The Healing Properties of Kaffee und Kuchen
Navigating sickness while travelling to Stuttgart.
[It was 4am when Mike rolled over in bed, waking slightly as he must have gotten the sense that something was wrong. Then I said the words that he didn't want to hear only one week into the trip, "I think I need to see a doctor."
Continued from:
By the morning I had convinced myself that everything was totally fine... it wasn't... so Mike had to put his foot down and insisted I go see a doctor. Since I was sick, I slept in for as long as possible, then by the time I found the closest doctor to our AirBnb, we were racing against the clock to check out and head to Frankfurt City to catch our prebooked train.
While Mike stayed back at the accommodation and hurriedly packed with Miss Adventure, I made my way to the doctor alone. I was so nervous about visiting a doctor in a foreign country (this was a first for me) and I didn't even know if they would take a walk-in patient from a different country. It was a maze of back alleyways to get to the doctors office with a fairly non-descript button to call up to reception, I pressed it, with my fingers crossed and throat burning.
Visiting the doctors office turned out to be easy; not only did I have to wait a short ten minutes before the doctor could see me, everyone who worked there was kind, accommodating and spoke English with ease. The doctor's diagnosis was that I had a viral throat infection and I was prescribed anti-inflammatories and painkillers. The visit was surprisingly cheaper than seeing a doctor back home in Australia (around 20 Euros) and the prescribed medicines were no more than 10 Euros. Having said that, we would always recommend getting travel insurance in case of a medical emergency - you wouldn't want to be an unprepared traveller.
Once I got back to the accommodation, Miss Adventure and Mike were all packed and ready to go. We had no time to lose and thankfully, due to the relief of seeing a doctor, I was feeling well enough to set off to our next destination - Stuttgart.
We had purchased train tickets the night before because we couldn't get the website to work all week and we kept putting off going to the Hauptbahnhof to purchase them in person. We originally wanted to get them at the start of the week, but by the time Mike made a special trip into the city to buy them, they'd doubled in price (due to price surging). The cost of the train tickets alone was a motivator for us to move on to our next destination, regardless of the building sickness.
The rush to get out of the house and make it aboard the train filled me with such adrenaline that it held back the brunt of the illness. It wasn't until we were on the train and pulling out of Frankfurt that the fever hit and I promptly passed out.
When we got to Stuttgart, I really took a turn and the sickness absolutely floored me. We were able to catch a bus from Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof, which took us very close to our accommodation, the final test was a walk up a steep hill with all of our luggage.
Our original plan was to stay in Stuttgart for five nights, before catching a train onto Switzerland, where we would tour around the country for a week. Once the sickness hit, the chances of this were not looking good.
As a kid, I picked up tonsillitis constantly until they were removed. This sickness felt like that, but it was worse than tonsillitis, in fact, I believe it was worse than childbirth - at least I had a small break between contractions, this was a constant intense pain in my throat, with no reprieve. It was like razor blades every time I swallowed and the doctor had prescribed me tablets.
To make matters worse, Miss Adventure also picked up some kind of sickness again, which eventuated into more conjunctivitis, but luckily we had the eye drops that she had been prescribed before we left Australia.
To make matters about ten times worse, a sick kid means a lot of extra clinginess.
And to make matters about a thousand times worse, Miss Adventure wouldn't let Mike settle her overnight, so that job fell on my shoulders and I was relying heavily on overnight feeds to knock her out, so I could get some rest.
It was brutal.
Despite the sickness, lady luck had us on her side. We had two fantastic things happen:
The AirBnb that we were booked in had everything - comfy bed, big bath, all streaming services on a giant television and, a fully equipped kitchen with herbs/spices galore, stock cubes, pots - this allowed me to make myself soup from scratch. It was like being at home again, the perfect place to recover from illness.
A Deutschbahn train strike halted all trains running from Germany, forcing us to alter the plans that we had made for our week in Switzerland. However, with the sickness intensifying, it didn't look like we were going to follow our preplanned itinerary anyway. The lucky part was that we were able to use the German train strikes as the reason for the cancellation. This meant we were able to get a full refund on everything we had booked over the following week in Switzerland.
It was clear at this point that we needed to forget about going to Switzerland and instead, extend our time in Stuttgart to allow time for me to recover.
Our Stuttgart AirBnb host had people booked straight after us, so we were unable to lengthen our stay at his beautiful apartment. Mike got to work with finding different accommodation as soon as possible and locked another apartment in for an extra four nights.
By day three, I was starting to feel a bit better, so we all went for a walk to a little Middle Eastern restaurant that Mike and Miss Adventure had scouted and we got our fill in, it was rejuvenating. This was followed by waffles with a very reasonable amount of cream.
Mike locked in a new apartment to extend our stay in Stuttgart but we received a message from the host advising that the place we booked wasn't accessible. However, he had another apartment that could be made available to us. It came with a warning, the only drawback was that it was on the top floor...of a 5 storey building with no lift. With the amount of luggage we had, the thought of carrying it all up the stairs gave me chills, but at that point, we didn't have a choice and we only had to do it once.
With the sickness still lingering, we packed our bags and realised that the positioning of the new accommodation meant that we could walk directly to it or walk to a tram stop, ride the tram a few stops and then walk to the place. There was no difference in walk time between these two options, so we took the direct route. When we got there, Mike and I both had a mild panic-attack - the apartment was in fact on the sixth floor of the building, with each level having three blocks of stairs per floor. It was a tough climb, especially for someone still recovering.
We vowed to leave the apartment only once per day - with Miss Adventure in tow, it would mean having to carry her, as well as the pram and nappy bag, up and down each time.
By booking an extension to the stay it allowed us to visit the two places that had made us stop in Stuttgart in the first place; the Porsche Museum and the Mercedes-Benz Museum.
Both museums were very high quality experiences with the Porsche Museum showcasing a large variety of their impressive supercars, whilst the Mercedes-Benz Museum delved deep into the history of the company with a dazzling amount of information related to car manufacture.
Although the two museums were worth the trip, hands down, the best car museum could be found on the streets of Europe, where an impressive collection of vintage and unique cars caught my eye wherever we found ourselves.
A Car Lover's Dream
The best car museum can be found on the streets of Europe, where an impressive collection of vintage and unique cars caught our eyes. Here is a small collection.
With each day that passed, I felt the sickness lifting. We filled the remainder of our time in Stuttgart by taking leisurely strolls through the streets, admiring the stunning architecture of the buildings and the disproportionate amount of fancy cars throughout the city. I am crediting a speedy recovery to one of the best traditions in Germany - Kaffee und Kuchen.
At 3pm every day, it is not uncommon for German people to stop and enjoy a coffee and cake with friends or family. This is exactly what we did and it healed me. With a final meal in Germany, comprising of weinerschnitzel and spargel, we departed Stuttgart, relieved to be healthy enough to continue the trip.
[The adventure continues soon]
See you on the road!