Postings from Germany

Hawaii + Stuttgart

Of course Hawaii and Stuttgart have nothing in common except when cousin Tom Strickland from Hawaii (mother's cousin's son, which if I am correct makes him my 2nd cousin and is realted the same way that Hunter/Hannah/Hayden/Dylan and Rachel/Rebecca/Robin/Kelly/Daniel/Sean are related - whew!) is here visiting his friend Gila. Stuttgart was the closest major city and it was a nice terminus since we could take a short tour of the city before heading out to where we were staying.

Once again we went by train - quicker, easier, cheaper than by car. Especially easier! Sit, read, gaze out the window, snooze, stitch, eat, and let someone else do the driving.

After greeting us at the station, Gila and Tom took us to the Stuttgart old city. Germany had kings and princes in every region before it became a sort-of-united country under Bismarck in 1871. That means that before that time castles and royal residences were built all over the place in various sizes and shapes so that the various princes and kings could demonstrate how cool and rich they all were. (Sort of like the Wall Street guys before the current unpleasantness.) Stuttgart is no exception. Here's the square in front of the royal palace, now the administrative offices for the city. Quite imposing still. No one but the state can afford these places anymore.

There are lots public parks and public art. And - SURPRISE - we found a modern bronze sculpture of a pelican. Naturally, a picture with my pelican man was in order.

Here's another castle, located near our hotel. We noticed it when we took a getting-oriented walk around the neighborhood. What do you think it is? We thought: a children's playhouse, or puppet theater.

Nah. PUBLIC TOILET. How's that for German humor? It is fun to go potty in Germany!! You still have to pay, but it's only 20 cents.

The next day we visited another royal residence in nearby Ludwigsberg. This is a smaller version of Versailles, but no less impressive.

Funny, this palace had NO toilets! The last queen - an English import - had to have her potty chair carried all over the palace for her convenience. She was inconvenienced.

Over 450 rooms (but no bathrooms, remember).Royal audience room. Ballroom. Baroque gardens (shown here). Opulence.

And finally the end of opulence. After 200 years, the lace curtains finally show appropriate wear and tear. Wouldn't the original residents be appalled!?

There was a pumpkin festival on the grounds, billed as the largest in the WORLD. I don't know, but it was big enough.

Hey, some LARGE pumpkins!

They had displays of all kinds of sorts of varieties of types of pumpkins from here and there and everywhere. Some were reallly ugly. Some were of course really really really big. The theme this year was "Stars and Space" so there were displays of astrological signs and space creatures all made of pumpkins. Weird. But the pumpkin goodies were good - we tried the pumpkin quiche and pumpkin bread. Then Werner had to go back for pumpkin snack bars. We did not try the pumpkin schnapps. Next time.

On the way back to dinner (Tom made a Mexican dinner for us - really good!) we stopped to look at the vinyards. I don't think I knew that the different vines changed colors differently. It was a sight!

We had a nice visit. Even though we only met cousin Tom a year ago, he's still family and somehow that trumps all. Thanks to all ya'll for being my family.