A few days in Ulm

After a couple of months without business trips, it was time for me to spend some time with my dear colleagues in Ulm. This time of the year is quite a good time to go, actually, due to the great German tradition of Christmas markets.

So as a nice start for my trip, my team met up at the Christmas market on Monday evening (the Ulm chrsitmas market is rather nicely located on the square in front of Ulm Munster – the imposing cathedral). Thomas, my boss, was kind enough to buy drinks for everybody ;-). It was also a good opportunity to meet up with the new members of my team – Olli and Jose. My old mate David from Southwood was also there – he’s in Ulm on a three-month contract. It was all good fun – we tried quite a few versions of Glühwein, accompanied by some giant hot dogs for dinner. Afterwards, we ended up in Barfuser (where else,) for a few hefeweisses…

Tuesday night was a bit less intense – I went to John Benton’s with Jose and David to have those legendary John Benton ribs – even I struggle with those! Afterwards, me and Jose went for “one beer” (as the somewhat inaccurate expression goes)… By Wednesday evening, I was seriously in need of a quiet night, so I just had dinner with David in the Ratkeller (which is located in the historic town hall – unfortunately the food was a bit disappointing).

On Thursday night, I decided to head to Barfuser again – it is really getting to be a bit of a regular hang-out. I started out with a couple pints of hefeweisses with Jose (a hardy team-mate of mine). Later we were joined by my good friend Sami, who was on good beer-drinking form after some initial threats about drinking coke or water, or something absurd among those lines. Good to catch up with him as well.

That brought an end to my hectic week in Ulm. On Friday, ‘twas time to catch the train to Stuttgart, from where I continued my trans-European adventure to England…