We started out our German segment in Stuttgart, where we had our first couch surfing experience. It was awesome. Our host, David, was so gracious, easy to talk to, interested in exchanging stories of culture, telling us how things are done in Germany, and curious to hear what we had to say from a US perspective. We got into Stuttgart at 11 pm and didn’t make it to his house until close to midnight, and he still welcomed us in, offered us drinks and an Argentinian pizza. Not only that, his flatmate was spending the night at his girlfriend’s, so he gave us an entire room all to ourselves. He was terrific.
After a wonderfully relaxing and restful night of sleep, we made our way out into town. David had recommended that we visit Stuttgart’s park, an incredibly beautiful large, sprawling piece of land, filled with many different kinds of trees, lush green grass, ponds full of carp and ducks, and happy people biking, picnicking, and strolling around the grounds. The day was warm and pleasant, and we spent way more time there than anticipated, relaxing by the pond.
The main reason we came to Stuttgart was for the Wassen, a lesser known version of Munich’s Oktoberfest. The Wassen is like a big fairground, complete with rollercoasters (one had 2 upside down loops), ferris wheels, games, and junk food. However, the Wassen is distinguished from regular fairs by something very special – BEERHALLS! Women in dirndls and leiderhosen clad men handed out liter sized mugs of beer while their fellow Stuttgarters sang, cheered, and danced on tables. We sat with some guys from Stuttgart who declared enthusiastically (and regularly), “We are from Stuttgart!” They also called us “Oklahoma boy” and “Oklahoma girl.”
In the beer hall.
The Wassen was memorable not only for the beer halls, but also for the food. In addition to beer, we had “fried everything” as Max calls it. Kartoffellpuffen (potato pancakes), apfelstrudel, sausage, heart shaped frosted gingerbread cookies, shokoladefrute (fruit bathed in chocolate), crepes, and on and on. It was amazing. We got there at 3 in the afternoon and didn’t leave until 11 pm.
Max in front of a haunted house about to be eaten by King Kong.
The next morning we rented a car and drove to Heidelberg, a little city about 2 hours north of Stuttgart with a river and a castle. Heidelberg is beautiful, one of the prettiest places we’ve been, and having just come from Switzerland, that says a lot.
Max on the autobahn.
Apparently, lots of people also think that Heidelberg is really beautiful and very worth visiting because when we got into town, there were no hotels or hostels available. Following the advice of our guidebook, we decided to try a campground a few kilometers down the road. The campground seemed nice, but when we told the campground owner we didn’t have a tent, he told us it was “too cold to sleep in car” and directed us to another campground across the river that apparently had bungalows. When we got there, we found the place eerily deserted. We saw the bungalows, but it was clear nobody was staying there and they were all locked up. There was no one there but a few RVs. We decided to keep looking, and that spending the night in the car there would be our last resort.
Guess where we ended up. After hours of searching, we had no other options. It kept getting colder and colder, and we really did not have enough clothing to provide padding and keep us warm. By this time in our journey, Max had already lost every long sleeved article of clothing he had brought (first fleece left in Newport, second fleece left on train to Lucerne, long sleeve shirt who knows where) which made things worse. He did still manage to sleep in until 10 though, so it couldn’t have been that bad.
Max, still exhausted, at the castle.
In the morning we went to the castle. Built over the course of hundreds of years and several different reigns, the castle is a beautiful and bizarre hodgepodge of architectural styles in varying stages of disrepair. Some parts of the castle are well preserved and look as though they were built near the 18th century, while other parts could have been from the 1300s. There was even a tower that had toppled over and was crumbling at the base of the castle, the entire interior exposed where it had broken away.
Old town square.
We visited the torture museum in Rothenburg - what medieval town is complete without one? A lot of torturing went on in those days, and they had quite a few devices for carrying out their torture. There were instruments of harsh punishment, including stretchers, as in to stretch a person's limbs from their body, pulleys with weights, used to hang people up and basically use their own weight plus heavy balls tied to their feet to dislocate shoulders and other such things, and spiky chairs to sit on. There were also less severe punishments used more to embarass the victim than create pain, such as these weird masks with big glasses and long ears and tongues for women who gossiped (they saw and heard everything and then talked about it all). If I wasn't already scared to imagine life during medieval times because of seiges and famines and all those terrible things, the torture museum really drove the point home.
Max in the stocks.
The beautiful view of the city skyline.
The city wall.
View of the castle as we were driving away.
The train we took was at 4 pm, and it was the last one of the day. You didn't need a reservation, meaning anyone could get on, meaning that it, like Oktoberfest, was insanely crowded. The first car we walked through was so full that a lot of people were standing in the aisle without a seat. Several subsequent cars were the same way. We were finally lucky to find a few empty seats, but it was unlike anything we'd seen before or since.
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