My next destination after Munich was Stuttgart. I spent the better part of eight months living in Stuttgart during my co-op work term at Bosch and in this Europe trip, I was able to visit this place again. I didn’t really feel like a tourist here, and it felt like I was a local – after all, I still knew my way around quite well.
Here, I visited the places that I used to frequent and I still have very fond memories here. It’s like going home again after a long time, but the difference here is that this was never my real home, but a temporary one. It’s really hard to explain. I definitely still have an emotional attachment here.
Of course, I went back to probably Stuttgart’s most recognizable landmark: Schlossplatz. I spent a lot of time here just chilling with my intern friends after work.
As I walked around the city, all the streets looked pretty much the same as I remembered. There wasn’t anything super different. I guess that was to be expected.
I remembered that we always bought donairs from the same shop and so when I went back, I did the same. It tasted just like I remembered.
I also went to Schlosspark to see if the people camping there were still there. When I was in Stuttgart in 2011, there was a huge group of people camping there in protest against clearing the trees in the area for a railway station construction project (Stuttgart 21). But I guess these people were kicked out – and the trees are gone too.
Before, everyone had their tents set up here. They even strapped teddy bears around trees to prevent people from cutting them down. This was probably the biggest change that I saw in the city.
Later that day, I had dinner with one of my intern friends that I met while at Bosch, and we ate at our group of friends’ favourite place: Sophie’s Brauhaus. The most unique thing about this restaurant that is really different from what people do in North America is that this restaurant brews their own beer. They have the best Hefeweizen I’ve ever had and of course, that’s what I ordered.
For dinner, I had Spätzle with Lentils, something I ate all the time when I was living here. The Bosch cafeteria often had this for lunch. My friend had Maultaschen, which can be thought of as a giant dumpling, but German style or very large ravioli. All of this was quite nostalgic for me.
After dinner, we walked around the city some more to see what had changed until my train arrived. After waiting for a train that was delayed for about an hour, I managed to finally make my way to Mannheim, just in time to meet my friends for the RoboCup Workshop we would have with the other two German teams in the international RoboCup competition.
Link to photo album here