STUTTGART

Just when I thought it would never happen, I went to Stuttgart for the day on Saturday!!!!!

Quick background story: Ashley Paulick, a girl I went to high school with and only knew of, contacted me via Facebook last week, explaining how she realized I was currently studying abroad in Germany. She was, as well...but in...STUTTGART, a city in Southern Germany.

Happy as a farm boy that just won a pig-wrestling tournament, I contacted her in return, explaining how I had a secret goal to get to Stuttgart while I was still on this side of the planet, because I needed to make my much-willed visits to the Porsche museum and Merecedes Benz museum. I asked if I could come visit her for the day on Saturday!

Lo and behold and some magic worked one week later, and I was on a 7:39 AM train to go from Kassel to Stuttgart. A 3 hour ride, but it was cool. I took a UWM buddy with me, Dan. I have traveled to easily a half-dozen far away cities in Germany, and all by ICE train...this has given me ample opportunity to see the German countryside, and it is COOL. Just beautiful. Rolling hills, and green green green, forever and ever! I love it, you can't find this peace anywhere else!

We arrived in Stuttgart at 10:33 AM (I am sure I have mentioned or will mention how punctual the Germans are), and Ashley was waiting for us at the train platform. We greeted each other, and promptly made our way out to the Porsche museum by taking the S-bahn (Straßbahn, or street-tram).

I gotta tell you, the current one that is standing, is very small and rather disappointing, especially after seeing kingly Volkswagen the day before!! It is about the size of two petite banquet halls, and attached to one healthy-sized Porsche showroom.

The Porsche showroom will go down in history as the single car dealership that I will ever visit where the carnivorous, comission-salespeople did not even bother to speak to me or approach me, since I had no 'Porsche Potential' written on me.

There were a lot of Formula-One racing cars in the display room, along with several engine blocks put up on display, including this crazy 16-cylinder one. The plaque explaining it said that the engine was so heavy, it could never be legally entered into a race!

There were some cool little Matchbox-sized cars on display, too, in some glass cases lining the walls. Race cars, domestic cars...even an old tractor that I think Grandpa Jerry would really like! None of them were for sale, but Dan got a picture of the tractor for me on his spiffy Nerd Camera, this huge Canon that cost him like $3000 so he could be a wannabe professional photographer. :)


Have faith in Porsche, though, because just outside of the dealership, was this HUGE, I mean HUGE building being built for the new museum...I am not sure when it will be done...probably this fall? But it is made of big red steel frames, and stands two stories above the ground, with a viewing nose that juts out onto Porschestraße (Porsche Street, ha ha.)

I am sure the museum is out to compete with Mercedes Benz. More to follow on that!

After the Porsche museum, Ashley took us to some authentic German Italian restaurant...I don't know how else to explain it...but an authentic Italian restaurant, located in Germany. So, it was a German imitation on Italian food. :)

I had some shrimp penni stuff, Dan had some lasanga, and Ashley had a pizza. (OOOOOH, pizza!! I miss American pizza, with Wisconsin CHEESE!!! I would love to have that as soon as I get back into the States. Wah!!)

Ashley taught us a few things about German culture, and how it differed from her living in southern Germany, and Dan and I living in the north.

I admire her a lot; she will be living in Germany for a whole year, from August 2006 to August 2007. She says she loves it so much, that she wanted to stay a whole other year. However, Madison was giving her some gripes about credits transferring, so she is only staying for one year. Then, she will return to college in WI, obtain her degree, and probably end up living in Europe. (I asked her if she does want to live in Europe permanently, and although she said she didn't know, I could see it in her that she will someday.)



We had some gelato (Italian ice cream, mmmmmm) for dessert, paid the waiter, and split off to take the U-bahn (underground train, or subway), out to Mercedes Platz, or the Merecedes Benz museum.


It was huge. Freaking huge.


(But, not as big as Wolfsburrrrrgggg....wink, wink!)


Mercedes Benz museum in Stuttgart.



You walk in to the place, which is eight stories tall (even though it doesn't appear that way from the outside), and buy your admission ticket in the center of this atrium. I used my Microsoft-Word-created student ID for Kassel UNI to get in at half price. :) :) :)

For 4 Euro, I had an afternoon of hauling ass and getting filled up on funky trivia.



After you buy your admission ticket, you head over to the side wall of the atrium to pick up this little Windows PDA-looking thing clipped to a lanyard made by HP, but embroidered with the Merecedes Benz name and symbol on it. Also included in this ensemble were a pair of headphones that you plugged into the handheld PDA-looking thing. You were to walk around the entire museum and listen to the PDA-looking thing, which sensed where you were in the museum, to playback narrations to you about what you were looking at, at the time.

Once you get your PDA-looking thing (available in English, yay!), you take this stainless steel pea-pod elevator all the way up to the eighth floor. You get out, and work your way down through the museum from there, all the way back down to the first floor. The whole thing is a big spiralling ramp, and you just keep going...and going...and going....and going! It was slick!!

It all went into chronological order, starting at the top of the building with the 'beginning of transportation,' including the horse-and-buggy days. They had a stuffed, full-size horse there. Wow.

There was a progression in carriages, wheels, and the first motors, until you finaly reached a few stand-alone models from the late 1920s. Grandpa Jerry would have had a ball, I SO wish he could have been walking through the whole museum with me. I would have loved to just sit back and watch him watch all the displays, he is hilarious and so full of spunk!!

Instead, I took as many pictures as I could, to hopefully be able to explain them all to him when I return.


