Stuttgart

Stuttgart is the capital of the old German state of Wuerttemberg, and since 1951, it has been the capital of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. It's the largest city in BW and the 6th largest in Germany. Lots of facts there, but more importantly for exchange students, it's also a very pleasant place to visit, with lots of museums, good shopping, and some lovely old architecture.

A great example of that architecture, if you can get there within the next few years, is the Old Train Station. Built in the 1920's, it's a lovely example of pre-war German architecture and a UNESCO world heritage site. The biggest political drama in Stuttgart at the moment, and one of the biggest in BW, is the 'Stuttgart 21' plan, which aims to better link South Germany with major rail destinations like Paris and Vienna by demolishing the old Bahnhof and building a new underground railroad through the city. This has been a major source of controversy in the city, and when we were there in early October, the place was absolutely swarming with police officers. Clustered around the opera house, on the main lawn, was an armada of police vans, set up to be a headquarters. We were entertained over dinner by a crowd of protesters, one of whom was giving an impassioned speech that our German was not quite good enough to follow.

But the politics were not the only selling point for the city. The main shopping streets are quite modern and busy, but have a character and relaxed feel that's hard to describe but that made Stuttgart feel much more comfortable, at least for me, than a similarly sized city in the States, which are typically too full of hustle and bustle for my tastes. The museums in the city are also very good. The Landesmuseum is a very good gallery that juxtaposes classical and more modern art in a way that I quite appreciated, and in the Wuerttembergische Staatmuseum we saw one of the largest collections of glass in the world. Not that the glass in itself was interesting, but it was very cool to have seen such a thing, that I didn't even realize existed. It was like meeting the man with the Guiness World Record for going the longest without eating salt. You wouldn't have thought that it existed, you are not quite sure why it does, but it was interesting to see.

Personally, however, my favorite memory of Stuttgart isn't a museum that just has to be seen, or a restaurant I can recommend, but a chance find, like most of the best memories. In a little music store right on the main square across from the palace, I found piano scores of Mozart's Don Juan and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde for 9 Euros each. When I took them outside and looked inside, I realized that the Wagner had handwritten notes in an old-fashioned German script in the back cover. The notes are dated from Muenchen 1865, the city and year in which the opera premiered. Without even realizing it, I'd managed to buy a piece of cultural history.