Christmas is coming

As the title of this post might suggest, one thing that was made very apparent to me this weekend is Christmas is coming to Germany. Without Thanksgiving to even attempt to ward off Christmas decorations, preparations started right after Halloween but recently have been taken to a whole new level as the Christmas market is due to open pretty soon.

Saturday started out a bit overcast, but better than the rain the day before. It was also colder than usual, but not so much that I had to break out one of my heavier jackets.

Waiting for the train

After getting off the train I began walking from the train station, I came across the various bits of the Christmas market being set up. It's pretty amazing how many booths were being set up.

As usual, I first stopped by the flea market in Karlsplatz. This time though it was a bit emptier than usual, I think the rain and cold kept most of the vendors from coming. I'm not actually sure when this market ends, the website's not too clear, but I guess I'll find out when vendors stop showing up. So even with the lack of vendors I did pick up this small first-aid manual from 1913. 

Karlsplatz Flohmarkt

After the market I went to a specific shop to buy a gift for someone, so I won't give any details about where it is. But on the way to it I came across this little pedestrian street. 

Now there wasn't any other plaque on the street, so I think it was just renamed in his honor.

After that little detour I headed back over to Schlossplatz to see how the main part of the Christmas market was coming along. I found that part of it was open, mainly the skating rink and a few food stands. I also found out that coming to the other side the ocean is apparently not far enough to escape the typical Christmas songs you hear in America. 

The majority's still being set up, including this big train set they have near the extremely large Christmas tree in the main square. 

After checking all of that out and grabbing lunch, I headed to my main destination for the day. I've actually passed by this a lot but never went in for some reason. I went to the Landesmuseum, located right next to Karlsplatz. 

                                                                                 

I didn't take any pictures inside, but of all of the museums I've been to at this point, I'd say this was one of the best. Their permanent collection is a catalog of all the people who have lived in Württemberg, from the Neanderthals to the last King of Württemberg. Definitely worth seeing for anyone coming to Stuttgart.

The museum's courtyard

After finishing up with the museum it had started raining again, so I started heading home. However I did see that the rain wasn't enough to stop work on the Christmas market and they were still busy setting up booths in the downpour. 

Sunday I saw something new in Germany, snow!

View from my apartment

There wasn't much snow and it was mostly gone by noon, but it was still cold enough for me to decide to put on my bomber jacket before I headed out for the day.

Little bit of snow at the train station

My destination for the day was the Naturkundemuseum, or natural history museum.

It was what you'd expect of a natural history museum, fossils and wax sculptures. Though I think a few of them probably wouldn't ever make it into an American museum.

Second Week of November

Well, time for the weekly update on my goings on here in Stuttgart. Work at Bosch is still going good, especially now that it's starting to get a bit busier for me. I've been assigned to help a few different projects in the division that I work for. It's good since I like to see what all of these projects do, especially one involving batteries that I'm in now.

Some people have asked me if anything is going on here in light of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. While I didn't see much personally, French intitutes around Germany have had flowers stacked up oustide their doors. The Germans stand with France and it is tragic what occurred in Paris.

I had a bit of a slow weekend, but as always I started Saturday bright and early. What was actually surprising is that it was nice and sunny all day for a change, and warm to boot. The temperature here hasn't really gotten below 50 during the day, and even at night it's not freezing quite yet. I'm still waiting on the temperature to drop but I have been informed that this part of Germany has a much more moderate climate than the rest of the country.

As always I started Saturday visiting the flea market at Karlsplatz. There was a new addition to the square, a large building that had been put up since last week. I assume it's for the upcoming Christmas market, but there weren't any signs on it to say what it was for.

Flea market at Karlsplatz

This weekend was actually pretty successful in terms my haul from the market. I acquired two more "cigarette books", one for the 1932 Olmpyics and one for famous historical figures. I'm finding that there's a huge variety of these cigarette books, everything from art history to the first world war. The other items were two ELO Singles and a book on the Battle of Narvik.

Cigarette Books

Top text says, "On the eve of the World War"

ELO Singles

I did try to find other bands, but these are two of my favorite ELO songs.

Book on battle of Narvik, Norway

So as you can see the book on the Battle of Narvik is written from the Axis perspective. I had a friend ask why I buy stuff like this, and the reason is that I simply like to collect things. I already own a variety of items from WW2 from the Allied perspective, books and newsreels mainly, so it's interesting to see the same essentially the same kind of stuff, but written from the other side.

