posted on 21st December, 2022
This was my first visit to Europe. I visited a city called - Stuttgart, located in Baden-Württemberg state in Germany. The visit was due to official work related reasons with few of my colleagues. I had a lot of fun while exploring the city. We used to stay in outskirts of the main city in a place called Esslingen, some 12 KMs from the center of Stuttgart city. We used to work in the office from 7 AM - 4 PM which is typical German working hours. We used to explore places in the time we used to have after work was done.
I started with Public Library Stuttgart. It was the best library I've ever been not, not that I have been to many libraries to be honest with you. You can find the interior view in one of the attached images I've with this post. It was very easy to access the library, we did not have to go through many security checks. As you'd expect, it was full of German books, but there were few English ones as well stacked in between the German books. The architecture is mesmerizing, it's bright white from Inside. The way they have put in book shelves and the stairs from the top is a view to capture. The place is so clean and serene, makes you feel lost in silence.
I had the first time experience of watching a top tier Football division game in Europe. We watched a game of Bundesliga in the Mercedes Benz Arena in Stuttgart. I've been an avid Football follower for years now, experiencing a match in live inside the stadium was something totally different. We felt ourselves connected to a team we never heard of (Stuttgart Vfb), we used to stand at our seats whenever ball approached the goal in anticipation. I watched people waving flags, forming a Mexican wave, singing song for their team. All these things, so far I only experienced on TV. It was cherry on top of the cake when the team we supported won in extra time 2-1.
Next, on a random holiday I visited Porsche Museum. It had a huge collection of luxury cars through out the history of Porsche. They charge you 10 Euro as entry fees to the Museum. You're provided a multi-lingual earphone with a phone which tells you about the history of Porsche, various cars and milestone events in the timeline of the company. The museum premises is spread over 3 floors which I covered in around 3 hours.
Now I'd be covering the most talked about tourist destination in Stuttgart - Mercedes Benz Museum. The museum is located in vicinity to our Untertürkheim office. They charge 6 Euro for normal customers, but for me it was free of cost. I visited this place thrice in a week since it is humongous comprising of 9 levels. It has huge display of Mercedes collection throughout the 100+ years of company history. It has an art Gallery which displays various events that happened which led to what Mercedes is today. If you try to read these, it could easily take you an entire day. I was more interested in capturing cars in my camera so I skipped a lot of these writings.
I also visited Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History. My first experience was, man this is totally different from the ones I visit in India. I saw rocks and fossils dating back to 200 Million years ago, there were dinosaurs skeletons and the models created from those parts on display. I wonder why we don't have that many fossils in display in our Museums in India ? There were also some demonstrations on our we humans evolved as a species. I couldn't read most of them since they were in German. I spent around 4 hours in the museum which was totally worth it.
On one random day after office hours, I took some time and headed towards Konigstrasse - one of the favorite shopping destinations of Stuttgart. At the end of the street you have a castle and a giant wheel. One of the most beautiful Christmas market in Europe is setup here for around 3 months.