Mid-December

Well it's almost Christmas time here in Germany, and I've spent the last two weekends Christmas shopping in anticipation of my family's arrival to Germany this week. So I think it's safe to say I have fully explored the entire Stuttgart Christmas market, which has everything from Christmas ornaments to vacuum cleaner parts available.

Crowded streets at the Christmas Market

Not a petting zoo, just sheep on display

So while the streets are crowded and almost every shop sells the same Christmas ornaments, the market is still a fun thing to go to. It also marks the only time of year you can get Christmas Cider, so I plan on stocking up a bit before the stores here stop stocking it.

Of course no weekend is complete for me without a visit to the flea market, or on occasion multiple flea markets. In addition to visiting the one in Karlsplatz, in the last two weeks I went to two different ones in small towns south of Böblingen, Gärtringen and Nufringen. Both were actually inside their local gyms or schwablandhalles, though it's actually been pretty warm here recently. Of course that just means it's been above freezing everyday.

Karlsplatz

Gärtringen Schwablandhalle

The German countryside

Inside the Flohmarkt in Nufringen

I actually had a few finds over the last few weeks, such as

This small coin bank from a bank here called Sparkessen, it has a lock on the bottom and I was even able to find a key that fit. 

A few books from England, I haven't actually read these but they were cheap and I thought the covers looked interesting.

Perhaps my greatest find was this Bruce Lee coin, which now is proudly attached to my backpack.

And this small desktop barometer, in the back you can see my collection of Fanta bottle caps. I'm hoping to save up enough to buy a copy of Fallout like that one guy did.

Thanksgiving Weekend

Well this post has been delayed just slightly, between some long days at work and Fallout 4 I hadn’t

gotten around to writing anything. Anyway going back to last week, Thanksgiving day to be exact, I

had a visitor here in Germany, my Dad.

My Dad and I

After meeting him after work we went to one of the few restaurants in Stuttgart that I could find that actually served turkey, a purportedly American style barbecue restaurant on the norther side of Stuttgart called Tim’s barbecue. They actually had a Thanksgiving menu and it was actually all really good, it even had some of the best apple pie that I’ve ever had.

The next day we got up early and went to the Porsche museum. I’ve visited by myself before, but this time we also went on the factory tour. Which I didn’t really know about since you have to reserve a spot ahead of time to get on it. There were absolutely no pictures allowed in the Porsche factory, they even confiscated everyone’s cell phones before sending us to the factory floor.

The original Porsche

The factory is pretty amazing, you get to see every step from the bodies coming out of the paint shop to the finished cars rolling down to the testing department. There’s also only one assembly line in the whole factory and every single model that Porsche makes is produced on it, so five cars can go by and each one is completely different. Of course the downside to this method is that the factory can only produce 200 cars a day. Though our guide told us about their new factory outside of town, which makes all their larger cars, that gets up to 600 cars a day.

After the tour we headed through the Porsche museum again, which actually had changed a bit since I had come. The original Porsche had been restored to its original position and a couple of prototype cars were where the stage had been last time.

After the Porsche museum we headed down to Schlossplatz to the see the Christmas market, which is now officially open. Even the train set was open and it turned out to be a small ride for kids, which I thought was pretty cool. My Dad and I got lunch from one of the sausage stands and visited one of the beer stalls. We were a little confused at first when we got charged twice as much for a beer as the sign stated, but then realized that the extra was a deposit on the glass.

Stuttgart Christmas Market

After seeing just some of what the Christmas market that had to offer, we headed up to the Landen museum as my father was interested in learning some of the history of the Swabian region of Germany. Afterwards we headed back Bosch, so that my Dad could see where I work. Then to Böblingen for dinner at the local Thai restaurant, which was great, and got ready for traveling the next day.

Stepping out of my apartment that morning

Train pulling into Stuttgart

Munich Station

The next morning I met my Dad at the Böblingen train station and we headed to the Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof, the main station, and boarded a train for München Hbf, otherwise known as Munich. I’ve been in Germany for a bit, but this was my first time going to another city in the country. After two hours we arrived in Munich and checked into the hotel.

