Tübingen

There's a group of countries that're known as the "-stans". The list is mostly made up of the former Soviet republics like Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan but it also includes places like Pakistan and Afghanistan. They're pretty far off the normal "tourist" path so most people don't know much about them, me included. I would like to add a few to the to-do list. Any ideas?

About two weeks ago, Diana and I went to visit Esslingen, which I recently found out is one of the "-gens". Similar to their distant "-stan" cousins, but much easier to visit, the "-gens" is a group of small towns and villages located in the area surrounding Stuttgart. This past weekend we decided to visit Tübingen, which is another one of the "-gens".

Just like Stuttgart and Esslingen, Tübingen is located on the Neckar river. It's about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Stuttgart and is a well preserved medieval-style town with lots of classic architecture:

In some ways, Tübingen has a similar feel to other medieval towns that I've been to like Carcasonne, Mont Saint Michel, or Toledo (Spain) with their city walls, tight winding cobblestone streets, castles, and impressive churches. As I've done more and more traveling around Europe, I have seen other similarities and overlap such as this statue of Saint George slaying the dragon (just outside the main church):

There were some more paintings and sculptures of Saint George inside the church as well. An unusual feature inside the church was this mausoleum area behind the main altar where several past VIPs seem to be buried:

To see the mausoleum, we had to pay one euro to enter but the "donation" included getting to climb a couple of hundred stairs to a platform outside the church's bell tower. This is the view of the Tübingen castle (upper left corner), the Tübingen city hall (brown roof center right), and some of the city:

Tübingen's been around for quite a while but really started to grow in importance with the founding in the 1400s of the Eberhard Karls University. The town definitely has a university feel to it and, today, students make up about 25,000 of the town's 90,000 residents.

The Tübingen Marktplatz and Rathaus (city hall):

One of the things that Diana does very well is find random, good restaurants. She managed to help me GAIN weight while we were in China two years ago by always picking great spots. While we were walking down a random street in Tübingen, she stopped at one door that didn't even appear to be a restaurant, took a look at a couple of pictures they had up, and told me that "this is a good place to eat". How could I say no, right? It turns out that it was a Serbian restaurant that also served traditional German food. Neither of us had ever had Serbian food so we ordered one Serbian dish and one trad German one. We also ordered a couple of glasses of Bosnian wine, which ended up being interesting and good. Oh, and the restaurant was in the basement of an older house and looked sort of like a cave:

The restaurant's food was delicious and priced reasonably. It was different and interesting enough that I'd go back if given the chance.

A cool Tübingen house that's right across the street from the restaurant:

Because of,the university, many famous people have spent some time in Tübingen including Alois Altzeimer (who is credited with identifying Altzeimer's disease), Friedrich Meischer (who first discovered DNA), and the current pope, Benedict XVI (who was on the university faculty). Meischer's DNA discovery took place in the kitchen/laboratory of the HohenTübingen castle:

The view towards the center of town and the church (light-colored tower on the right) from the castle:

Another in the series of self-portraits. This one in front of the Neckar river, Neckarmauer (river wall), Neckarfront (the row of houses facing the river), and the main church (tower):

Tübingen is a nice little town. Actually, I'm finding out that, at least with all the "-gens" I've visited so far, that they might make a nice place to live! Now, off to find some more "-gens"!

Porsche Museum

I think that most boys growing up, at least in the United States, fall in love with the idea of fast cars. There's something about the freedom implied by having a car and the thrill of going fast in that car that we're drawn to. I can remember that, at one point, I even had a picture of a Porsche 959 on the wall of my bedroom. Because we were still kids and until we were old enough to drive, we had to fill that need for speed and thrills by racing our bicycles and riding our skateboards.

Over many years, I've owned a bunch of different cars but my deepest affection is reserved for only two of them. The first, as I've written about before, was my MINI that I owned until last year. That car was amazingly fun to drive. The other love is for air-cooled Volkswagens, including this 1965 convertible that I bought during my first year of college:

I owned and loved that car for almost 20 years. It was the car that I drove across country when I moved from Philadelphia to California. The convertible was actually the third air-cooled VW I owned but it was by far the best.

So, what does my early love of cars and my owning a bunch of oil-leaking VWs have to do with anything? Those VW Bugs were originally designed by Ferdinand Porsche, who also just happened to design and build...Porsches. And guess where you can see a whole museum full of Porsches? Yep, here in Stuttgart!

Located just north of the center of the city, across the street from one of the main Porsche factory complexes...

...is the spaceship-shaped Porsche Museum:

The building is quite impressive. The scale was hard to make out when I was looking at it, and, looking at the photos now, it's even more difficult to appreciate the scale. The building's designed with reception, restaurant, and workshop areas on the ground floor and the museum-part of the building suspended in the air on giant "legs".

