Car Museums in Stuttgart

(Darren heavily edited this since I don't know much about cars.  Try and figure out which sentences are mine and which he added.)

Sorry for being late to post.  Things got a little crazy last week with my ongoing search for a post-move job in the Bay Area; hopefully I'll have some good news to share on that front later this week.  In the meantime, I'll jump back a month to finish writing about our quick weekend trip to Germany in December.  On Saturday the 9th, after doing lots of Christmas activities the day before, we shifted gears (get it? :) and spent the day in Stuttgart going to car museums.  If you remember, Stuttgart was our very first trip in Europe, but our main goal while visiting last time was to get our visas, so we didn't have a chance to see many sights.  This time, Stuttgart was on the way home from Rothenburg and Nuremberg, so it seemed like a good opportunity to go back and see some things we missed.  Our main focus was to see the Porsche and Mercedes car museums.  Did you know that the automobile was invented in Stuttgart and these two car companies were founded there as well?  I didn't know that until we visited these museums.

We first went to the Porsche Museum and spent the late morning and much of the afternoon there.  We bought the audio guides at both museums and walked around to see a variety of cars from throughout each company's long history.  I felt the Porsche Museum wasn't as good as the BMW museum because I don't feel like it gave enough background about the company's founder, Ferdinand Porsche, or about the history of the company in general.  Mostly, the museum just showed lots of cars, with a strong emphasis on their success in high-octane racing. 

This is the Porsche 356, the company's first production car and the first one they produced with the name "Porsche"

The silver one on the left was the model James Dean was driving when he died in a crash

The 356 Spyder

Looking at the dashboard of one of the roadsters

Some aerodynamic racing cars from the latter half of the 20th century; the yellow and purple one that you can barely see on the left end of the line has something like 1200 horsepower!

A late-model 911; Darren wants one like this

My love, the Panamera

Probably the closest he'll get to this anytime soon, unless he buys me a Panamera :)

The outside of the museum, which was redone in 2008

Even though the Porsche museum wasn't my favorite (since I'm not really a racing enthusiast), it was still fun to visit.  Plus, they had a very affordable cafe (who would have thought that anything at the Porsche Museum would be inexpensive?) where I again enjoyed my favorite Swabian dish, called Maultaschen, which filled me right up.  I love eating in Germany!  (I'm already scoping out German restaurants in the Bay Area, anyone want to join?) 

Next, we drove over to the Mercedes-Benz Museum.  This was a much more comprehensive museum because the founders were the inventors of the first automobiles, as I learned.  Thus, the scope of the museum was much wider, and they covered a lot of concepts in the development of motor transportation, rather than just focusing on 60 years of race cars.  Carl Benz filed a patent for a three-wheeled automobile in 1886, while Gottlieb Daimler converted a stagecoach into an automobile later that year.

A replica of Carl Benz's automobile invention

A replica of Gottlieb Daimler's four-wheeled automobile

Built in 1902 and once owned by the Vanderbilts, this is the oldest Mercedes in existence (cool, huh?!)

The Mercedes name actually comes from an extremely wealthy racing enthusiast, Emil Jellinek, who had Daimler's company build a car to his specifications.  He named that model after his daughter, Mercedes.  The Mercedes model and its successors became so popular that they came to define the brand for all the company's future cars.  Daimler and Benz's companies merged in the 1920s and the Mercedes-Benz name was born.

One of the stylish touring cars from the 1930s that was popular with heads of state

An example of more affordable post-WWII cars manufactured by Mercedes

As we went through the museum in order of the history of the company, it was funny to read how quite often, major safety and fuel economy changes were forced upon these car companies by US policies.  Instead of making separate cars that fit US standards, the company just redesigned most of their cars and so safety, fuel economy, and environmental impact were improved worldwide.  They talked about US pollution regulations and had a picture of Ralph Nader highlighting the poor safety standards in automobiles in the 1960s.  US politics may drive you crazy, but sometimes we do things that affect the world for good.

