Stuttgart

Stuttgart

Stuttgart (in the heart of the region of Germany called Schwabia) was our home for four years, so naturally it holds a special place in our hearts and our memories. To read what the Encyclopedia Britannica says about Stuttgart, click here.

Our migration to Europe was an interesting process. I was doing work for the folks from the Stuttgart MITRE office for a year or more, and had taken a few trips over to Stuttgart and Naples in support of that. The manager over there had asked if I wanted to transfer over, but I assumed that it would be a non-starter with Lynn, so I never even raised the subject with her. Then one day it came up in conversation and Lynn was really... really excited about it (surprised the heck out of me), so we started down the road.....

We arrived blindly in September 1991, in more ways than one. We had heard rumors that housing was difficult to find, and that some families had lived in hotels for months while they looked for housing, so when the office manager called to say that she had found an apartment that seemed to fit our needs (3 or more bedrooms, close to the school the girls would be attending, close to public transportation, etc.), we jumped at the chance and signed the lease via fax sight unseen, even before we left the US. We figured that even if it was a dump, we could move in a year if we didn't like it. But we did like it, and we stayed there for our entire four years - we even had to fight the landlord to stay (more on that later).

Our house was what we call a townhouse in the States (in Germany it was referred to as a row-house); basement, ground floor, 1st floor, loft, in a row of five identical townhouses, all attached. We lived in a southern suburb of Stuttgart called Möhringen, on Balingerstraße. The basement was rough concrete walls and ceiling, and sticky carpet over the concrete floor. A bit spartan, but it made a great playroom for the kids, and an office for me. We also had a cool-room down there (where we kept the beer and wine), and the utility room where the furnace, hot water heater, and washer-dryer were.

The ground floor had the kitchen (very small - room for one person to work), a half-bathroom, and a large combination living-room / dining-room, with a patio out the back that led to a tiny back yard. The first floor (in Europe the "first" floor is the first floor above the ground floor - what we would call the 2nd floor) had three small bedrooms, one with a balcony overlooking the tiny back yard, and a full bathroom. The loft was in the attic, and it was another bedroom - this one large - with skylights. Also up there was a storage space under the front eaves.

All in all it was a great little townhouse, heated by natural gas (forced hot water). Construction over in Germany is almost exclusively concrete, so it was a solid, dense place, and almost impossible to hear anything from the neighbors (except when the next-door neighbor was playing his drums or saxophone). The only thing we struggled with were the German appliances and the kitchen. For all their technical know-how, Germans don't know how to build appliances. We had a "full-sized" German refrigerator, which to us was little more than a dorm-sized toy. Most German fridge's are meant to be built into a cabinet up high, so you can reach them, but ours was free-standing on the floor, so I had to get down on my hands and knees to get stuff out of the lower shelves. The top of the fridge was at my waist. We put the microwave on top of it and used it as a countertop extension. The oven was also quite small by our standards (not enough room to cook a decent 16-lb. turkey), as were the washer-dryer. The washer could handle maybe five shirts at a time, and the cycle took well over an hour.

We lived in a great neighborhood. The school that the girls attended (the International School of Stuttgart - ISS) was about 4 blocks from the house. We had all sorts of shops and restaurants within a short walk, and two subway/streetcar stops (called the "U-Bahn"). Every morning I would walk to the U-Bahn stop and ride the train to the next town (Vaihingen), where I would hop off the train and hop on a bus for a short ride to the gates of the US military base where I worked. In the evening I would reverse the process. Very convenient. It also meant that Lynn could have the American mini-van we brought over with us and we didn't have the expense of a second car. There was a getranktmarkt (literally, the drink market - a place to buy beer, juice, and other drinks) across the street, and a vegetable market, and the Saturday morning open-air market was two blocks away. I would walk down on Saturday morning and buy Bretzeln - sometimes giant ones a foot across.

We had a dozen restaurants within walking distance of our house - all spectacular. They ranged from the German equivalent of a 99 restaurant called Wienerwald (literally, The Vienna Woods) which was a chain owned by the same company that used to own Lums restaurants over here, all the way to a Michelin 4-star gourmet restaurant that we could only afford to eat lunch in, with everything in between. There were Italian restaurants, and southern German style restaurants, and trout restaurants, and others, all within walking distance. We even had a Gyro fast-food with great Greek sandwiches.

