Finally!
I had my last day of work this past Thursday. After the visit to the Cannstatter Volksfest (thanks Markus for organizing!) on Wednesday night it was supposed to be a quiet day. This mostly worked out fine, except just before lunch I got a phone call from my customer that the latest software release wasn’t working. Great news! After about 45 minutes on the phone we figured out what had happened, and so my last software delivery went through just fine. What a relief!

Once my workplace and inbox were cleaned up and all my e-mails sorted out, I said goodbye to many of my colleagues before heading home for final cleanup of our appartment. It was going to be a long night… there are so many little things you need to clean up or move out of the way.
Friday morning finally came and I had a rather tight schedule:

• Cancel the ticket for public transportation
• Close the bank account at the Postbank
• Get cash in Euros and US dollars for the trip
• Bring the remaining pieces of furniture to the waste dump
• Load my dad’s car with the bicycles and the remaining boxes
• Clean the floor of the apartment

I had all that finished just 15 minutes before I had to return our apartment. Gladly there were no big issues with the apartment so all went well and at long last, we were on our way for the first stage of my trip from Stuttgart to my parents house in Switzerland.
The last impression I got from Germany was typical for any Friday afternoon in Germany: traffic jam. Finally we made it to my parents house at 6:30pm where we enjoyed a warm fall evening on the patio eating grilled meat and discussing how all went and will be going the next few days.
This is my last weekend in a well known environment before leaving on Monday morning on the train from Zurich to Venice.