DAY 25 - 5.7.2006

We forced ourselves up at 8.30am, because we were late from our sight schedule. Yesterday we didn´t have time for the Porsche museum so we wanted to check it out today. It was nothing like MB museum, it was a lot smaller and it took us about 45 minutes to see everything. After that we took S-bahn back to the city centre and went to the Staatsmuseum, the city museum. It was wednesday so students got in free. If we would have wanted to see Monet´s paintings we would have had to pay. But the free tour was good also as there were paintings of Picasso and Dali. I´m not a big fan of art, but Picasso´s paintings just are fun to watch. There was also modern art and that was just terrible! I hate modern art, it doesn´t require artistic skills, just some insanity.

After our art tour we met Vanessas at the train station and then we went to this mineral bath. Stuttgart is famous of it´s mineral waters and so there are few mineral bath spas. We chose mineral bath Leuze because in there was a finnish sauna, and we missed sauna so badly:) It was like a spa, with normal swimming pools and mineral water swimming pools. The mineral water pools were nice experience as it formed bubbles on the skin. We didn´t like the taste of the mineral water though.

After some swimming we wanted to go to Saunas. As a Finnish sauna people we were a bit surprised about German sauna culture. We didn´t expect to see women at the same facilities, and people were lying under the sun naked. It felt like a nudist colony. What´s wrong with German people?=D Anyways, as they say: In Rome do as the Romans´ do, so we blended in. We tried different saunas, and there were some nice modifications. Smell seemed to be more important factor than the temperature. The "Finnish" sauna was also nice. We got some complaints as we didn´t know that you had to sit on a towel and keep your feet on the same towel. After the whole experience I still prefer our own sauna culture:)

After 3 hours of soaking in the water we left the place cleaner than ever, or at least so it felt as it had been some time since the last shower:) Before the spa we had also taken our laundry to laundromat so as we came back our clean clothes were waiting for us. First time in three weeks. Yeah, I know, we´re dirty and smelly men:)

We did some shopping, or rather watched Jari do the shopping. Ate at a chinese all-you-can-eat restaurant and when the clock turned 9 in the evening, we went to watch the Portugal vs. France match in the Fan Fest area. After the first half they closed the area as police informed that there was big storm coming. We moved to an internet cafe to watch the rest of the game. After the game it was raining... a lot! Luckily I had a gore tex jacket in my backpack, but Arttu and Jari had to run to our car wearing swimming pants and shorts, what a sight=)

It was a beautiful storm. There were lots of lightnings and they were close too. Really made our hearts beat faster at times. When we got to our car we hanged our wet clothes and put our heads on our pillows and listened to the raindrops hitting on the roof of our car.