Ritter Sport Chocolate Factory And Museum

Stuttgart's probably best known outside of Germany as the home of Porsche and Mercedes but it should probably be better known as the home of the square. Well, actually, Ritter Sport, makers of the square chocolate bars:

Since I grew up in Philadelphia, chocolate always meant Hershey's, which is made in nearby Hershey, Pennsylvania. It wasn't until I was older that I began...experimenting...with other brands. I can remember seeing Ritter Sport's unusual, maybe even weird, multi-colored square chocolate bars at supermarkets in California. I could never figure out why it said "Sport" on the package and, until recently, figured that Europeans ate them as some sort of energy or protein-type bar when they were working out or playing sports. (I really thought that for a time.) It wasn't until I got to go to Ritter Sport's factory, art and chocolate museum, and cafe that I found out the real answer...but first...

Ritter Sport is now located in Waldenbuch. It's about 30 minutes via car south of Stuttgart but it was founded in 1912 in the Bad Cannstatt area of the city, which Diana and I recently visited. We just happened to come across the old Ritter Sport factory. If you look at the left-hand side of the front of the building, you'll see a tiny white sign that says that this building used to be the Ritter factory.

The company outgrew its Bad Cannstatt location in 1930 and they packed up the whole family and moved to their new digs. The new factory is surprisingly small considering how many chocolate bars they say that they make per day. Oh yeah, like the chocolate bars, everything is themed in squares, lots of colored squares...

The Ritter "complex" is made up of a handful of buildings including the factory and offices (above) and their relatively new combo art museum, chocolate museum, chocolate workshop, chocolate shop, and cafe:

The art museum houses the personal collection of the family and, guess what, it's all about squares! They do have special exhibits too with one of the upcoming ones about an art-and-chocolate theme. The chocolate museum includes exhibits about the history of the family and business, the raw materials...

...and the supply chain...

One of the more interesting things (probably only to me) was this one display where they highlight three Ritter employees. Other than advertisements, almost all the other non-chocolate displays are about the family, which I guess is appropriate since it's a family-owned business but I thought it was nice that they included something about these three folks...

Speaking of the family, they are currently on the third generation running the show. The main figurehead used in most of their materials is the grandson of the founder. It's somewhat funny as he's got big hair and has had big hair all the way back to photos from the 70s. On the left (below) is a book that Ritter Sport put together for the 100th anniversary of the company and you can see that Alfred's one of the things that's featured. Inside the book and mentioned somewhere during the tour, the company is co-run by him and his sister (she's on the right in the right photo below). I saw only one photo of the two of them together and they both looked fairly uncomfortable. The one below is actually two cardboard-cut-out style photos put next to each other (they did it -- not me). Call me crazy but I'd bet a box full of Ritter bars that the brother and sister team don't get along. I'm not sure why I feel that but it's the sense that I get from their photos... Hmm...conspiracy theory...

The chocolate museum has a video that shows more of the history of the company. It's really the only part of the whole museum that shows the actual manufacturing operation, which is what I'd really like to see. One of the more curious, but cool, things in the museum was this "game" that has a small version of the Ritter Sport factory in it. When the button is pressed, the factory lights up and shakes for a few seconds and a small truck with a mini Ritter bar on it comes out of the factory and "drives" to a slot in the front of the display. The chocolate bar is dropped off into a bin and you get to keep/eat it. This is Berat showing off his "winnings" to Diana and Xiao while Thanos gets ready to take his turn:

They also had an interactive display where they show Ritter Sport's commercials from over the years. Can you hear me now??? Thanos, Berat, me, and Xiao are enjoying the show:

By the way, our group was pretty international with me from the United States, Diana from Colombia, Thanos from Greece, Berat from Turkey and Germany, and Xiao from China. Yeah for international day!

After we were finished touring the museums we went to the factory store:

Surprisingly, there were no free samples but they do have a load of rejected chocolate bars (mostly broken/cracked) for sale really cheap. They also sell their full line of products for about 20% less than what they cost at the store. I was "moved" by the "minimeter" that has 100 mini bars of chocolate in it to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Ritter. What can I say, it was an emotional experience...

The one thing that I was bummed about with the whole visit was that they have a workshop where they let kids make chocolate bars. You might remember the time that I got to make Cup Noodles while in Osaka. (Definitely one of my favorite stories and among the best photos of anything I've written about.) Unfortunately, Ritter only allows "younger" kids to participate. Oh well, maybe next time...

Oh, and why the square shape? Ritter legend has it that Clara Ritter, the wife and co-founder of the company, noticed that local sports fans were buying chocolate and putting it in their sport-jacket pockets where the bars would end up breaking. I'm not sure why this'd be a huge problem but Clara had the foresight to get the company to change the shape of the bar into a square that could fit into the jacket pocket of her customers, thus the "Sport" in the name. For a time, the company had some trouble convincing their customers that the bar was still the same 100 gram weight but eventually the new design stuck and became synonymous with Ritter Sport. Like their motto says, "Square. Practical. Good." I agree.

Thanks again to my international travel companions for the fun day and especially to Berat for putting it all together. And, yes, I have enough chocolate to last for months at a reasonable rate of consumption...not that I expect that!

A Pretzel A Day - Or Memories Last A Lifetime

Sometimes I'll hear a song that'll take me back to some moment in time. For example and for some reason, the Don Henley song Boys Of Summer, which I've never been a huge fan of, reminds me of driving down an empty Interstate 95 in Center City Philadelphia late one night. I'm not even sure if the memory is a real one or not but the song puts me right back there. Other times, something like a smell or flavor will have that effect but I can never really know when it'll happen because it's so random.