Mercedes not only makes standard commercial cars, but also ambulances, trucks, buses, construction vehicles, etc.  They highlighted some of these other vehicles in the museum as well, and since Darren likes to see everything, we went over to take a look at them.

This truck is basically a giant snowblower

Can't forget all the fancy limos Mercedes has made over the years for people like the Emperor of Japan

The very first Popemobile

Overall, I enjoyed the Mercedes museum more, but the BMW one was still my favorite.  Either way, it was still a great day and I'm glad we made time to see these before we moved.  I guess we just should have bought some guidebooks for the museums so we could remember the names and significance of all the cars we saw!  After finishing at the museums, we left Stuttgart and drove back to Zurich to prepare to leave for the US just a few days later to spend time with family for Christmas.   

Weekend in Germany

Now that the holidays are over, it's back to blogging.  Our European adventure is almost over, but we are still managing to get in a few more trips.  For example, back in the beginning of December, we did a quick tour of some southern Germany sites I had been interested in seeing.  We left Friday morning and drove up to the cute town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber that I had visited before.  I had really wanted to take Darren and I wanted to go back to that amazing Christmas store.  

We arrived in Rothenburg in the afternoon to chilly temperatures and a bit of rain, however, Rothenburg was even more magical than before.  It was decorated from head to toe for Christmas and it really boosted my Christmas spirit.  We walked around to see the decorations and visited the small Christmas market in the town square.  After that, we stopped in a restaurant, called Baumeisterhaus, on the square and had a delicious and (for me) hearty lunch.  I had pork roast with potato dumplings and the best red cabbage I've ever eaten.  

In front of the Rothenburg tiny Christmas market on the main square

Happy to be eating in Germany

An example of all the Christmas decorations in town

After lunch, we spent a good hour in the two Käthe Wohlfart stores working around the crowds and deciding what to buy.  Darren did snap some pictures of the inside this time with his phone so that we could show it looked like.  We picked up some traditional German Christmas items like straw ornaments and a real nutcracker.  I am excited to display them next year.

The entrance to the Christmas store

Inside the Christmas store

Some traditional German Christmas decorations

On our way out of Rothenburg

We only spent a bit of time in Rothenburg because I wanted to see the Nürnberg (Nuremberg) Christmas market that night.  We drove another hour east and arrived in town around dinnertime.  It was very chilly outside, so we bundled up to walk over to the Hauptmarkt where the Christmas market was.  This main square is also home to the Frauenkirche, a beautiful church, and the Schöner Brunnen, a beautiful 62-foot fountain that was built in the 14th century.   

Hauptmarkt with the huge fountain in the middle and the church in the background

The market had a dozen or so rows of stalls, each selling food, Christmas treats, and Christmas decorations, among other things.  We walked through all the rows and purchased some Christmas presents for family.  We also enjoyed sampling some market food like apple strudel, Nürnberg sausages, and waffels topped with cream.

Eating my Christmas market treat

An example of the Christmas decoration for sale

This picture is for my dad, I know he would have loved to eat this

We had Nürnberg-style sausages, which are tiny sausages put inside a roll and eaten like a sandwich

Darren enjoying his waffel

I just loved visiting this Christmas market and feeling a lot of Christmas cheer.  Darren said he thought the Strasbourg Christmas market was better, which is great for Zurich friends since it is much closer.  I'm really glad we were able to spend one more Christmas season here before we move back.  After seeing all of the Christmas market, we walked around just a bit of the old part of town.  We ran into this castle and walked up to the top where the Christmas tree was to get a view of the city.

Part of an old castle in Nürnberg

It started to rain again as we walked up there

The great view from the top captured by Darren's steady hands

A self-portait next to the Christmas tree

Stopped by another church on the way back to the car

Unfortunately, we didn't have more time to visit other sites in Nürnberg, though it seemed like a nice town with a lot of history to take in.  We left Nuremberg and drove to our hotel for the night, which was just outside of the city.  The next day we visited the Porsche and Mercedes museums in Stuttgart, which I will cover in the next post.

