Germany (Lonely Planet, 6th Edition) - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [351]
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Train
IC and ICE destinations include Berlin (€126, 5½ hours), Frankfurt (€56, 1¼ hours) and Munich (€46 to €52, 2¼ hours). There are frequent regional services to Tübingen (€11.30, one hour), Schwäbisch Hall’s Hessental station (€13.30, 70 minutes) and Ulm (€16.70, one hour).
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GETTING AROUND
To/From the Airport
S2 and S3 trains take about 30 minutes to get from the airport to the Hauptbahnhof (€3.10).
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Bicycle
Rent a Bike ( 4207 0833; www.rentabike-stuttgart.de, in German; adult 6½hr/full day €12/16, student €9/12) delivers and picks up bikes. Stuttgart has 50 Call-a-Bike ( 0700 0522 2222; www.callabike.de) stands. The first 30 minutes are free and rental costs around €5 per hour thereafter. Visit the website for maps and details.
It’s free to take your bike on Stadtbahn lines, except from 6am to 8.30am and 4pm to 6.30pm Monday to Friday. Bikes are allowed on S-Bahn trains (S1 to S6) but you have to buy a Kinderticket (child’s ticket) from 6am to 8.30am Monday to Friday. You can’t take bikes on buses or the Strassenbahn (tramway).
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Car & Motorcycle
Underground parking costs about €2.50 for the first hour and €2 for each subsequent hour. See www.parkinfo.com (in German) for a list of car parks. The Park & Ride (‘P+R’) options in Stuttgart’s suburbs afford cheap parking; convenient lots include Degerloch Albstrasse (on the B27; take the U5 or U6 into town), which is 4km south of the centre; and Österfeld (on the A81; take the S1, S2 or S3 into the centre).
Avis, Budget, Europcar, Hertz, National and Sixt have offices at the airport (Terminal 2, Level 2). Europcar, Hertz and Avis have offices at the Hauptbahnhof (next to track 16).
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Public Transport
From slowest to fastest, Stuttgart’s public transport network (www.vvs.de, www.ssb-ag.de, in German) consists of a Zahnradbahn (rack railway), buses, the Strassenbahn (tramway), Stadtbahn lines (light-rail lines beginning with U; underground in the city centre), S-Bahn lines (suburban rail lines S1 through to S6) and Regionalbahn lines (regional trains beginning with R). On Friday and Saturday there are night buses (beginning with N) with departures from Schlossplatz at 1.11am, 2.22am and 3.33am.
For travel within the city, single tickets are €1.95, and four-ride tickets (Mehrfahrtenkarte) cost €6.92. A day pass, good for two zones (including, for instance, the Mercedes-Benz and Porsche Museums), is better value at €5.80 for one person and €9.70 for a group of between two and five.
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Taxi
To order a taxi call 194 10 or 566 061.
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AROUND STUTTGART
Grabkapelle Württemberg
When King Wilhelm I of Württemberg’s beloved wife Katharina Pavlovna, daughter of a Russian tsar, died at the tender age of 30 in 1819, the king tore down the family castle and built this domed burial chapel ( 337 149; adult/concession €2.20/1.10; 10am-noon Wed, 10am-noon & 1-5pm Fri & Sat, 10am-noon & 1-6pm Sun Mar-Oct). The king was also interred in the classical-style Russian Orthodox chapel decades later. Scenically perched on a vine-strewn hill, the grounds afford long views down to the valley.
Grapkapelle Württemberg is 10km southeast of Stuttgart’s centre. Take bus 61 from the Obertürkheim station, served by the S1.
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Ludwigsburg
07141 / pop 87,350
This neat, cultured town is the childhood home of the dramatist Friedrich Schiller. Duke Eberhard Ludwig put it on the global map in the 18th century by erecting a chateau to out-pomp them all: the sublime, Versailles-inspired Residenzschloss. With its whimsical palaces and gardens, Ludwigsburg is baroque in overdrive and a flashback to an age when princes wore powdered