Deutschland, Part 4

I've been stalling. I promised to get to the telling of my time in Stuttgart, and I've put it off for a few posts. The pressure of describing the juiciest part of the trip has gotten to me a little. And tonight's no different. Instead of regaling you with tales of the Porsche factory and the Mercedes museum, tonight you only get a taste of the city itself. Quite honestly most of the people I bribe to read this blog will be more interested in this anyway.

My hostel in Stuttgart, Inter-Hostel, was a very friendly one, if not the busiest of my stops. Stuttgart is relatively minor on the list of tourist towns in Germany, with the exception of the car buffs. When I got to the hostel, there were two guys at the front desk, and one of the offered to show me around that night. My room was on the 6th floor. The place had no elevator, and my pack was pretty heavy. On top of that, at the top of the spirally staircase, I found that the key they gave me opened the wrong door, but I decided to crash in the room that it opened, rectifying the situation on my way out to dinner.

Aside from the labor of getting to a comfy bed, the sixth floor did have its advantages. This was the view from my window.

While Stuttgart is not that touristy, it does have a US military presence, and I wound up meeting a couple of Navy dudes and hanging out with them for a while. One of them even joined my little hostel group for a drink at the bar.

After coming back from dinner, another American happened to be sharing the 6th floor suite of two private rooms, but he complained that his room (the room I was supposed to have gotten) smelled like smoke and he was kinda allergic. After going up to assess the situation, I realized that it didn't smell that bad to me, and Lance, an Asian guy from San Fran, seemed like a pretty decent guy, so I made the swap. Good call on my part.

I proceeded to hit the bar with Lance, the guy at the front desk from earlier, and the Navy dude. I spent the whole time talking cars with Lance, while the Navy guy, who turned out to be a little crazy, talked the ear off the German dude, who probably wanted to shoot himself. And Lance also gave me some friendly advice about my upcoming trip to the Nürburgring, which incidentally, he'd just done himself. Probably a bit more aggressively than I, since he said he'd learned all the corners through Gran Turismo, the video game. Finally, he told me to get to the Porsche museum by 9 to get on a factory tour, and he's the real reason I was able to do that tour. Thank you, Lance.

Well, that's really all I have to say about the city itself. To be perfectly honest, I neglected the conventionally touristy spots in Stuttgart for the sake of the automotive stuff...but what did you expect? Next post will be about the Porsche factory and museum, I swear!