Stuttgart

We decided to do different stuff today as Glen was keen to see some cars and Deb noticed that there was a massive outlet mall with a shuttle bus running to/from our hotel.

Glen will write his bit, then Deb hers. Click the link to read more…

Stuttgart is known for 2 car companies, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche. Both rather impressive entities in the car scene and for different reasons. Both have car museums so that’s where I headed for the day.

First up was Porsche. A short train trip from the central station and getting off at Porscheplatz, you’re within 200m of the very impressively built, 100million euro museum completed only last year.

In the front door and you buy your 8euro ticket, 2 euros to hire a headset to hear all about the cars and up the escalator you go. From there ,it’s a sea of cars dating back to the very first Porsche shell ever made (which looks remarkably similar to today’s classic Porsche shape) right up to a newly released 918 Spyder, only on show for this week! Gotta be lucky sometimes…

The audio really helps with the experience and getting to know the history of the company and the individual car models. There were production cars, concept cars and actual race cars used in races like Le Mans dating back to the 50s right up through to today.

I really enjoyed the experience and really happy I did it. I kinda rushed it as I was hoping I’d have time to get to the Mercedes one as well, so off I went, back into Stuttgart and then out to the Mercedes train station.

It was about a 1km walk from the station and out of nowhere comes this enormous building. It’s classic Mercedes silver without a hard edge to the building – it just flows in a kind of wave in a loose rectangular fashion. Clearly I wasn’t the only one to have the idea of going to the Mercedes museum today – as I had to lined up for around 20-30mins to get a ticket… but as I’d soon find out, it was well worth it.

8 euros, free headset this time and up we go 8 floors in a purpose built lift with velour trim. From the top, you start at the beginning of Mercedes-Benz and the start of the automobile. The audio was very clever in that it knew where you were in the building and started playing information about where you were, what you were looking at and so-on. A lot more advanced than the Porsche system. You could also point your headset at a particular car to find out more about its history.

So from the top, you wind your way down these lightly curved ramps with historical features and how Mercedes fits in on the left-hand-side. Then at the bottom of th ramp, there was a feature of cars in that time period. A short walk takes you to another area where cars/trucks/buses etc are grouped together based on what they are or what their purpose is. The sheer magnitude of what Mercedes build is amazing. Not only did Mercedes invent the car, they also invented the diesel engine which then lead to them building the first small truck, large truck and bus.

This scenario of floors continued on for another 7 until the “racing” floor at the bottom. Here, in a kind of starting grid, they had cars from all eras that have raced at some point in time. From actual formula 1 cars used in races by Alain Prost to race cars used when Mercedes first entered motorsports. One cool story was how the Mercedes silver came about… At Le Mans, there was a rule that the car could be a maximum of 750kg. The Mercedes entry was weight at 751kg the night before the race and wasn’t going to be allowed to be entered. The engineers scraped off the white paint over night, taking it back to the bare aliminium thus saving around 2kg and he car entered the race… and won. That car became so well known for it’s distinctive look that Mercedes kept the silver as the colour for their brand along with the blue.

At the bottom of the museum and to the side is an enormous car dealership with every single model and variation that Mercedes make. You can pick up an SLK55 AMG convertible for around 100,000 euros or a fairly standard C200 Kompressor sedan for around 40,000 euros. The idea of the museum and then dealership obviously works for them – I noticed people I saw on the tour sitting down with dealers working through the numbers. Zie Germans – they’re a smart bunch.

Both tours were great, but I could have spent probably 6hrs+ at the Mercedes one. There was so much to learn, so many different attractions and hands-on things you could do which I sadly had to skip or rush through. But so, so glad I went.

Deb’s Shopping Trip – Just before we chec ked out of the hotel I discovered a ‘shopping brochure’ which stated there was an outlet mall somewhere in Stuttgart which you could get to by shuttle bus. Well I was excited by this idea as I wasn’t overly keen to go and see the car places. So I went to receptionand they booked the shuttle bus for me and I wated out the front until it arrived. I expected it to be a mini bus like Des’ but instead it was a massive Mercedes bus which seated about 100 people. Needless to say it was a very comfortable 30 minute bus ride to the outlet mall. It was just a little different than driving to Harbortown on Anzac Highway. Instead we drove through beautiful lush countryside. I certainly didn’t feel like I was about to end up at a shopping mall.

Anyway once I arrived I kinda just stood there for a while trying to decide where to go. I hd already looked at the map and chosen the places I wanted to go,but when I got there I realised it was much bigger than what was on the map. So I just followed the signs and went where they took me. Firstly I went to the Croc Shop…hehe…as I had to buy a pair of white shoes for my placement in Romania. My aim was to buy a pair and just leave them in Romania for someone else to wear but I actually quite like the shoes I bought! hahaha. Next I went to Tommy Hilfiger and got the coolest (actually warmest) slippers u will ever see! They are filled with down feathers and are very toasty! I also got the usual pairs of socks that are a must. Then off to Nike to get a couple of tshirts for Glen’s placement.

The best part of this mall was the lindt chocolate shop. OMG was it amazing! I got a 750g bag of chockies for 4 Euros. It no longer weighs 750g as we may have eaten a few since we got them!!
Everything was so cheap and I could’ve bought so much more but there is always the problem of having to carry it afterwards!

Shopping always makes a girl peckish so I stopped to get some breakfast which consisted of a vegetarian pretzel. It was better than it sounds and what I thought it was going to be. It was just tomato and cheese melted onto a pretzel. Actually just thinking about it now it really was quite good. hehe. I also got a vanilla coffee frappaccino to go with it. Yum!

So after a lovely morning of shopping I got back on the bus and headed back to the hotel to wait for Glen to come back. My sister kept me entertained by texting me while I waited. All round a good day! Now off to get breakfast for today! Oh how I love German food!!!

Back to the airport and the bloody flight had been cancelled, even though we had been to the airport in the morning to check the filght was still on. No-one could tell us why it was cancelled, the phone numbers all said Monday-to-Friday only, so we were in limbo. Only until I checked my spam folder did I find an email to say the flight had been cancelled… from a week ago! So we checked back into our very nice hotel, booked another flight with “German Wings” airline, which appear to be the Virgin Airlines of Germany, and crashed for the night… We had hoped to go for a sauna downstairs, until we learnt it was a nude-only thing and we’re not quite comfortable with that idea… yet!