Day 44: Motor museums and music festivals

August 4 –

Today we bid farewell to Frankfurt – goodbye humongous Hotel Intercontinental…  We are off by train!  We’ve lightened the load enough to walk to the train station to catch the 10:20 intercity train to Stuttgart.  I’m very glad we paid the extra €3 to reserve seats because the train was packed and we watched lots of folks get shuffled around as the owner of the seat they were in came to claim it.  By noon, we had arrived in Stuttgart and realized that our hotel was fairly close but straight uphill…. and today was actually hot – upper 70’s and screaming sunshine!  It made pulling the cases a real challenge.

We managed though and after dropping the cases off in the kids room (ours wasn’t ready yet), we wandered into town.  First on the agenda, a light lunch:  yummy sandwiches from stands along der Köenigstraße on wheat rolls with lots of seeds and stuff!  Second, the Porsche museum!  If you were wondering why we would stop in Stuttgart on our way from Frankfurt to Basel, the answer will soon become clear – this is the home of German automotive engineering!  We visited the current museum and gawked at the hull of what will be the museum next year – it will be on a much grander scale than the one room that currently houses the displays.  I was happy to look at the pretty cars for a little while then sit and practice my German (Danke, ich sehe mich nur um – no thanks, I’m just looking!) while Frank and the kids spent billions of mega pixels capturing the small but impressive collection. He was a little disappointed but he knew that of the two museums we had on the agenda, this would be the smaller.  We have much higher hopes for tomorrow’s destination:  the Mercedes museum!

So the automotive destination achieved, we proceeded to wander around the main shopping area looking for ice cream and interesting sights.  That’s when we noticed the tents and stages set up around one of the city squares:  we had arrived during Sommerfest  – a summer music festival for 4 days at the beginning of August.  We grabbed a few local brews and sat on the grass to enjoy the Jailmen Jazz band, a local Dixie-land band who were very good.  I even bought one of their CD’s!  Eventually the delicious pils and the beautiful sunshine wasn’t enough to keep the tummies from rumbling so we wandered over to the Schlossplatz for dinner at a restaurant recommended by our guide book (yes, I confess – I have been consulting “Germany for Dummies”!)  As we have found with all our meals in this fine country:  it was excellent!  I had lamb goulash with homemade spätzle which was yummy but I think Frank’s dish of oxen breast with horseradish cream sauce won the prize for best dinner.

Afterwards, we wandered back to the grass for the last set of the jazzmen while another thousand people sat, drank and danced around us to lots of different kinds of music.  Eventually we had to get back to the hotel since Frank and I hadn’t even seen our room yet – and wow is it nice!  I think I would call it a junior suite – not what I asked for but no complaints here, other than the fact that we only have one night to spend here as tomorrow we leave for Basel, Switzerland.  Yup, I have to work on Monday *and* Tuesday!

/san/

[Pedometer:   23,644 or about 11.5 miles – not including the dancing, cartwheels and wrestling on the grass in the square!]