Stuttgart

I’ll be brief about my excursion to Stuttgart as there were only two reasons for going. The first was to get a chance to drive on the Autobahn, the second was to see the Porsche Museum. I arrived at Munich airport to pick up my rental. I knew when I booked the car that it would be an Audi A3 or something comparable. I had no idea what was comparable to an A3 in Germany. I hate this about car rental companies they always say something comparable to the featured model. When I was in California last summer driving down the coast from San Francisco to San Diego I had reserved a Chrysler Sebring convertible. What did I get? A MAZDA MIATA!!!! How the hell is a Miata comparable to a Sebring? We could only fit one bag in the trunk of it! My girlfriend was not about to ride with a roll around bag and two backpacks on her lap, nor would we have been able to fit that anyways. We had to settle for a Honda Accord (not a bad car though). So of course I would not be rolling with four rings in front of me. My choices were a Mercedes B-class or a Nissan Qashqai both crossover-type (read: station wagon on steroids) vehicles only seen in Europe (do an image search on Google). I jumped in the Benz and was off. I couldn’t wait to hit the Autobahn, punch the throttle wide open and watch the tachometer needle make its way to the redline over and over again as I shifted through each of the five forward gears as soon as a no speed limit sign appeared.

This would not be the case. As soon as I made it onto the A8 stretch I was met by a traffic jam that lasted for miles and miles. Two arduous, exasperating, trying hours and I had only moved maybe 5 kilometers. I found out from someone who spoke English that a bridge up ahead was getting work done to it and the work would be done in 40 minutes. What else was going to go wrong today? I had to make it to the Porsche Museum before 5pm. Finally the traffic broke and I started moving. Unfortunately speed limit signs followed me my whole way to Stuttgart. I made it to the museum by 4:30pm. You know how good and bad things come in three’s well the third was about to rear its ugly face. I rushed up to the exhibit, camera in hand and not even a quarter of the way through my camera dies. I was furious, what a day. I knew I needed more pictures than what I had; I couldn’t let my co-workers and fellow gear heads down. I ran down to the car, grabbed the charger and found a wall plug near the downstairs café. I knew I didn’t have much time to charge it up, so I did what I could and headed back up for more pictures. I didn’t get much, but I got a few good ones.

Once I left the museum, the hotel was about 4 blocks down the street. After settling in and showering I set out to find food. I drove into Stuttgart and found an area that wasn’t as nice as I thought it would be. It kind of reminded me of the not so marvelous section of New Haven Connecticut only the buildings were European style. I rode around and finally stopped at, of all places, a kebab shop. Go figure I drive 10 kilometers into Stuttgart from Zuffenhausen just for kebab. I sat in the car and ate and then headed back to the hotel. Once night fell upon the Swabain region of Germany I just went downstairs to the hotel bar to relax and have a few. I started taking to the bartender mainly about how I had been to all of the other European countries that were famous for their beer and how I thought Germany had the best. He was very prideful of his Swabian roots but admitted whole heartedly that Bavaria indeed had the best beer but Swabia had the best cars (couldn’t argue with that). He was nice enough to offer me a free beer from Munich called Alpirsbacher Klosterbrau. It tasted almost exactly like beer hall beer. I enjoyed it thoroughly. After a small plate of food and one more, it was off to bed as I had a long 6 hour ride up to Berlin ahead of me in the morning.