Back to Copenhagen, Part Two

On Friday, we spent the rest of the day at one of the most famous Copenhagen attractions, Tivoli Gardens.  Tivoli Gardens, which opened in 1843, is one of the oldest amusement parks in the world.  It is not only has great rides, but great restaurants, fun activities, and a beautiful layout.  And as most European attractions do, they go all out for Christmas.  They even have a different theme every year to make it more exciting.  This year their theme was a Russian Christmas.

The entrance to Tivoli decorated for Christmas

The first thing we did when we arrived at Tivoli, though, was to meet up with Darren's great-aunt and uncle, whom we met on our first visit to Denmark.  We chatted with them and their friends over drinks at one of the restaurants in Tivoli for a while before they left to go see a show.

Sorry, the lighting is not very good in this picture, but this is the only one I have

After they left, we then walked around Tivoli to see all the decorations and visit the Christmas stalls.  We were very impressed with all the Russian Christmas decorations, and loved everything about Tivoli.  We had borscht and beef stroganoff for dinner at the Christmas stalls, but also had to have our favorite Danish treat: aebleskivers.

A food market made to look like St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow

Enjoying the Christmas decorations

The beautiful buildings with two restaurants inside decorated all with lights

Some of the Christmas stalls selling food and souvenirs

Part of the Asian section of Tivoli Gardens, with little boats on the small pond

Looking across another small pond inside Tivoli Gardens

Trying to get a picture of Darren at Tivoli in the dark

Leaving Tivoli after a fun night

We really loved Tivoli and it was the highlight of the trip for us.  We wished we would have encouraged everyone to go when we went in August.  It was too cold that night to ride the rides (it ended up being colder than I thought, so I freezing most of the trip), but they looked really fun.  The next morning, we decided to go to the zoo.  I really love zoos (as everyone knows), and it was free with our pass, so we thought we would check it out.  Again, it was pretty cold (my hat stayed on the whole trip), but the zoo ended up being fun because there was hardly anyone there.  We got to see the animals up close without having to fight any crowds.

Bactrian camels who probably thought the weather was balmy

We were the first people to visit the Siberian tigers and they weren't even awake yet.  Darren tried to whistle to get their attention, but they only opened their eyes, looked at him, and went back to sleep.  Lazy tigers!

Left tiger looking at me and right tiger looking at Darren

We also woke up the red panda who stared at me for a while before going back to sleep

I think this zoo was fun because even though it was cold for us humans, some animals' natural habitats are in cold weather, so I think some animals were more active than I've ever seen.  For example, the highlight of the zoo was this male polar bear who was playing around in the water.  I took two videos that I really encourage you to watch.  It was also amazing to be so up close to the polar bear and brown bear to see that these really were very large and powerful animals.  We are so puny and weak compared to these guys.

The huge polar whose one paw was the size of my head

Cute polar bear playing with the bucket

Male brown bear walking around in his den

The female brown bear kept getting up on her hind legs like this

 A beautiful wolf roaming around in his den

They also had some domestic animals, of course I had to pet the baby cow

Cute baby lions!!

After the zoo, we went to the NY Carlsberg Glyptotek, which is an art museum built around the personal collection of the Carlsberg Breweries founder.  As a side note, I have really come to appreciate how similar mine and Darren's sightseeing tastes are.  We are lucky that both of us like to see the same things and like to manage our trips in the same way (with food being our only difference of opinion).  Who knew I would find someone who will go to the zoo and an art museum with me in the same day?  Anyways, we couldn't take pictures at the museum, but just enjoyed walking around and seeing the collections though there weren't any must-see pieces in there.  We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around before meeting Darren's family for dinner.

A nice picture we got of Nyhavn with Christmas decorations

We had a great dinner with Darren's family at a restaurant in Tivoli that was serving a traditional Danish Christmas food buffet.  I tried some herring this time and after one bite, I decided it wasn't for me. ;)  But all the other things like the duck, ham, potatoes, and red cabbage were delicious.  I'm really glad we were able to try all those things.  We were happy we were able to see our family in Denmark one more time before we move back to the US.  The next morning, we only had some time to relax at our hotel before we had to leave.  It was a great trip.