3 days in Stuttgart, a.k.a. -- The Porsche Mothership {2018}

September 25th - 28th // Stuttgart

Stuttgart is basically the mothership for car lovers and was something that had been on Kris' bucket list for the last several trips and we'd just never been able to fit it in. So this time -- we did. After our flight from Amsterdam, we boarded public transit in Stuttgart to the residential neighborhood where our Airbnb was. We were slightly delayed so the grocery store we were planning on going to for dinner was closed. We were tired and haggard with all of our shit with us so we didn't really feel like wandering around trying to figure something else out. Plus -- it was super residential and there weren't many options. We figured we'd just hope our Airbnb hosts had some fruit or just something that could tide us over until morning. 

The neighborhood was nice, but fucking UPHILL again. That's the worst with bags.

We were staying in a basement room of the host's main house. The entrance was confusing -- it's a pet peeve of mine when host's don't make check in abundantly clear. Our host's were a nice older German couple. They greeted us at the front door and then we turned to walk down an inside staircase that led to the basement had a main room with several smaller rooms attached -- our room, a bathroom, and a laundry room. We dropped our bags and told them we had missed the grocery store and were just exhausted. They didn't look immediately enthusiastic, but we were just like -- can you help us out? This is part of being a host, like -- dealing with stuff in the moment and it was almost 10 o'clock at night and we didn't have any food. 

It ended up being fine, you could tell they just probably weren't used to people being so forward. I'm sure we were those obnoxious Americans who burst in late in the evening and asked to eat their food. 

But, it ended up being nice -- they had a bunch of apples from their friends orchard and then they gave us a plate of leftover cake from a party they had gone to so that was a nice surprise. 

The room itself was.....dank. The bathroom was outside of our bedroom which meant you had to enter the pitch black basement and fumble around for the bathroom door, that was a bummer. Obviously I pissed in my tupperware at night. The bathroom itself was tiny, but clean and adequate. The shower was crazy small and you basically where standing in a restaurant bus tub with 4 shower doors containing you. Our room was strange -- it was a futon that was awful so we raided the armoire that was in there and padded the bed with all the extra blankets we could find. Also kind of tacky was a shelf that had a coffee maker on it and an honesty box to deposit 50 cents a cup. It's funny with things like that. Maybe it's a cultural thing, but I'm like -- just charge a few bucks more per night and give your guests free coffee. Plus it was like the most dog shit coffee maker of all time. It was some cheap plastic brewing unit where you put in a tea bag full of coffee grounds and forced water through it. It was awful. But it worked and it always caffeinated us enough to get our the door each morning. 

The first day we were there we walked down the hill from our Airbnb and took an easy subway ride over to the mothership -- the Porsche museum.

It ended up being really cool. Even a non-car enthusiast like me enjoyed it just for all the history. 

After the museum we went into the Stuttgart town center and it was nice enough. We tried a couple of places for lunch, but nothing looked like "it" so we ended up just going to a Spar (sort of like a 7-11) and getting their version of hot pockets to-go and eating them in an adjacent park. All in all Stuttgart was nothing to write home about and the only reason we were there was for the car shit. On our way home we were in time for the grocery store so we grabbed some to-go salads for dinner and headed back to our little cave room for the night. 

On the second day we stopped at the grocery store for lunch on our way out. It is a cute enough store and they even have a few tables and chairs in the corner for eating.

Then we went to the Mercedes museum, which was just as cool.

Afterwards we decided to walk back home since on the map it wasn't that far. Except that the walk took you mostly along the side of a highway and at one point the highway was on top of the road we were supposed to be on and there didn't seem to be any apparent way to get off of it. So that was kind of a bummer! But we made it....eventually.

The next day we were heading out. We packed up and stopped at the grocery store again to eat lunch and also to procure snacks for our travel day -- in particular the big, salty pretzels from the bakery. We were taking Ryan Air again, but had done the upgraded version and that ended up being super fucking chill. 

Ryan Air is so funny though -- we still had to just watch the counter near the gate like a hawk. There's never an announcement or any sort of order. You basically just wait until you see a Ryan Air employee and at that point you sort of storm the gate and just generally remain on your toes. It's comical. So that basically happened. We waited and waited, we saw the lady, we went and stood right by the gate like obnoxious assholes, but we were nearly the first people on the plane so, you know....early bird gets the worm or whatever the fuck. 

This is how you continue boarding though -- you ended up corralled on the actual runway just waiting for the previous passengers to disembark so you can then power walk across the tarmac for the back door (if you're smart) and get your seat and your overhead bin space. 

Immediately upon boarding it was like coming home -- they were speaking British English on the speakers and most of the passengers were from the UK and it was like instant camaraderie. I just love the people and the culture so much. Like there was a group of bros sitting behind us and Kris heard them fussing with their armrests, like -- they couldn’t figure out how to put them down so he turned around and showed them and it was just this funny moment and there were so polite and hilarious. 

I was happy we were ending on our trip on the high note of getting to spend a few more days in London.