We spent our first six months in Germany trying to get to know our neighbors better. They seemed a bit stand-offish and aloof - not unpleasant, but also not overly welcoming and friendly. It turns out that the Schwabian German custom is the exact opposite to the American "Welcome Wagon" way of greeting new neighbors. In Schwabia, the new neighbors are supposed to reach out first and introduce themselves. Nobody told us this, but we stumbled on the secret by accident. After six or more months of getting little or no reaction to our eye contact and verbal greetings on the street, we took the bull by the horns and invited all our neighbors to an American 4th of July barbecue, with hot dogs, hamburgers, grilled chicken, and American beer (Bud long-necks) for comic relief (offering American beer to a German is like offering a Ferrari owner a ride on your motor scooter). It was a b-i-g hit. They're probably still talking about that party! We finally got to meet all our neighbors, and became friends with most of them - and life-long best friends with some. And the hit of the party? The twist-off caps on the Bud long-necks. German beer does not come in twist-off bottles. All the beer got opened that day. Not all the beer got consumed, but all the twist-offs were twisted off!

Stuttgart was a great place to live. There was always something going on, and there was something for everyone. From the world-famous Christmas Market (die Weihnachtsmarkt) in the center of town, to the Cannstatter Volksfest - Schwabia's answer to the Oktoberfest, and everything imaginable in between.... Kraut fests, onion fests, wine fests, fish fests, and on and on.

A Fest Tent At the Volksfest
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The International Garden Show
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Carnival Rides at the Frühlingsfest
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Look What Parked In Front Of Our House!
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September - October 1999

Everyone in the world has heard of the Oktoberfest in Munich (München), but fewer people know that the 2nd largest beer festival in the world happens just two hours north-west of Munich, in Stuttgart - at about the same time! The Cannstatter Volksfest is a combination harvest festival, beer festival, and monster carnival, all rolled into one. In addition to the three main beer tents (one for each major brewery in Stuttgart; Dinkelacker, Schwabian Braü, and Stuttgarter Hofbraü), there are 6-8 smaller beer tents. The big tents hold upwards to 10,000 people (as do the tents at Oktoberfest in Munich) and have 8-20-piece bands playing all the time. The smaller tents have smaller bands, and seat from 500-3000 people. The carnival rides are incredible, and there are so many of them. There are lots of what I call puke-bucket rides; rides that spin you around and around and upside down and such that your stomach does a walk-out protest out of self-preservation! They also have the largest mobile ferris wheel in the world.

I went down to the fest on Sunday (the day before I flew home) for a few hours, had a mass of Dinkelacker festbier and a couple of Münchener Weißwursts. It had rained previously, and the clouds were threatening all the time, but it never really rained while I was there. Here are some pictures from my walkabout. Click on any thumbnail to see a larger version (35-55 kb JPEG files).

This is inside the Dinkelacker fest tent, where I had my beer and wursts. The green decorations hanging from everything are hops plants - how appropriate!	Outside the big tents, each brewery had a fest wagon on display with horses and everything. This was the Dinkelacker one.....	One of the many scary fun-houses at the fest. Remember as you look at these - this is all temporary and only lasts for 3 weeks. Once its over all these rides and beer tents get torn down and the place is back to an empty field...... until the Frühlings (Spring) Fest!!
The Space Roller - one of the many puke-bucket rides I mentioned. The dangly things are people's legs being swirled around......	Fish on a stick! Roasted over charcoal. Yum!!

January 2000

I returned again to Stuttgart for a few days on business (9-12 January). This time I stayed at the Copthorne Hotel at the Stuttgart International (SI) plaza in Möhringen. Nice hotel, but a tad on the expensive side, and they charge extra for everything (parking, breakfast, etc.). I visited one evening with our old neighbors Gerhard and Ursula, and worked. Not much else. A quick trip with no photos to show for it - it was raining shlushy snow the whole time. Yuck.

April 2000

Lynn and I returned to Stuttgart together for a week's vacation that was part of a business trip for me. We spent one week visiting old friends and old sights, and then Lynn flew home and I spent another week working. Here are some narratives of our visit:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6