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.