I've also been doing a bit of 16mm film collecting while here. Nothing too major since I don't really have the ability to watch any films here, but just to take advantage of the fact that a lot of stuff on German Ebay doesn't ship outside the country. So far I've gotten a few things like an episode of the Twilight Zone(Time Enough at Last) and a German WW2 newsreel on the Battle of Crete. The later actually comes on a cardboard reel, which I would assume would be because metal was too expensive at the time.

As for the rest of my Saturday, I headed over to the Linden Museum. It's a museum that focuses on cultural artifacts from around the world, with recreations of scenes from their countries of origin thrown in here and there. I didn't take any pictures inside, but I can say museum has a very impressive collection of artifacts from different regions around the world. I particularly liked their Africa collection. The China collection was also interesting to see, especially as I recently watched "The Last Emperor".

Linden Museum

Sunday was a bit slower, I decided just to sleep in and skip going to a museum or something. I did however decide to go to the new James Bond movie. I thought it was pretty good for the most part. I'd heard some people complain that Christoph Waltz wasn't in it enough, but I personally thought it fit the overall theme of the film, and one scene in particular just exemplifies Waltz's ability to be creepy and foreboding. I won't elaborate, but suffice it to say it's not anyone who would consider themselves squeamish.

Train station in the evening

Corso theater

First November Weekend

Well it's been another week in Germany, so time for an update on what I've been doing. Work at Bosch's been going good, but as I've said before, I'm not really allowed to talk about what I do there since it's a research facility. Though I can say that I came down with a cold this week. But after going through my usual remedy, downing a bunch of pseudoephedrine, it was down to just a sore throat by Saturday. So, on to the weekend.

The weather this weekend was actually really nice, and pretty warm to boot. I think it got to about 60 degrees on both Saturday and Sunday. So that was a nice change from my previous weekends that were cloudy almost the whole time. My first destination on Saturday was this shop I found out about that sells a pretty wide variety of vintage items.

Exterior of the shop

Located on Mozart street, Such & Find sells vintage books, model trains and cars, records, cd's, legos, and pretty much anything regarding vintage toys.

Packed to the ceiling with stuff.

It was an interesting place to go, just to see how much stuff someone can fit into two rooms. I even got an ELO single while I was there.

So after that it was off to the flea market for my weekly visit. You really do not know what you're going to find, and I always have fun just looking through everything. That was especially true this weekend as the warm weather seemed to have made the place busier than ever, with booths all the way up to the statue in the middle of the square.

At the flea market again

My searching did pay off though as I found something I liked, these two volumes on the 1936 Berlin Olympics from 1936.

1936 Olympic books

Inside cover of the first volume

I don't know what it is about me and the Olympics, I've just find the old memorabilia so interesting. I think it probably started when I bought a 16mm print of Tokyo Olympiad, so the natural progression is just to acquire more vintage Olympic items. Anyway, back to the books, they detail both the 1936 Winter and Summer games and have lots of really nice pictures. Something I noticed while I was considering buying them was that almost all of the pictures prints that have been glued onto the pages.

Picture is glued onto the page rather than printed

From what I can find online, these books are part of a series of "cigarette" books. Basically people would send in coupons from cigarette packs and receive a packet of pictures in exchange. Then the cigarette companies would release books like this to put the pictures in. Pretty interesting and someone must have put a lot of time into this book since it's not missing any pictures.

Pull out map in the first volume of the Berlin games

So after acquiring the books I looked around a bit more, then had a lunch consisting mostly of sausage. I walked towards the schlossplatz to see if anything was going on over there. Turns out there was quite a lot going on! I noticed there were a lot of demonstrators set up, like these Tibetans.

Tibetan demonstrators

Then I saw that the Christmas market is still being set up.

Christmas Market booths

Ice skating rink, complete with mini zamboni

Then I'm still not sure what this was for, I think it was some anniversary of the transit system, but I ended up walking in on some kind of Star Wars dance routine set to "I Need a Hero"

Star Wars dancing for some reason

So there was that. Also saw one of the most determined buskers I've ever seen.

So after that I went home since I had intended to go and see the new James Bond movie that night. Though when I got back I looked online and saw that it was sold out the entire weekend. So oh well, try again next week. I made up for it though by catching up on Fargo tv show.

