Germany (Lonely Planet, 6th Edition) - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [343]
Stuttgart airport (www.stuttgart-airport.com), Baden-Württemberg’s largest, is a hub for the low-cost airline Germanwings (www.germanwings.com). Frankfurt airport is about 75km north of Mannheim. Other useful airports include the Basel-Mulhouse EuroAirport (www.euroairport.com), where budget airlines easyJet and Ryanair operate. Karlsruhe-Baden-Baden airport (Baden Airpark; www.badenairpark.de) and Friedrichshafen airport (www.fly-away.de) are both served by Ryanair among other airlines.
Trains, trams and/or buses serve almost every city, town and village in this chapter, though public transport across the Black Forest can be slow, and long-distance trips (for instance Freiburg to Konstanz) may involve several changes. Available at train stations, the great-value Deutsche Bahn Baden-Württemberg Ticket allows 2nd-class travel on trains and some buses, costing €19 for an individual and €28 for up to five people. Most Black Forest hotels issue guests with the Schwarzwald-Gästekarte, providing free use of the local public transport network.
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STUTTGART
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0711 / pop 591,100
Ask many Germans their opinion about the Stuttgarters and they will go off on a tangent: they are smooth operators behind a Mercedes wheel, speeding along the autobahn while flashing and gesticulating; they are city slickers in designer suits with a Swabian drawl; they are tight-fisted homebodies who slave away to schaffe, schaffe, Häusle baue (work, work, build a house). So much for the stereotypes.
Blessed with a prosperous air, a finger on the pulse of technology and an endearing love of the great outdoors, the real Stuttgart immediately challenges such preconceptions. One minute you’re touring space-age car museums, the next you’re strapping on boots to hike through vineyards, dining on Michelin-starred cuisine or shimmying beside ubercool 20-somethings in the bars on Theodor-Heuss-Strasse.
Progressive, open-minded and strikingly self-assured, Stuttgart cherishes its traditions, stays true to its rural heritage and embraces innovation with a passion.
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HISTORY
Whether with trusty steeds or turbocharged engines, Stuttgart was literally born to ride, founded as the stud farm Stuotgarten around 950 AD. Progress was swift: by the 12th century Stuttgart was a trade centre, by the 13th century a blossoming city and by the early 14th century the seat of the Württemberg royal family. Count Eberhard im Bart added sheen to Swabian suburbia by introducing the Kehrwoche in 1492, the communal cleaning rota still revered today.
The early 16th century brought hardship, peasant wars, plague and Austrian rulers (1520–1534). A century later, the Thirty Years’ War devastated Stuttgart and killed half its population.
In 1818, King Wilhelm I launched the first the Cannstatter Volksfest to celebrate the end of a dreadful famine. An age of industrialisation dawned in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with Bosch inventing the spark plug and Daimler pioneering the gas engine. Heavily bombed in WWII, Stuttgart was painstakingly reconstructed and became the capital of the new state of Baden-Württemberg in 1953. Today it is one of Germany’s greenest and most affluent cities.
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ORIENTATION
The main pedestrian shopping street, Königstrasse, extends southwest from the Hauptbahnhof. Public squares on or near Königstrasse include Schlossplatz and Schillerplatz. The leafy Schlossgarten stretches northeastward from Schlossplatz almost 4km to the Neckar River. The district of Bad Cannstatt straddles the Neckar River about 3km northeast of the Hauptbahnhof.
Steep grades are common on Stuttgart’s hillsides: more than 500 city streets end in Stäffele (staircases).
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INFORMATION
Bookshops
Wittwer ( 250 70; Königstrasse 30) A bookshop with foreign-language and travel sections.
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Cultural Centres
Deutsch-Amerikanisches Zentrum (German-American Center; 228 180; www.daz.org; Charlottenplatz