After paying to enter the museum and picking up our audio guides, it's up into the white box in the air via an escalator:

The first thing that I saw at the top of the escalator was Ferdinand Porsche's Type 64 body that he designed and built in 1939 for long-distance racing. Its aerodynamic and lightweight aluminum body style was based on the earlier work he was doing on what would later become the VW Beetle. The Type 64 was the basis for almost everything that Porsche has done since.

Around the corner from the Type 64 was the car that I really came to the museum to see. This is, in my opinion, Porsche's masterpiece, a Type 1 (in this case, a 1950 production-model VW), which he started working on way back in the early 1930s as a "people's car" (or "volks wagen" in German):

What I never knew about Ferdinand Porsche and learned at the museum was that the guy was a genius. He was playing with concepts and building motors, cars, and other parts that today we consider somewhat new and exotic. Take for example this in-hub electric wheel motor for a car that he designed, built, and displayed back in 1900. It wasn't until the last ten years or so that designers have just started developing (again) electric, in-hub, wheel motors for use in hybrid cars.

The Porsche Museum was filled with his different experiments and achievements. They do a great job showing the evolution of the cars from the earliest prototypes all the way through today's production and racing models. There's even a Formula1 car on display along with a small manufacturing display (which I wish was bigger).

Getting to finally see a Porsche 959 and one of the original Beetles was definitely cool. The architecture of the building and museum are impressive and the cars themselves are pretty amazing. Somehow, though, I'm still drawn to the Volkswagen-like cars. There's something about that slightly rattle-y sound of the air-cooled motor's valves working away that just draws me in. Porsche's managed to take the original people's car and make it into a driving monster. Probably the best representation of this combination was this 1948 Type 356 that they had a couple of on display:

Since visiting the museum, I heard what I'd call rumors that you can go for a real factory tour at Porsche. I'm hoping that's the case and that I'll get a chance to see it while I'm here in Germany. Interestingly enough, visiting the Porsche Museum makes me want to go visit Volkswagen...hmm... ROAD TRIP?!?!

Mercedes Benz Classic Center

Upon arriving to Stuttgart on the day we moved to Germany, we had to wait a while at the airport so we visited the tourist-information center. They gave us about 30 brochures and information packets about what to see both in the city as well as in the surrounding Baden-Württemberg area. One brochure in particular was about all the car-related places to go, which I've been picking off one by one.

Our first visit was at Meilenwerk and then I went to Gottlieb Daimler Memorial. All together, there are about 15 places listed in the guidebook. I'm not planning on going to everything but I thought that I'd stop by and check out the Mercedes Classic Center, which the book lists as having the "legendary" 300 SL Gullwing, among other classics, on display.

The Classic Center is located a little bit east of the center of the city just past the Gottlieb Daimler Memorial. Interestingly enough, I found out that they have another Classic Center in Irvine, California, right near where I used to live in Oceanside (San Diego). Small world!

What interested me about visiting the Classic Center was that they have a showroom of "classic" Mercedes as well as a service center for the "classics" (or so they say in the brochure). I really wanted to see what the hype was about for the 300 SL Gullwing and I thought that it'd be cool to see them working on some old cars.

But, wait! There's no 300 SL on display! Where did it go? It wasn't there and no one was around to ask. The place was EMPTY of people! Oh well, scratch that item off the to-do list. They do have a bunch of cool old cars on display including this 1957 300 SL Roadster that had originally been sold in Portugal but later moved to Colorado in the United States. The car even still has its registration sticker from Colorado in corner of the windshield:

The other car, besides the 300 SL Gullwing, that I wanted to see was the 1886 Benz Patent Motor Car, which is considered (by Mercedes, at least) as the first motor car in the world. The one on display at the Classic Center is a replica that is actually for sale. They make them right down to every little detail and sell them for about 66,000 euros (~$88,000 U.S.) so if you've got a little cash hanging around waiting to be spent, this might make a nice Christmas gift...

The Patent car was beautiful, especially the single-cylinder motor that's under/behind the seat. I loved the leather belts and large flywheel:

Honestly, it was a bummer not getting to see the Gullwing but all was not lost because, apparently, Mercedes has gotten into manufacturing replicas of other antiques. Hidden among the golf shirts, photo books, and other merch for sale was this gem. Yep, a Star Wars Light Saber, complete with power source, for the low price of 22 euros (~$30 U.S.). Score!

I didn't end up buying one because this was the Rebel color and I wanted an Empire one. I'll probably check amazon to see if they have it. They'll probably be cheaper anyway.

Oh, and guess what! The service center is not viewable by the public! Rip-off! No 300 SL Gullwing and no way to view the repair area...unless you walk around back and look in the bay windows:

Did you notice that old convertible? Way cool!

Score one for Mercedes selling light sabers. Subtract one point for no 300 SL Gullwing on display. Add another point for the Benz Patent Motorcar being on display. And, subtract one last point for not being able to see the repair area. Let me see. Yep, zero points for this museum. At least it was free!