Day 5 - Freiburg to Stuttgart and Frühlingsfest

Today was an exciting day!  We woke up fairly early and caught a train to Karlsruhe then a TGV to Stuttgart. The TGV is a French train that goes super-fast.  Today the ticket taker man said we were going 250 km/hr which is about 150 mph!  I was really looking forward to this train but it felt a lot like a normal ICE train ride.

Once we got to Stuttgart we had to drag our bags up a hill a bit to our hotel, maybe half a mile.  Once we got there, they did not have our rooms ready so we had to leave our bags and come back later to check in.  A lot of us went off to the train station to eat lunch.  Some folks headed to the zoo, the Wilhelma.  Some of us went downtown and saw the main square and the old castle museum.  After that, Andi and I left the students and went off to an art museum while they explored downtown Stuttgart.

Tonight and tomorrow are the last two nights of  Frühlingsfest / Canstatter Wasen in Stuttgart.  This is the biggest spring festival in Europe and it rivals the Oktoberfest in Munich.  I think it is very similar to  the SC state fair but with tents of beer rather than tents of quilts / 4H exhibits.  There were many rides and the biggest Ferris wheel in Germany.  I finally got a Schweinshaxen (pork knuckle) and Andi had the standard  half chicken.  I also had some beer.  Later we went off for a walk and rode the ferris wheel (biggest in Germany they claim) before heading back.  Tomorrow is a fairly early start, with a trip to the Mercedes Benz museum then the Porsche museum.  These are finest car museums we saw while living here, much better than Audi and BMW in our opinion.

Pictures - Day 5 Freiburg to Stuttgart