Sunday I headed out for the Staatsgalerie, the main art museum in the city. It was originally a royal museum, the facade even has the old name, but eventually it switched over as monarchies lost power. It was pretty much leveled during the war, but was rebuilt immediately after.

Statue of Wilhelm I

It was a great museum with plenty of art from all over Europe. I didn't take any pictures inside, but some of the most impressive things to me were the massive altar pieces they had on display.

After getting some lunch near the museum I headed back to Böblingen where there was yet another flea market going on. It was pretty nice weather to be walking around in so I looked around the booths.

Train ride at the flea market

I didn't buy anything, but I was given a roll of 35mm negatives by one of the booths that saw my Hasselblad. As far as I can tell it's from the 50's-60's, so that was interesting. 

Mystery roll of negatives

Halloween!

Halloween was this weekend, a very spooky time indeed. Or at least it is in America, Halloween is celebrated in Germany but it only started very recently. So while I didn't see any trick or treaters, except a few people with their faces painted, the German interns at my job assure me that the holiday's popularity is growing. 

Fog surrounding Bosch's main building

On Saturday I went to the Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württemberg which translates to Museum of the History of Baden-Württemberg. Baden-Württemberg being the state of Germany where Stuttgart is located. But first, I dropped by the flea market at Karlsplatz. This time I got yet more pins, though some different ones this time. Some were for the 1964 Olympics, there's a Kodak tie-clip, and a couple of Soviet pins that commemorate various battles. One pin I thought was interesting was the 1980 Olympic pin for the Dressage events, since to me that seems like the least Soviet sounding sport out there. I also found a copy of Waterworld for the SNES, a game that's actually exclusive to the PAL region.

Cloudy day at the market

Olympic Pins

European exclusive SNES game

Before going to the museum I had to go to the train station to renew my monthly train pass. I was actually pretty lucky as I didn't realize how early they closed on Saturday. So after getting in the very long line, closing time came around just as I was about to get to the front. They were nice enough to just herd everyone in line into the office instead of turning us all away. After that I got my pass renewed and found out about an add-on to my pass that gives me unlimited travel in Stuttgart. It applies all day on weekends and after 12:00 on weekdays, and it's only 12 euros. I'd also like to mention that I haven't encountered a ticket inspector the entire time I've been here so far. Not to say I haven't been buying tickets, but no ones checked me to see if I did.

Station where I bought my pass

After taking care of all that I went to the museum. I thought it was good museum, though not all of the descriptions had English translations. I was able to tell what everything was at least and they had a lot of artifacts from around this area of Germany. I even saw a few things made by Bosch! 

Entrance to the museum

Another thing I wanted to mention is the bag storage I've seen in museums. Most of the museums I've been to don't allow backpacks, so they provide storage lockers for them. They way they work is you insert a euro coin in order to lock it. When you lock it the coin is returned, so I think it's just a deposit in case you lose the key.

Locker Coin-op

After the museum I took a walk in the nearby park.

Then I headed back home since evenings here are now extremely early since the clocks moved forward an hour last week. As I said before, I didn't see any trick or treaters. So I did my other Halloween tradition of eating candy and watching a movie, preferably something spooky. Luckily my Mom was kind enough to send me some candy from home, and I ended up watching "Big Trouble in Little China". 

Sunday's in Germany are slow, pretty much everything is closed except museums and a few restaurants. This sort of becomes obvious when you walk down thoroughfares that are completely packed on Saturday but are empty on Sunday. 

I went to a museum that's dedicated to musical instruments, which was not only open but had free admission!

They told me to start on the top floor of the museum where they have an interactive room. There were a couple of makeshift instruments, displays to show how sound works, the usual stuff you'd probably see in a kid's museum. But what made if great for me was that they had a theremin you could mess around with. 

Theremin

Here's a video that shows what it sounds like. So I had some fun with it waving my hands around to make spooky sci-fi sound effects.

The rest of the museum was lots of examples of different instruments, a lot were custom made for very specific purposes. 

Combination of an upright and grand piano

Piano on the go

What appears to be a serpent trombone

A piano built for playing duets

After the museum I decided to walk to Stuttgart's central train station. Partially to get a feel for the layout of it, and partly because it's one of the few things open. 

Something interesting they had was a coin operated train set. It was actually a pretty nicely done set, though I did see a child try to use it and none of the trains would move after he put a euro in.