Day 14 - London to Stuttgart

Got up at 4:30am and caught our 5am cab and then jumped on the train from London to Brussels at 6:10am. We pulled into Brussels at 10ish and then caught at 10:30am train from Brussels to Cologne, Germany.
The chunnel train was pretty nice. It was kinda like taking a plane cause we had to be there early (but only 30 minutes) and then had to go through security and customs just like at the airport. Which is fine though because you definately wouldn't want anything to happen while under the English Channel.
From Cologne, we jumped on the 'local' train, instead of the 'express' to Stuttgart by accident. The express didn't leave until an hour after we got to Cologne, so we figured if we got on the train leaving right away, we'd get there sooner. Not the case. The local train stopped at EVERY little station along the way and ended up getting to Stuttgart 15 minutes later than the express. The worst thing about the train we got on was that the only seats we could find were in the 'ashtray'. It was horrible. A whole train car with no open windows, no air flow hardly, and every German smoking at least one cigarette every 15 minutes. I'm positive we were the only people on the train who couldn't speak German too. I couldn't believe that there were parents with children in the same car. It was the grossest 3 hours ever. And on top of that, we had to keep changing seats since we only have a ticket for the train, but not a specific seat unless we pay extra (about 2 Euros), we we'll know better from now on.
After getting to Stuttgart, we called Christian's mobile and he eventually found us at the station. It was pretty awesome seeing him for the fist time in a year and a half. He works for Bosch and was all dressed up and looked alot thinne, saying he'd lost 40lbs since i saw him last. He brought us home in his Volkswagon Golf to his apartment on the outskirts of Stuttgart and we met his girlfriend Anke, who is very pretty and very very nice and welcomed us very hospitably into her house.
We got settled, had a few 'Rothaus Pils' beers adn then we ate. Anke made us a traditional German dish from the region that had some kind of noodles called 'spatzle' with lentils and saiten (sausage). It was awesome and we ate ourselves full which we then followed up with a glass of Ramazotti (an Italian liqueur). We then had a couple more beer and then we went downtown Stuttgart which was way nicer than i expected, especially the main square with the two castles, huge water fountains, and 400 year old church, which was all right next to the shopping district which had tons of bars and clubs mixed in. We went to a Mexican style place that was very classy and we had a blonde German beer while we waited for 11 o'clock happy hour at which point we ordered these HUGE Long Island Iced Teas that were basically pure liquor and sugar with a LITTLE big of Coke for clour for 5 Euro (regular 10 Euro). Rob had the bright idea of pounding them back in one go through the straw (which we of course did) and then ordered two more before coming back to the apartment. They had a mattress and a small, self-inflattable mattress for us to sleep on. I took the mattress cause we're at my buddies place...haha.
Was great to finally get to bed around 2am after being up since 4:30am back in London.