The semester ticket is given to all students who register. The student union in Marburg negotiates with the regional transportation to secure a special transit pass for students that covers travel on regional trains in the area surrounding the university. The union in Marburg is particularly good at this task and even negotiated with Deutsche Bahn to grant us access fast Intercity trains that travel across country. Thus, we the 100 Euro semester ticket, I can travel on any train that travels through Marburg to the stop right outside Hessen. This means that the normally 30 Euro train right from Marburg to Heidelberg is now free, as long as I stink to Intercity trains. Its a beautiful thing. On this particular trip, I felt inspired to write the previous blog entry about the joys of train travel.
I arrived in Heidelberg around 3pm in the afternoon, bearing only my backpack for the overnight travel. The birthday girl was MIA, so I found a park bench along the Neckar River and settled down for a nap. (another thing I love about Europe, I feel safe enough to fall asleep on a park bench). Eventually the birthday girl was found and we set out to make food for the Mexican themed feast. While cooking several other Fulbrighters from around Germany arrived (all a pleasant surpise for the birthday girl) and secured a cooler to transport the now freshly prepared food to the river bank. After singing happy birthday by candlelight, we watched a procession of men and women carrying torches down the river. We never figured out why they did it.
After dinner, we all cleaned up and I retired to Elisa's place to camp out for the night. I woke up early the next morning and hopped on an early train towards Stuttgart. I just happened to board the same train as another Fulbright so we ended up chatting during the hour long trip. (Can you imagine this happening if we all drove cars to the party?) I hopped off at Stuttgart while he traveled on to Munich. Once in Stuttgart, I took use of the train locker system (great system that needs to be replicated at US train stations) and set off exploring Stuttgart. I first found a lovely park just outside the train station.
After getting lost a few times and learning to navigate the tram system, I eventually found my way to the Mercedes Benz Museum, a modern glass sculpture on the outskirts of town.
This museum was a must-see considering that even the busses in Germany are Mercedes Benz. The museum is extremely interactive and shows the history of the company from the birth of the first car to the most modern version of the Mercedes Benz Class 5.
On your self-guided tour, you see all types of vehicles that the company has ever made (including their ambulances and speciality cars).
At one point, the museum even let you try out the massaging seat chair available in class Mercedes Benz class 3 or higher cars. (I tried this out of course.)
After exploring the museum, I met up with Elisa and Kim at the Stuttgart FruhlingsFest (or Spring festival). I at first thought it would be this dinky little festival filled with beer and schnitzel, but it turns out that the festival was a HUGE fair type event, filled with high flying swings (we rode them), roller coasters named after the alps, games (played them), and of course multiple beer gardens with live music and people dressed in dirndls and Lederhosen.
Even the little kiddie rides were authentically German with kids riding miniature ICE trains.
The feeling of the festival was one of great fun and joy. I honestly can not remember having so much fun at an American style fair since I was 10, but I guess the fact that every thing seemed new and different made me feel like a kid again.
After spending a few hours at the festival and realizing that none of us had brought more than 15 Euros each to spend at the festival we decided to take off towards the city. Since Stuttgart was a major manufacturing hub during World War II, the town was heavily bombed and thus had to be completely rebuilt. The "old town" consists of a few churches that were rebuilt after the war and some pedestrian only streets of rebuilt fachwerk houses.
However, it was still a nice town to explore. Its one of the few big cities that I would actually enjoy living in. I would love to visit it again, especially when I found out later that my dad's family lived in Esslingen in the 1200s. Esslingen is less than a 10 minute train ride from Stuttgart.
Thus this place definitely merits another visit, just probably not this summer.
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