Thelma & Louise

To update, Hans and I had a date on Friday night. We took the kids to the CDC in the pouring rain and drove downtown into Stuttgart to find the infamous empanada restaurant. We never did find it, it apparently had gone out of business because we definitely were in the right place...

So, we were back to second choice, Chinese food and "Gran Torino". We drove all the way back to Vaihingen and went to the Chinese restaurant, which was damn good. The Chinese in Stuttgart don't make sweet and sour chicken the way the Chinese in Minneapolis do, but it was close enough to do the trick.

OK, so back up a moment, we had parked underground in a parking ramp. In Germany, you take your ticket with you and when it's time to leave, you find a kiosk, insert your ticket and pay and then feed it in at the gate when you leave. We've done it many times, we're familiar with the drill. Except for some reason, the machine took our ticket and wouldn't give it back. Hans didn't realize that he hadn't gotten the ticket back until we were almost back to the car...so we spent several moments searching all of our pockets and my purse.

Long story short, he figured out that the machine had taken our ticket and not returned it. We had no way of getting out of the parking garage. We pushed the call button on the kiosk and by the exit gate and the phone just rang and rang (and rang and rang). Hans went into the one store in the mall that was still open to try to get some help from security, but the guy (although very friendly, nice and exceptionally good at speaking English) was unable to help us locate anyone.

There was no way around it...we were going to have to get up behind someone exiting and gun it through behind them while the arm was up. Or be forced to spend the night in the parking garage. It's sort of embarassing to admit how many times we almost went through behind someone and chickened out! A couple of times, the legit person paused too long while the gate went up and we were afraid we wouldn't make it through. We had horrible visions of the arm crunching down on the roof of the car...oh, those horrible visions.

So, we backed out of the lane a few times, circled around and crouched near the lane, waiting for someone to come along. Finally it was do or die time as it was getting late and less and less people were exiting the parking garage. We got in behind someone who popped through as the gate was rising, Hans gunned us through...we both exhaled, we made it!

It was actually pretty dang hilarious...and after we were out, I held out my hand to twine it with Hans' in a classic Thelma & Louise About to Go Over the Cliff hold...because we both felt pretty dangerous. Ha! We beat the evil parking garage gate system! I know I'll probably think of that occasion now every time I'm in a parking garage.

We ended up getting home so late that we decided to watch "Gran Torino" on Saturday night. It was good, very good. Clint Eastwood, I gotta say, is pretty damn cool for an old man. I haven't seen much of his stuff, except that I can recall watching the one with the oraguntan, "Left turn, Clyde"...I can't remember the name. Maybe I need to go back and watch "Dirty Harry" or something. Anyway, it was a fine movie, makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you wonder how people end up the way they do.

And that is all that's fit to write at this moment!