strolling through stuttgart - part II

The next day after a night out at Winter Fest Summer Fest, I made it over to the new Mercedes-Benz-Daimler-Chrysler Museum in Stuttgart.

Really a stunning building. It just opened in May of this year.



Upon entry, you take these elevators to the top of the building. After seeing a stuffed horse and the world's first automobile, you slowly descend around the perimeter of the building seeing the history of the company and its place in German and world history.


Along the way, you have a handset which tells stories, highlights inventions, and provides historical information. I am not really a big car nut, but I spent 5 hours there.


And then, as all modern museums do, the end of the tour dumps you out into the gift shop.

But this gift shop was nuts.

In addition to the Mercedes-Benz polo shirts and blingish keychains, there were four floors of Mercedes cars that one can sit in, look over, and begin leasing. Cars were available to drive off the lot.



crazy. Maybe we should build a Avanti Museum.

strolling through stuttgart - part I

Also last week I made a visit to Stuttgart, Germany's 6th largest city. There are 600,000 in the city and about 3 million in the metro area.

Stuttgart is home to the headquarters of Daimler-Chrysler, Porsche, and Bosch. The few days I stayed there, they were in the middle of the summer festival in what is left (not much actually) of the historical part of their downtown. It was odd because during the "summer festival" temperatures did not go above 50 degrees. It was mid August and everyone was walking around in ski jackets and scarves. Here is a photo of the central fountain with the opera illuminated in the background:


Small candles surrounded by multi-colored paper lit all the paths near this square. It looked great. Here is a closeup of these candles . . . a nice, non-expensive way to add color to the environment at night:


As the music played at the various stages in this area, the buildings changed color as well. Here is a quick movie of the what the place looked like.



Just around the corner is a new art museum in the downtown. I love the architecture. Maybe the new building for the Williamson School of Business at YSU can incorporate parts of this building for its design. The new structure can really have that "beacon on a hill" look.


I really like how the stairs are situated around the building. The galleries are furthest in, and like a shell, the stairs are further out right next to the glass exterior.



And in the cafe at the southern entrance, there was a great piece of morphing art. Cycles of persian rugs and turkish carpets were created over and over again as hipsters listened to a dj playing drum and bass in the background. very cool.

interactive art in karlsruhe

Last week I made a stop in Karlsrhue to visit some colleagues at the Fraunhofer Institute in Karlsruhe Germany. Karlsruhe is the center of a metro area about the same size as that of Youngstown's.

For a city of Karlrhue's size, it seems to have a remarkable about of arts and cultural institutions. One is the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (Center for Art and Media Technology) and I had the chance to visit. Here is a photo of the outside of the building:


Three very large floors were dedicated to interactive art. There was even art in the men's bathroom.


One of the coolest pieces I saw was a screen projecting bubbles onto a wall. As a person made a swipe at the bubbles, the bubbles made noises as they bumped off your silhouette. Check out this clip:



Karlsruhe has a large chateau/castle in the middle of the city and many of the main streets emminate from this building. Kinda like the Capitol in Washington DC.


In the stone street in front of this building, they did some neat design. During the day, all of these stones look the same. But at night, certain stones light up and illuminate the ground. I'm still not sure how they did this, but it was really cool.


And one last picture is dedicated to this advertisement in the window of a store. I'm not sure what they were selling (it wasn't toilets) but it certainly caught my eye.

we are all outlaws in the eyes of america

world cup fever baby!


Had the chance to make it out to Germany this week for one of the USA World Cup matches. Click here and here to see some pre-game video. After licking our wounds from the 3-0 thrashing by the Czech Republic (Boze moi!), our group of 23 buddies found some solace in schnitzel and hefeweizen. The match was in Gelsenkirchen, kinda like the Youngstown of Germany because of its industrial heritage.


Our group even represented a good mix of cultures: Ohio, Iowa, Idaho, California, New Mexico, Tennessee, Scotland, Northern Ireland, England, El Salvador, France, Germany – people would just come up to us, asking to have their picture taken with us. “Where are you from?” they asked, and we could just say, “well, from all over the place really”.

A poll on the Youngstown Vindicator’s website, the local newspaper of record, asked its readers how much they were interested the world cup. The results:

Yes, I am really interested: 9%
Umm, I am moderately interested: 7%
No, I could care less about the damn thing: 84%

In cities around the world, people are meeting in public places to watch these matches, even if their country is not represented. From shopping malls in Hong Kong to militia strongholds in Somalia to a campo in Patagonia (thanks CNN international for the story this morning)

I hope tonight we fare better. I have an Italian roommate, who has many Italian friends coming over to watch the match. If it is a rout, the living conditions may become unbearable.

But one last Youngstown kick: these matches will going on every week until mid-July. Is there any chance of putting a big projection screen somewhere downtown so the public can come together to watch these games?

Maybe the international community will come out in full force in addition to other futbol fans. Maybe coaches can bring their soccer teams, who will come with their families. Maybe high school teams can join as well. The final match is Sunday July 9th.