You kept spiralling down and down, and the whole way through there were flat screen LCD monitors built into the walls, one right after another, with images being displayed, plus text, explaining what was happening in the world parallel to what was happening inside of Mercedes Benz' company at that given time. Things like "Beatles Storm Europe" or "JKF visits Berlin" or "Hindenberg Explodes" were all up. It was very educational, and I am just sour that I didn't have 6 hours to slowly walk through and read them all.

There were floors devoted to service vehicles, where I finally got a chance to take a picture of the funky ambulances over here in Europe for Dad, and the "Polizei" vehicles that are used as cop cars. There was a 1957 fire truck there too, that I am sure Greg would have loved and poked around on. I just stood there, staring at it, hearing his voice in my head, imagining all the construction-worker phrases he'd have to say about it. What a stinker. :)


There were floors devoted to touring vehicles, like the dump trucks and busses that Mercedes Benz has manufactured over time.

There was a floor dedicated to celebrity vehicles, with original vehicles owned by celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger and the late Princess Diana.

(Interesting back story behind Princess Diana: she had purchased this maroon Mercedes Benz convertible in the mid 90s because she liked the look of it and the sportiness of it. Apparently she really liked the car, but went under fire by the British public, for her driving a German car, instead of supporting her own economy and driving a British vehicle. The tabloids and rumors and cruelties thickened, and she ultimately sold her car back to Mercedes Benz like 8 months after she bought it, to satisfy her constituents. Poor girl, she couldn't even drive the car she wanted to drive!)



The bottom three floors were allllll about Mercedes racing, and Formula One cars. It was pretty big, basically a whole indoor race track laid out along the wall, with full-sized vehicles bolted in stationary position on the track, made to look like they were racing. I guess Mercedes even races trucks, like semi-trucks, because there were two of them included in this so-called 'mural.' Opposing the laid-in-track were several tall, gleaming trophy cases, with gigantic trophies won in time by the Mercedes' teams. Original racing suits were on display in shadow boxes as well.

The spiral ended with you turning in the PDA-looking thing, but keeping your lanyard and headphones. :) :) Alas, my souvenir from the MB museum was my cool lanyard, and a spare set of headphones. They're the kind that hook around your ear, so I am sure my brother might like them! I'll have to show them to him.

Once you turned in your things, you could take some steps down into the BASEMENT of this sucker, with full-size concept cars on display on these white lilipad-looking things. There were interactive computer screens (again, flat screen LCD monitors) paired up with each vehcile, and touch-screen activated, so you could choose your language and read all about the specs of the vehicle.

Very, very, very thorough!


There was a baby restaurant (more like a coffee bar) at the base of the stairs, along with a HUGE gift shop. The biggest one I've seen out of all the car headquarters I've visited: Porsche, Volkswagen....

There were lots of funky items for sale, all with hefty price tags, but I will have to tell you all about them if you ask! There is so much to randomly recall right now!!


Now, I am not sure how much you all have heard about the Daimler SmartCar?? It is not for sale in the U.S. Market (it will be in 2008, I heard?), but it is an incredibly small car that seats two people and has a body length just long enough to get past the length of a full-size car door:




Well, I think Mercedes Benz might be the father company to SmartCar, since the gift shop was outlined in a weaving track of parked, normal-sized SmartCars, all variously painted and decorated and modified (convertibles, taxis, cop cars, Barbie cars). It was pretty cool. But I still love my Volkswagen Beetle. Only that is the cutest small car out there!!!! :)


The gift shop was only one story, but it was broad, it stretched out for at least 100 meters (here I go with the European units). At the end of it, it just opened up into the HUGE showroom floor for the dealership! There were gorgeous, sparkling, spotless Mercedes, so many models I cannot ever even name them all, and in all colors! There were cool little contemporary offices for the salesmen, and a stainless steel staircase that took you up THREE FLOORS of car showroom floor.



W-O-W.


I think my old crew buddies (Colin, are you still out there?? Thanks for becoming a reader, Buddy!) would be impressed by the compact, but LIGHT-loaded stage some construction crews were building, too!! It was this circular stage, only the plywood was laid for it, but it had to have been 20 meters in diameter. Clinging to the ceiling was this lattice structure of several layers of lights: spotlights, boom lights, little rotating lights (CRAP, I forgot the name of them, but I know Bay Port has a single one of them). It was all decked out for a rock concert, it was most impressive how all the lights were positioned and attached to the lattices. I took some pictures of it, but cannot share them until I get back to the States to unload them onto my computer, with the appropriate drivers for my camera. :)


We (myself and that Dan guy, remember?) finished up at the Benz museum RIGHT at closing time. We could have easily spent another 3 or 4 hours there, it was just a hotpot of information and catchy things to study up on!

However, the museum closed at 6, and we walked back to the subway stop just in time to get onto the 6:27 U-bahn that returned us to the Hauptbahnhof, or Train station, to buy some postcards and hop on the ICE train for 6:51, to head back to Kassel for the evening.


Day #2 of car heaven: completed!!


I was honored to have visited the city I heard so much about (and Googled so much about as well), especially when I didn't think it would ever happen! I am seizing my opportunities on this trip, but I have got to! I don't know when will be the next chance for me to get back to Europe!


Except I did figure out I'd love to have my honeymoon in WOLFSBURG someday. Ha ha ha...that completely matches me, doesn't it?? Now, I just need to find the right guy, which includes being so twisted and keenly interested in a car city like myself.


:) Ich liebe Deutschland!