The year our family traveled the world: Stuttgart and Nuremberg

After Baden-Baden, we intended to drive on to Cesky Krumlov but we were getting tired of long drives so decided to go only as far as Nuremberg with a stop in Stuttgart at the Mercedes Benz museum. I remember driving to the factory with my parents as a child for some reason and the sight of those old cars in Monaco and at the Mustang shop in Baden Airpark got me thinking about seeing what Mercedes had (not to mention that I have really been missing the CLS on these beautiful autobahns!).

Jen and Rachel weren't interested so Shawn and I did a quick tour while the girls played some banagrams in the foyer amongst all the new models. It is quite a museum and is built as a double helix stairway just like the one at Chamford Chateau that many believe was designed by Leonardo da Vinci. You start on the eighth floor and work your way back down on one of the two "staircases". You can switch at each floor but generally one staircase was for cars and the other for buses and trucks - you can imagine which one Shawn and I followed!

It started from Mercedes invention of the first motorized vehicle (car and motorcycle) and Benz's use of the Diesel to the merger and then to the present day. The displays were interspersed with the timeliness and relevant current events. It was interesting how they fully detailed (and apologized) for their part in the two world wars along with the recognition of the holocaust. I was also pleasantly surprised to see how much credit they gave to the US and the Marshall Plan for their recent successes.

It goes without saying that they had some interesting cars on display. The museum is co-located with a huge new car showroom that every possible make, model and version Mercedes makes - including the new CLS that we saw twice on our travels - once fully camouflaged. I must admit that I don't like it as much as mine. Perhaps in time it will grow on me but I think the new Audi A7 and even the A5 (as well as the Hyundi Sonata and the VW Passages CC) are better looking copies of mine. I do like that you can get this one as a Diesel though! 400 horsepower does not make it easy on gas!

Here are some pictures of our morning in Stuttgart.

Nice!

This prototype set the world speed record on a public motorway at almost 300 miles per hour in 1935!

The first motorcycle.

The first car (in the late 1890's)

And the little motor that made it all possible.

This was the driving end of an airship. note the propeller on the back, the rudder on the front and the propeller for lift underneath.

It had an ingeniously simple clutch and transmission for driving the vertical propeller. You pulled back on the handle and that would slide the horizontal drive disk against the flywheel which would transfer some of the drive energy to the vertical propeller.

Lovely

Of course they'd have a gull winged SL

And a SLR

A couple of the new versions of my CLS 550's. The one in the rear has a carbon fiber type flat paint. It actually feels rough - was quite striking to look at but not sure how practical is will be.

After Stuttgart, it was back on the autobahns to Nuremburg. We got caught up in a seemingly bad accident with cars on either side of the highway tangled up but other than two cars on top of each other (roof to roof), it looked like everyone walked away from it. The autobahns for all their speed (and lack of speed limits) are still by far the safst highways in the world. They have 4.5 deaths per million kilometers on North America, 3 and a bit in France and 1.9 in Germany. Certainly, everyone knows how to drive and you don't see passing on the right, tailgating or left lane banditry in Germany. everyone sticks to the right except to pass. Speed doesn't kill... idiot drivers do.

We had a bit of a tough time finding a spot to stay because of some convention so we booked into a hostel and again, I couldn't tell the difference from a hotel. I beginning to think that Jen has been embellishing her hardships travelling in hostels! Seems pretty cushy to me! :-)

The next am, we went to the Nuremburg Court to see the museum of the war crimes trials for all the Nazi's after WWII. The allies picked Nuremburg because it was the site of the first big Nazi rallies where tens of thousands of Germans came out to "Sieg Heil!" Hitler. After WWI, the Allies had let the Germans try their war criminals and the German judges let most of them off scot free... despite their violations of treaty (invading neutral Belgium), first using chemical weapons and destruction of civilian cities and towns (Ypres).

The Allies were determined that this not happen again but they also wanted the criminals tried according to their own laws and rules of evidence. There was a big fight over whether they should just "liquidate" them but the US won and they decided to have a fair trial using German evidence against them. They didn't get convictions on all counts but it was generally acknowledged - even by the Germans - to be a fair trial. This was also where the evidence for the holocaust first became widely published.

By now many of you are probably wondering why we are exposing our kids to this and other tragic events. For me, I have been exposed to people that claimed it never happened and that Hitler wasn't a bad man but just had a few bad people. It is far too easy to demonize a people and start another atrocity. I want everyone to remember history so that we can make sure that we never have to go through this again.