Stuttgart

4 June - Day 81


On Mondays, museum across Europe are closed. When I picked up Stuttgart's city map from the info centre across from the main railway station the very nice lady reminded me, but I can still visit the cathedrals she said.

Stuttgart is a newer looking city compared to all the elderly places we have been. It is famous as the home of Porsche and Mercedes Benz. Despite this, the vehicular traffic is very free flowing, I have yet to see a traffic jam. The public transport is very comprehensive with connections to every conceivable corner of the greater Stuttgart. It combines metros (U-Bahn), light rail (S-Bahn) and buses. The lower population here means the connections are 9 mins apart rather than 3 mins in the denser cities.

The autobahn are the best roads in this entire trip, they are fast, smooth and very well planned. We drove from Fussen to Stuttgart on a one stretch 240km long, the A7. And no tolls or vignette either.

Marcus thinks German is the funniest language to far, and I must say it is not the most elegent. Compare Bon Voyage to Gut Fahrt, urinals are piossoirs. According to Michael Palin, they even have names for men who pee standing up vs sitting down. Take a guess - standen piossoirs and sitzen piossoirs. They don't bleep out the naughty words on TV interviews because they sound like regular German words anyway.

Outside of the two car manufacturers, 80% of Stuttgarts attractions are around Koenigstrasse, the main shoping drag and city centre. So we checked out the main square, Schlossplatz (Castle Square) and the gardens adjacent. It started raining and so after lunch we went home.

 

5 June - Day 82

It took a U-bahn and S-bahn to get to the Mercedes Museum. The head office, central showroom, one assembly plant and head office are also here.

The museum looks pretty cool, all 7 levels of it. It cost 8 euros for me and 4 for Marcus, being a student. You start the tour from level 7 and the exhibits are organised in a spiral down to the ground floor.

Then you move to the adjoining building where are the new cars are displayed for purchase along-side key chains, T-shirts etc. So they cater for all budgets from 5 -167,000 euros.

On the outside wall, there is a chronological posters of world events and the displays in the centre align with this timeline. Even Edmund Hilary got a mention.

Aside from chronology, the exhibits were also clustered around themes.

There is a celebrity one. The Pope mobile, Princess Diana's SL500, which she had to give back after the British manufacturers kicked-up a fuss, the off-roaders from Jurassic Park.

There are concept cars that never made production. Some using drive by wire using joysticks.

There is their racing heritage, and innovations that kept them ahead like the supercharger.

From vintage racing till today.

The owner of this custom made car had Carl Benz name the car after his daughter, Mercedes, and after that the name took off.

We also used the simulator which put us in the drivers seat of various F1 drivers, the last one being Lewis Hamilton when he became the youngest world champ by 1 point.

There is a display of the entire SL series over the last 60 years.

Then at the bottom level across to the next building, we were given the opportunity to purchase a Mercedes from the A series to the SL series.

A quick shot of HQ, and back onto the S-Bahn for lunch in town.

We went to a pub near the railway station which claimed to have the best steak. I ordered the lunch steak and Macus a hamburger. They delivered the meals from the next table, and we tucked in thinking that this is how they present burgers in Stuttgart.

Soon the waiteress came over and apologised and said we could carry-on eating (hah, like she could say anything else). I remarked 15 minutes later the people at the next table have ordered the same meal we'd just eaten. We were billed what we ordered, not what we ate.