I recently had a "smell flashback" happen here in Stuttgart. I was walking back to the metro from my German class and I passed by a small kiosk that sells pretzels and other pretzel-dough-based items. The moist, "doughy" smell of the fresh-baked pretzels put me right back in the hallway of school when I was in fourth grade. Growing up in Philadelphia, soft pretzels were a daily "cookies-and-milk" type of snack when we were in school. The flashback that I have, which (again) I'm not sure really happened, is of me walking down the hall right after the large shopping-style paper bags of pretzels had been delivered to the classrooms but were still hanging on the doors outside the classrooms.

In case you don't know, the area around Philadelphia and especially out in Lancaster County is the pretzel capital of the United States. The specialty is the Philadelphia soft pretzel that usually looks something like this:

Well, in another "The World Is A Very Small Place" series, I get to eat fresh pretzels every day (if I want) here in Stuttgart! The pretzel originated, it is believed, somewhere in the area around southern Germany and/or nearby Austria, which just so happens to be where I'm living! The pretzels here are different than the ones where I grew up and tend to look something like this one that I bought a while ago in the Frankfurt airport (note my mobile phone on the right for relative size):

Back when we first arrived here, I was out looking for apartments near the center of the city and came across this bakery, which has a sign out front with a large pretzel on it:

I thought, "oh my god, I've found pretzel heaven!" but it turns out that the pretzel is a symbol for a certain type of bakery in this area. Here's another with a similar sign:

Anyway, as I've been sampling the local delicacy, I snapped some pictures so that I could share my pretzel-a-day habit with you. Well, actually, I started out with a pretzel (or three) per day when we got here but I've cut back to maybe one per week now to try to maintain my "girlish figure". The photos are in no particular order starting with this one, a Laugen Bretzel (bretzel is German for pretzel):

The typical pretzel here has the above shape and tend to be pretty big. Thin and crunchy towards the center and fat and more bread-like at the bottom. They're not as moist as what I grew up with but they're still yummy. The next one is the size of a large dinner roll and is called a Laugenbrötchen (basically "pretzel roll" in German):

I may have already polished off a couple of sandwiches on those rolls... The next one is called a Laugenhörnchen (pretzel horn roll), which I had at a restaurant near the University of Stuttgart:

One of my favorites so far was this croissant-style sandwich roll, called a Laugencroissant (yep, pretzel croissant), which seemed to be made from a combination of pretzel and croissant dough. Can you say yum?

This one has an even longer name, Laugenmohnstange. It's the most like an actual bread of all the pretzels that I've had so far so much so that it's even covered with poppy seeds:

It's been a treat to eat such a large variety of pretzels. I love it! While writing this story, I came across a pretzel festival that takes place once a year not too far from here. I added it to my calender! Woohoo! PretzelFest!

Lastly, I tend to travel fairly light but I do have my limits. My guilty pleasure is bringing food back from Trader Joe's each time I go to the U.S. My luggage is always packed to the maximum-allowed weight with peanut butter and other stuff like these peanut-butter-filled and chocolate-covered pretzel bites that they sell at Trader Joe's:

The picture doesn't do them justice but just know that they're worth lugging one-third the way around the world...

One last note, Diana, our roommate Berat, and I went food shopping last night at the "big" supermarket -- the one that has large-sized packages and lots of foreign food items. Diana and Berat each, independently, picked up some Snyder's Of Hanover Flavored-Pretzel Pieces. Yep, they bought made-not-far-from-Philadelphia pretzels at a supermarket in the home of the pretzel. Too funny. Actually, I think I'll go see what type of flashback they give me...

Bad Cannstatt

Last weekend, Diana and I were looking for something to do and we decided to go to the Bad Cannstatt area of Stuttgart. It's probably one of, if not the oldest parts of town and it's right across the Neckar river from the U-park that leads to the main train station and the city center.

I had walked through the area on the day that I visited the nearby Gotlieb Daimler Memorial but it was just a quickie on the way back home. The area is pretty old and probably built up around the mineral spas that are there. It's home to Cannstatter Wassen, where a couple of large, Oktoberfest-types of celebrations are held, two sports stadiums, and the Mercedes Museum (which I haven't yet gone to).

The main pedestrian street that runs through the middle of Bad Cannstatt:

It's also home to the oldest residential building in Stuttgart, the Klösterle, which was originally built in 1563. It was most recently renovated in 1983 and is now a restaurant. We were hoping to get coffee and/or something to snack on there but it was after 2pm and they close from 2pm to 5pm. We were able to stick our heads in and see some of the amazing wood work in the dining room.

I liked walking down the winding medieval streets because the area's full of beautiful old buildings. A random old house:

A shop with apartments and/or offices above:

A local pub:

Another random older house:

I liked the view from the parking lot down this street:

Another restaurant in a building from 1561:

One of my favorite things that we came across that day was where one building had been taken down at some point and you can see how the "new" building next door is constructed. You'd never know it when you look at somewhat-boring, brown-stucco front of the building.

We ended up walking around for about an hour or so then got some coffee and a particularly-"non-euro-sized" piece of cake at a cafe. It wasn't Claim Jumper sized but it was big. And good. It's cool that an area with so many architectural gems so close to the center of Stuttgart survives somewhat intact for us to enjoy now.

Oh yeah, near where I grew up in Philadelphia there was a place called Cannstatter Volksfest-Verein that we always knew as "the German place up on Academy (road)". It's mostly a catering hall but they do hold a few "German" festivals each year including an Oktoberfest one. The few times that I was there I figured that it would be as close to Germany as I'd ever get. Hmm...funny how things work out...