Mother and Son Make The World Their Classroom for a School Year: June 9, 2015 (Stuttgart- Porsche/Mercedes to Fussen, Germany)

I am so grateful that I have found time to write in this blog/journal each day because we are doing and seeing so much it is hard to almost remember what we did a couple days ago. I have had big problems with my computer and it not allowing me to upload photos and that takes a lot of time each night. But trying to keep up on it so I have this record for me to look back on in future years and remember how I felt and what I saw on this gift of a year.

We slept well and again so grateful to have AC and slept with it cold, since the previous nights we had been so so hot. We headed out early and went right to the Porsche Museum which was about 10 mins from our hotel. We are in obviously an industrial part of Stuttgart with the Porsche factory being right across the street from the museum. It was a stunning mirrored structure, an architectural wonder in itself. Inside there was a ramp that you began at the bottom and worked your way up through the history of Porsche. They began with original trike with motor, through the design development of cars and engines and how big engine and more horsepower doesn’t make it faster than another but combined with the aerodynamics of a car and they had great films to showing how they create downdraft on cars that allow it to snug to the road and have grip and rip- to hug the road and rip around on the road. Porsche’s main focus has been to make the fastest cars in the world. They have accomplished that in many areas in the races they compete in. Le Mans is a race I have only heard because they have different events that use the Le Mans start- running to begin the race. For many decades they had drivers line up across from their car and then race across the track, hop in the cars and then pull out and that determined their start order. Well, that became deadly and some would pull out without seatbelt on to get a better spot in the lineup and several died in a crash before they got their belts on. Today they line up in their cars and then begin the race. Sam was especially thrilled with the Porsche 918 Spider, with Martini racing stripes and logo down the middle of the car.

We then made our way to the Mercedes-Benz Museum which was about 20 mins away. It is a much larger museum and took us almost 4 hours to go through it. It is another stunning architectural building with double helix ramps that intertwine. You ride a space age looking bullet elevator to the top and walk down ramps to different levels with different exhibits of Mercedes through the decades and along the walkways between they have displays that offer a brief history of significant happenings in the world since the end of the 19th century through till the start of the 21st century. Loved the history lesson and how history has affected their industry from tractors to the first motorcars driven only by those who could afford it to their history of building race cars and then cars for the people. The explain how they were a significant part of building trucks and engines for the WWII effort and how Mercedes had used forced laborers, which I assume were encamped Jews, to run their factories during the war, since their factory men had all been enlisted in the military effort. They later officially recognized their crime in doing this and offered their apologies. But part of me thinks that maybe many of the forced laborers lives might have been saved by working in these factories over the alternative which most faced which were the gas chambers.

Interesting to see how cars have evolved and to learn that the name Mercedes came to be when a dealer of their cars wanted a fast car for an exhibition in Nice, France in the early 1900s. The car they built for him and which was exhibited was a huge success and he named the car Mercedes after his daughter. Apparently that stuck ;)

Sam was most excited about seeing the race suits and helmets of the two Mercedes racers that we saw on the track 3 weeks ago in Monaco, Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton. I loved some of the old ones that are long and large and have big round lights and you see in old movies and you know have loud horns. Of course I can’t tell you what they are, but I have attached a photo of a gray one, my favorite.

We were so tired by the time we got to the basement which had some of the dream cars, just ideals for for future cars many submitted as thesis projects in autodesign. We had a bite to eat and then went into the multi story attached dealership. I can’t believe how many different cars that Mercedes makes, very different than Porsche. We had gone into their dealership and it was one level. This Mercedes dealership had about 50 different models at least as well as some smart cars and new energy efficient cars.

We hit the road after and headed for Fussen, where we were going to eat dinner before making to our bed and breakfast which is right below Neuschwantstein. We hit terrible traffic. Literally at a stand still for 45 minutes and then barely moving. What should have taken 2.5 hours took 4 hours. But when we pulled into Fussen it was again just a ridiculously charming town with little narrow winding cobblestone streets and many shops and little squares and lovely buildings with shutters and interesting roof outlines and painted with colorful designs on some and others with window boxes and vines. We wandered around and after nearly breaking the patio door of an Italian restaurant we were hoping to eat at (long story) we found a really authentic Chinese Restaurant with dragon murals and painted glass windows and decided we hadn’t had any Chinese food on this trip, let’s try it. It was delicious and a packed house- always a good sign.

We pulled into “Villa Ludwig” our hotel and it was a great location, right between the two castles in the town. I didn’t realize we needed reservations to get into the castle the next day so the hotel faxed the ticket office with a request for our tours tomorrow and provided those tickets to us the next morning. The hotel was very small and very nice and once again the whole concept of comforters too small for the beds did exist here but luckily they had made up a bed for Sam in the sitting room and he had his own comforter. The rooms were nice and comfortable and we slept like bears, sound and out for the night.