she was already gone. I was so betrayed. This reminds me not to just take a strangers’ word for it. I did feel a little better when I saw white glimpses on the rest of the car on the street.

Back at the hotel, we plead to our receptionist to help us with the parking ticket. It was fully in German so we did not know what to do to resolve it. Ever so helpful, he mentioned that we just need to make a bank transfer to the stated account.

To lessen the magnitude of our future stresses, we decided to just get our hotel’s reserved parking lot, which was at an exorbitant 20 Euro. At least we would not have to worry about getting more fines.

With that, we call it a night for our first day in Germany.