On the second day I was relieved to get my travel documents back from the bus driver at 12:00pm. This allowed us to catch the 12:40pm
high-speed train from Frankfurt to Stuttgart. The train, traveling between 150-200kph took one and a half hours to get between the two cities and was very cool. Stuttgart is the home of
Mercedes and as a consequence there is a lot of flash cars on the streets. The hostel was a fifteen minute up hill trek from the train station so in order to gain the energy we bought some very nice crepes. Once again the hostel itself was of a very high standard although it did feel very dead. Unlike New Zealand, German hostels are used a lot by local school groups for accommodation and as a result they feel very cold but extremely professional. The hostel itself was only partly complete as it was undergoing a massive extension programme (like most of Stuttgart) for the upcoming 2006 Soccer World Cup which it is hosting.
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Stuttgart's Modern Art Gallery
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After settling in we toured the streets and parks of Stuttgart. There was some pretty amazing architecture to take in (along with some equally imaginative commentary from Emma). The next morning we took a day trip down to Tübingen, a pretty little University town. The day trip ticket was very cheap (25 euros for the three of us return) and the destination was well worth the one hour train ride. The German architecture coupled with some beautiful natural rivers and hills combined to make some extremely picturesque images. We had a very filling lunch at a German pub that felt very English and then walked off the pasta with some up hill treks to catch some more views of the town.
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The pretty riverside houses of Tübingen
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More photographs from Stuttgart and Tubigen... 