Stuttgart

This weekend is a trip to Stuttgart via train. Stuttgart is the capital of Baden-Wurttemberg (our "state") and is an easy 90 minute train ride from our town.  It's famous for it's automotive industry, headquarters to Mercedes-Benz and Porsche and also electronics giant Bosch. During World War II Stuttgart was heavily bombed because of its position as a major industrial center.  The city was quickly rebuilt but most of the downtown was built as temporary structures using rubble and provisional building materials with the intent of putting up more permanent structures in the future. After World War II the city grew at an enormous rate and as a result, there is little left of the historical architecture. The city today more resembles a city found in the US than a typical German city.

train to Stuttgart

Kiwi's seat

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We stayed in our favorite chain hotel in Europe: Motel One. It is a cheap, no frills, Nice hotel.  Reliable, comfortable, modern and usually really convenient to the historic old towns of cities.  What more can you ask for?  There are a ton throughout Germany and the best thing is they are dog friendly for only 5 euro!  This one was a quick walk from the train station and on the edge of the city center.

Hotel

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A quick regroup at the hotel and then we hit the town...

Stuttgart street scene

Saturday in Stuttgart was busy. We walked and did a little shopping and then stumbled onto an outdoor film festival in the Schlossplatz (the square in front of the Neues Schloss, "New Castle").

First the Neues Schloss:
- a Baroque style palace which looks more French than German. It served as a residence of the Kings of Württemberg from 1746 to 1797 and from 1805 to 1807.

der Junge taking a photo of me taking a photo!

My photo! Neues Schloss

The palace was almost completely destroyed during WWII and was reconstructed between 1958 and 1964.

in 1956 before renovation

tired of this picture yet? I think we are!

Film festival in the Schlossplatz:
You can see the screen in the picture below. They are showing "Cars" dubbed in German!

Interesting car trivia:

Ferdinand Porsche founded the Porsche company (initially a consulting firm) in 1938 and was the former technical director for Mercedes-Benz.  Porsche was assigned by Hitler in 1938 to design a car for the people.  Hitler's agenda was to motorize the nation and every German would own a car or a tractor.  In the early 1930s the German auto industry was largely composed of luxury cars and only one  German for every 50 owned a car.  Hitler commissioned Porsche to design a Volkswagen, "People's Car" which was capable of transporting two adults and three children at 100 km/h (62 mph). The "People's Car" would be available to citizens of the Third Reich through a savings scheme at 990 Reichsmark (US$396 in 1930s dollars which according to an online inflation calculator, in 1935, $396 had the same buying power as $6,669.11 in 2012). Porsche designed the Volkswagen Beetle, one of the most successful car designs of all time. The Beetle is the longest-running and most-manufactured car of a single design platform in the world.

The Volkswagen Beetle

Ad scheme by the Nazi regime to encourage Germans to buy the Volkswagen

Sunday morning, we walked to the Altes Schloss, "Old Castle" (which is actually adjacent to the Neues Schloss, as seen above). This castle dates back to the 10th century when Stuttgart was a settlement for breeding horses (Stuttgart comes from stuotengarten, meaning stud garden, i.e. horse breeding place). Damaged by a fire in 1931 and again with WWII bombing, the Altes Schloss was only just restored in 1969 and is now home to the very interesting Württemberg State Museum. Besides just exploring the building itself, one of the coolest parts of the museum is the collection of ancient clocks and mathematic/scientific instruments dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

courtyard of Altes Schloss

Statue of Eberhard im Bart (Eberhard the Bearded), the first Duke ofWürttemberg

calculator displayed at the Württemberg State Museum dating from 1770

Stuttgart's opera house

Opera is huge in Germany! We have yet to go but it is on our list of things to do while we are here and almost every city and a surprising number of towns has a local opera house. This actually should not be a surprise as the great opera composers of all time, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Wagner, Richard Strauss and Berg in fact came from Germany and Austria. Above is Stuttgart's opera house known locally as the Grosses Haus (the big House), which opened in 1912 with the world premiere of Richard Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos". This opera house building is one of the few major German ones to survive WWII. In the summer, our town has an opera which is performed in the open air courtyard of the castle. It is a much anticipated event and tickets sell out way in advance, but we may get lucky to get tickets for a midweek show.

Another tired of posing picture! ...but little did he know, this picture would make it's way into the blog! Haha!

And that concludes Stuttgart...

exhausted...

Stuttgart: check

we have more updates coming...

but as der Junge says, we'd rather be a little behind...

than a big @ss!

Until next time!