Day 23

Today I had a sleep in for a while then got up, had brekky, went online a little while, then (around 11) me and Björn went off to the brand new (opened in May) Mercedes Benz museum. I had driven past it before on the city tour, and its a very impressive building! Anyways.. so we got there and headed in. Inside its a cool kinda double helix design thingy, and you catch an elevator to the top and work your way down. It loosley starts at the beginning of automobiles (Daimler - owner of mercedes - made the first engine n car n stuff (not quite true.. but close enough)).

Ha ha, you get to the very top, and there is this stuffed horse standing there :) I thought it was a pretty funny start to the musuem :D! Its all by itself in a reasonably large room, and it had a quote about how horses were the be all and end all of transport and that automobiles were just a fad. The entire musuem is in english and german too which was great!! We started off with the very first cars.. ha ha they looked like you would expect, and had massive 1 or 2 valve engines, with earth shattering power like 1 or 2 HP (PS in german). I dont know heaps about car engines, but I know what those two things are.. ha ha, so they were cute little cars :).

Usually as you spiralled down there would be some history placades on the wall, then you would reach the new floor and there would be a display of some kind of cars, a hands on section to the side, and then off to the right would be another gallery with a themem like 'gallery of heroes' or 'of carriers' or 'helpers' and stuff like that where they would have a bunch of ambuklances, police cars etc, or a bunch of busses n stuff. or whatever. It wasnt boring though! There were enough cars there for it to have great variety and be cool, but not so many you got blown away, and kinda stopped caring about each one. Each level was also connected by some stairs off to one side and a bunch of otherstuff, aswell as the main spiralling walkway down (with the history on the sides).

We spiralled our way down past a bunch of great cars and automobiles (and some HUGE plane engines - daimler makes all kinds of automobile stuff) and eventually got to the bottom. near the end we took a ride in a driving simulator.. which was a bit of a let down as most the time u were just flying around looking at people, and occasionally getting a driving simulation.. but those parts were great! (ha ha and the rest explained why the simulatros moved in ways that i couldnt for the life of me figure out how a car could move like that..). Once finished there is another small section with some cool as modern cars, and a cool section on the company: first research, then design, then construction and all of that. This was REALLY interesting!!! :) made me wanna go work for Mercedes :) After this me and Björn strolled through the shop, and then had a browse through the car yard that is right next to the museum, and you see as you walk out (cunning people). But all the cars were a bit below our price range really.. Was considering the new S class, and I had the 100,000+ Euro in my back pocket.. but i thought id leave it.

Afterwards we travelled home and I rested up for a while before we all went out again. At about 6.30 me, Arnulf, Mr Kirste and Mrs Kirste hopped into the car and drove to Nellingen (5min) to watch a concert. It was first up a piece by Mozart (its the year of Mozart here at the mo.. so gotta listen to some of it!! But I#m not complaining, I like Mozart!) Then a piece by a guy I hadnt heard of called Mjaskowski, and finally a piece by Tschaikowsky (who is one of my fav's yay!). The Mozart piece was really cool. The Orchestra was seated up behind the audience, along with the conducter, and just the percussionist, 3 violins and a kontrabass (double bass?) were on stage. It was "Serenata notturna" [KV 239] - for 2 Violins, viola and kontrabass. The lead voilinist and the double bass guy were great! altho thelady on viola had a bit of a shocker on her solo.. but it was nothing major. After this the orchestra came down and sat on stage. The Mjaskowski piece (op. 66 for Violoncello) was great ay!! It was pretty modern.. but very cool! Id never heard a piece for the before.. and it was GREAT! The violoncello soloist was fantastic too! He sat at the front with no music and kinda led the whole thing.. It was an outsanding performance!! And hes a doctor too.. just plays as a hobby! The only shame was that one of the french horn players was pretty bad.. every time they chimed in (which wasnt too often) it sounded pretty bad.. It was a funny group actually, a bunch of great players, and some pretty average ones! Anyway.. after this peice was a break, sop we went outside, and the percussionist came out (he knew Arnulf from school) so that was pretty cool! He was the youngest player there just incase ur wondering if it was a school orchestra or something. I also had a brief chat to the two Oboe players which was nice. They say hi to Rachel! Ha ha oboe power! After the break was the final Tschaikowsky piece, 'Mozartiana' (suite No. 4) which was also good! although of the pieces ive heard by him it was one my least favourites.. but it was still very nice! The Mozart and Mjaskowski were definately standouts though for me. If u wanna check out the orchestras homepage I found it here :)
http://www.filderharmonie.de/

After a cool little short encore piece that really made me wish i listened to more classical music so i knew which piece it was we made a quick exit and headed into Stuttgart by a (crammed) train, to the Lichterfest (Light festival). This kinda like a massive carols by candle light almost.. but with hundreds of thousands of people :). So you had that weird mix of families, old people, and drunken sleezy teens... But also a bunch of older teens and twenteens that were there for the big club party thing starting at midnight.. kinda weird.. But anyway, I went round with Arnulf. We had a wurst in Brötchen, then made our way over to watch the fireworks. First there was a skydiver which was pretty boring.. But the fireworks... woah!!

There was this big cool tower with spiralling staircases, and there were 'small' fireworks coming off this aswell as it being lit up. And then seriously huge big ones going off above it. This rivalled the Chinese New Year fireworks in wellington a year n something ago as the best fireworks display ive ever seen.. It was GREAT!! And the music they played with it went really well along with the fireworks too!! It was FANTASTIC!!! Kinda hard to describe fireworks.. but yeah.. it was 15 min of awesomeness.

After this we tried to get through the crowd to another site, but by the time we were there it was finished.. But you could always hear the music pumping. Its funny hearing germans sing along to english songs (of which there are heaps over here). They get some parts spot on.. and if they know the song very well its all good. but when they dont its kinda like listening to someone sing along with headphones on.. They get the tune right and the general sounds.. and some keywords... but the rest is a mumbled mash :) ha ha my favourite i heard tonight was someones attepmt at the beastie boys 'YOU GOTTA FIGHT... FOR THE RIGHT... TO PAAAAARRRRRTY!'
It went something like thins:
'oooo-aa-dada-ITE!... fada-LIGHT.... TO PAAAAAAAAAARRRRRTY!!!'
Gold :)!!
We met back up with Mr and Mrs Kirste and headed back with a swarm to the train station. This place was absolutely bustling! But the city had it under control.. there were copy n stuff there all over the place, and after enough people were down on the platform they stopped people heading down to it didnt get overpacked and people start popping out onto the tracks. Very smart! I spose when u are a big city you get good at anticipating problem areas and controlling potential hazards from crowds. On the way home some IDIOT musta pulling the emergency brake again.. GRRR!!! ha ha, but this time the driver could fix it, so after about 10-15 min waiting we were under way again. We got back to the car and headed home and I got to bed around maybe 12.30-1ish. Oh that reminds me, the big mercedes that Mr Kirste has a foot handbrake.. I was talking to someone about those recently.. Anyway.. I reckon they are kinda weird.. but there are quite a few over here so there ya go..
Catcha later all!