Stuttgart weekend

On Friday afternoon, I was planning on catching a train to Stuttgart, which arrived around 18:00. Unfortunately, the Deutsch Bahn (German railway) was on strike. Since the threat of delay was ambiguous, I decided to catch a morning train, going through Winterthur and Schaffhausen.



It always amazes me the kinds of guns that the military carry around on the street here:



I ended up having no problems with the DB, and I arrived in Stuttgart a few hours early. It was 4pm, so I stuck my bags in a locker and headed out to walk around the city. I walked down a pedestrian zone area that opened to a nice park and fountain. I checked out their book store (of course) and wandered around for a while, buying a little German new-reader book. The series has stories that consist of 800, 1600, 2400, etc words, with pictures and definitions for those of us who need it.






I meet the Freunds at the HBH Starbucks (as every train station apparently has one). And we put my bags in their car, then walked around to pick up a yummy buttered pretzel and some dinner foods. After a wonderful German dinner, the Freunds wanted to go walk around Cannstatter Volksfest; I thought it was late being after 22:00, but I wanted to go check out the second largest fair outside of Oktoberfest. We walked around and decided to ride one of the two Ferris wheels. The one we rode is the 60-Meter-Ferris wheel (the biggest mobile Ferris wheel in the world). I forgot my camera, so I did not get any pictures from the top of the wheel. However, I did manage to pick up a Lebkuchenherzen, or a Gingerbread heart, for Paul. They also have stands upon stands of cooked nuts, sugary sweets, and wursts! I picked up a few Mandelns to take with me and we sat down at a beer tent to have some Neue Wein and Zweibelkuche. The Neue wein, new wine, was only 3 days old, and was fabulous; this went well with the salty sour Zweibelkuche, otherwise known as an onion cake. Dr. Freund tried to talk me into another ride, but I might have needed a little more liquid courage to attempt the 40-meter swings, lol.

On Saturday morning, we decided to go to the town of Schwäbisch Hall, about an hour drive from Stuttgart. We picked up some new wine, veggies, and bread at the farmers market on our way out of town.



The countryside drive was so gorgeous, with many colors of the changing fall season. The German country has a lot of farm and forrest land between each Stadt (city) and Dorf (village/ town). This is because the government highly regulates zoning, and it is really difficult to get a new building permit.



Schwäbisch Hall is a fabulous little village, that has an old church, St. Michael's church, which is perched on top of little hill, and has tons of stairs leading up to it. The town often puts on outdoor theater shows on these steps, albeit, a fairly precarious show for the actors!





We stopped by a little cafe and eat lunch, then we headed over to the Edvard Munch exhibit at Kunsthalle Würth.



He is compared to Van Gogh, among others, as a great artist. Munch's style is credited as beginning the modern movement.

Other works of his can be found at: Munch Museum

A few of my favorites:




The was also a little Herbst fest going on in the town, so we stopped by and bought a rose cake... basically funnel cake in a nice rose shape, but wafer thin, unlike the funnel cakes. Herbst fest is to celebrate the harvest season.

Rose cakes:





After the excursion to Schwäbisch Hall, we went back to the house to get ready for the German opera! We went to see "DIE ENTFÜHRUNG AUS DEM SERAIL", or in English: "The Abduction from the Seraglio" by Mozart.

The music was awesome, the actors were very expressive, and the whole experience was a blast! I did not understand all the signing, but I got the gist of the story line and could understand about half of the words.

On Sunday, Frau Freund and I went to Ludwigsberg to visit the castle there. They also had a pumpkin festival, so we took many pictures and got to eat pumpkin soup and a pumpkin burger!