The main even that Saturday was seeing the main football team, FC Bayern München, but we had some time before we had to get to the game. So we decided to see the Residenz Schloss before heading to the stadium.

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Munich Christmas Market

Protest outside of the Residenz

Statue outside of the Residenz

I personally though it was better than the palace in Ludwigsburg. At the very least it was a lot bigger, it took my Dad and I way longer to get through than my tour of Ludwigsburg. Something I noticed on the signs though was that a large percentage of the palace was destroyed during WW2, but it was rebuilt after the war according to the original plans. It’s amazing how many details survived, though there are a few rooms where the ceiling paintings are blank because of this.

After the palace we head to the nearest U-Bahn station and started heading for the Allianz Stadium, home of FC Bayern München. The train was pretty packed, but we managed to squeeze our way on until we arrived at the stadium’s station. Then it was just a matter of walking to the stadium and getting in. The latter proved to be a bit more difficult as people didn’t really get in line for security and instead formed giant mobs around the entry points.

Once we had been patted down and our tickets checked, my Dad and I were finally allowed into the stadium. Our seats were in the top section near the middle, giving us a perfect view of the entire field as well as both teams extreme fan sections. The stadium was also packed since they were playing Berlin, which is one of the most anticipated games in the league. I don’t tend to follow football that closely, but I do enjoy watching it and I had a good time at the game.  One thing that amazed me was the endurance of the FC Bayern fans behind the goal, they were shouting, jumping, and waving giant flags for the entire game without ever stopping. The score ended up being 2-0 Munich, and it’s always good to see the home team win. While walking out I saw the stadium change to red then slowly back to its usual white after a while.

Getting back, my Dad and I were literally squeezed onto the train going to central Munich, just as soon as the doors opened it was a mad rush to fit as many people in there. Since the game was in the mid-afternoon and it was still early evening when it was over, we decided to go see a movie at one of the local theaters in Munich that plays them in their original languages. We saw “Bridge of Spies”, which I thought was excellent and part of it even takes place in Germany!

The weather the next day wasn't as cold, but it was lightly raining instead of snowing. After my Dad and I got coffee from the cafe near the hotel, we headed to the 1972 Olympic Park. The stadium still sees use from time to time, but for the most part it just sits there as a tourist attraction. After a bit of confusion on where exactly we could get a tour of the stadium, we managed to get on the on tour of the day.

Very 70's looking ticket booths

The Olympiazentrum tower

Since the stadium is only used for concerts now, the field's been paved over

After the stadium we went up the Olympiazentrum, the observation tower for park. At 180 meters high, it's also home to the world's highest Rock&Roll museum. 

View of the Stadium

My man Elton's piano featured in the museum

The Olympic Village, today it serves as public housing

My Dad and I also ventured to the outdoor part of the tower even higher up then the normal observation room. For anyone who dares to attempt this, try to do it on a day that it isn't raining or particularly windy. The lower level of this area was ok, but the level above that we had to lean pretty far just to stay standing. I'm pretty sure the wind was strong enough to blow you off the tower if your coat was big and loose enough to act as a parachute. 

View from outside the tower

We then decided to go to the BMW museum, which was pretty close to the Olympic park. You can see it and BMW's headquarters in the left side of the photo above. Before getting there though, we stopped by the memorial to the Israel team. According to a sign there's supposed to be an even larger one being built soon.

Once we got to the BMW museum, we found out the difference between BMW World and the Museum was that the former is more of a giant showroom for all of the brands owned by BMW.

BMW Museum

BMW Museum

Overall I thought it was a good museum, though it was definitely more focused on the concepts behind the BMW brand than the actual cars the company has produced. That made is somewhat confusing to navigate, but they did have a lot of interesting cars and motorcycles that the company has made over the years. 

BMW Motorcycle built for sidecar racing

One of the first jet engines made by BMW during the war

After the museum we had a little time before the train back to Stuttgart, so we had dinner and visited one of the largest churches in Munich, Frauenkirche.

After heading back to Stuttgart, I had to go to work in the morning and my Dad was heading back the next morning so we said our goodbyes.