Porsches and beer, as I learned on my recent trip to Germany, CAN go together, no matter how disparate they may seem.
The German National Tourist Board invited Frontiers to participate in a study tour called ‘Traditions – Customs & Culinary’ in South West Germany. This easy-to-visit region is in the heart of Germany’s culinary and wine areas. It is not crowded (in fact I was surprised at how easy it was to get around), and it is an affordable destination with lots to do.
We arrived in our first city, Stuttgart, with a visit to the Porsche museum, the Mercedes-Benz museum, a city sightseeing tour, and the beer festival. My colleague, Beth Kurcina, was in this region last year, so it was quite interesting to compare and contrast notes.
The Porsche Museum is as sophisticated and streamlined as the cars that bear the name. Everything is so design focused that it was tough for me to take my attention away from the architecture and onto the exhibits. The building itself is worthy of a visit, but once you see the cars inside, you may forget that entirely. When we started our private tour with the history of Porsche, I was fascinated. I had not realized that I would see one of the first Volkswagens that looks so much like the car I drive today. The different designs from various years and the intense focus on speed and racing left me awestruck. We were able to experience a carbon fiber race car door by feeling its weight, and it was astounding, almost as light as a feather. They also have “sound showers” where you can hear and feel different models of Porsches, from tractors to race cars, while standing on a disc in the floor under a dome in the ceiling. It is amazing how they use sound and vibration so that you can really feel and experience the different vehicles. This place is a must for any car enthusiast, and even this non-enthusiast wants to spend more time there some day.
We ended our day at Cannstatter Volksfest (or the Stuttgart Beer Festival), and although I am not a beer connoisseur, I wound up liking it quite a bit. This festival is smaller than the Oktoberfest in Munich (though I heard that it is second in size only to Munich), and it is one week later in the year. It is a festival – starting on Friday and ending over two weeks later on a Sunday. Four million people visit yearly, and it has been running annually for almost 200 years. I am not sure what I expected a beer festival to be, but this was so much more interesting than whatever I could have imagined. It was like a county fair met an amusement park and then combined with lots of huge restaurants serving unimaginable amounts of beer, while hosting live entertainment. Many people dress in their traditional German garb and go out for a night on the town to eat, drink, dance, sing, play arcade games, and enjoy the rides. We had some time to walk around and experience the festival and then met in one of the “tents” for dinner. I put that in quotes because each “tent” was more like a full convention center. It was fascinating that even with the volume of people they serve, we could get such good food that was still too hot to eat when it arrived. We had traditional roast chicken, which was so simple, but perhaps one of the best chicken dishes I have ever eaten.
Next stop – the Black Forest.