Eric's Germany Journal, Return to Stuttgart

Sunday, September 14, 2003

My choice of day to return to Stuttgart was dictated by the Straßenbahn museum's hours. It is open only the second Sunday and last Saturday of each month. When Alex was here, one of the old Straßenbahnen was in service for the day, but the museum was not open.

Stuttgart

The croissant stand in the Hauptbahnhof has a marzipan croissant. Marzipan is put to better use in that than in chocolates with plain marzipan. (Now, if it is flavored correctly, that is another matter.)

Part of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Part of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart's new building.
The Staatsgalerie Stuttgart is the state art gallery. The collection is small and did not take me long to go through. My favorite part of the museum was actually the architecture of their new building rather than any exhibit inside the museum. A small part of the new building is shown to the right.

The Straßenbahn museum did not open until the afternoon, so I walked through the city park, which is huge, and found there was a children's fair in progress. There were a lot of kids having fun at a wide range of activities, physical and intellectual, from precision bicycling to chess. The activities included slides, pedal-cart races, toys, games, make-up on mannequin heads, temporary tattoos, memory games, and digging in sand with "toy" cranes several meters long.

Back at the Hauptbahnhof, I ate likely my last Schupfnudeln on this trip to Europe and then boarded the Straßenbahn for the Straßenbahn museum.

I hoped there might be something interesting in the museum shop, but the only purchase I made was a postcard of the Ulm Straßenbahn. Maybe Dad and Alex would have liked some of the history books, but I don't know. They'll have to go themselves.

Anyway, the museum does have lots of Straßenbahnen and some equipment on display.

Train switches and control room Streetcar Streetcar
Train switches and control room. Straßenbahn. Straßenbahn.
Streetcar Streetcar Streetcar
Straßenbahn. Straßenbahn. Straßenbahn.
Streetcar Streetcar Streetcar
Straßenbahn. Straßenbahn. Straßenbahn.
Streetcar Work car Streetcar
Straßenbahn. Arbeitswagen. Straßenbahn.
Open-air streetcar Streetcar converted to a diner Party car
Open-air Straßenbahn. Straßenbahn converted to a diner. Party-wagen.

I stitched together three photographs of the side of the Party-wagen to get the combined image below.

Long view of the party car, which is decorated with people enjoying a meal together
Party-wagen. (The full image is 291 KiB.)

Not much else was happening in Stuttgart, since most things are closed on Sunday. I headed home. When I got to the Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof, the display board showed there was a train to Ulm scheduled to have left already but late, so I hopped on that.

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© Copyright 2003 by Eric Postpischil.