Trip to Stuttgart

On April 29th, my whole program took a field trip to Stuttgart, which is the capital of Baden-Württemberg (the state in which Tübingen is). It was a cool and cloudy day, and we visited the Mercedes-Benz museum, walked through the city, and took a tour at the Haus der GeschichteBaden-Württemberg (House ofHistory of Baden-Württemberg).
Here is the Mercedes-Benz museum:

The best part of the museum was the timeline. One takes an elevator

to the top, and then follows a slanting ramp downwards through time --

when you get out of the elevator, they have a model horse representing pre-car travel! The walls of the rampway had a timeline noting major historical events of all kind: scientific, auto-related, economic, political, cultural, etc. It was really neat to see historical events lain out all together in that way, and to see what was 'significant' from the point of view of this museum. Oh, there were some cool cars, too. :P

Here is a statue of an elk at the entryway to the building where the state government sits. The elk is a very (very!) old cultural symbol in this part of the world.

Just for fun, here are some cute ducklings in a pond near the opera building:

This is the entrance to the history museum. We had an amazing tour,

and the museum is very high tech and creatively designed. Our tour guide, a retired Gymnasium teacher named Manfred Kaut, was enthusiastic, sweet, and knowledgable. My favorite line of the many wise things he said was, "The first thing to die in war is the truth."

We had a really nice day and I got to spend lots of time with my friend Jennifer. After the tour, she and I visited some stores and bought some delicious candy and souvenirs for friends at home. We had the luck to discover that the (very tall) department store we were in had an amazing roof terrace with a view of the city. Here I am, with Stuttgart spread out behind me!