STUTTGART……..not all European cities are created equal.
When people think of Europe, they think of the grandeur of Paris with the Arc de Triomph, imperial Rome with the Colosseum, London and Big Ben, Budapest and the Parliament Building. Then there’s Stuttgart.
“What happened here?,” Connor, one of my group, says as we leave the Stuttgart train station.
“It’s like there was an Ugliest City contest and Stuttgart won.”
Maybe the gray day, the 19 degree cold, and the fact that my group and I have been kicked off the express train to Munich has colored their reaction, but everyone nods in agreement. We are stranded in Stuttgart, in southwest Germany, and the central town looks like WWII has just ended.
The train station, built in 1922, is in a Frankenstein-like, hulking style, somewhere between penitentiary bland and abandoned warehouse. It is empty, a huge hulk propped up with girders so it doesn’t fall down, the sides streaked with pollution and the windows blank, right out of an Edgar Allen Poe story. On either side of this gray tombstone are temporary structures of plywood, tarps and duct tape. The wind blows through, the snow seeps in, the plywood sags from moisture. Munich is our destination today, not Stuttgart, but we have been booted off the train, stranded, with an enormous snow storm bearing down on us.
We had left sparkling Freiburg early in the morning and had stopped in Mannheim to change to the Munich Express. In Mannheim the rumors are as contagious as measles. In snippets of conversations I hear the words ‘snow’ and ‘apocalypse.’ The lines at the information desk stretch a city block, with people drumming their fingers on frigid luggage as they wait their turn. Those at the head of the line shout at the train reps behind glass barriers.
“But my first grandchild, my daughter’s baby, is due tonight!”, one to-be grandma wails as she taps the glass in frustration. “Am I to take a cab?” I can’t hear the response but the grandma says, “What do you mean, the Autobahn is closed!?” Passenger after passenger receives the same message: this part of Germany is shutting down because of a winter storm and no one knows for how long.
When it’s my turn, I’m told my tickets will be valid until we use them but since the weather prediction has been for 3 inches and already 1 ½ feet have fallen, no one can say when the group and I can continue to Munich.
“Oh my goodness,” the train rep says as she examines my paperwork. “You have 12 people with you. How will you ever find rooms in this city! All the hotels are filled.”
The thought of nowhere to stay has crept into my head like a rat in the night, stealing along the baseboards of my mind, in the shadows, but with her words, the creature is now out in the light, staring me down, daring me to wrestle. I have no rat poison, no weapon, and the rat grows by the minute. I can almost hear hotel doors slamming in my face.
Sleeping on the floor of the train station with the destitute is not an option. Sitting all night in the mildly warmish Dunkin Donuts is out of the question; it closes at midnight. I leave the group to look for options. I trek across the station plaza, wind and sleet in my face, to the nearest hotel on the other side of the street. The Hotel Alma is full but the receptionist calls 3 other properties for me. The result is the same. In a back street I find the Concorde, a tiny place with a handwritten sign in the window: BESETZT, Full. My final option near the station is the pricey Steigenberger. They too have no rooms but call 5 B&Bs and hotels in the area, including 2 youth hostels (at least it would be a warm bed), without success.
I wander several blocks of the central city and have the same impression as Connor did earlier. The city is a collection of unrelenting depression, of dull, gray, cinder block monotony, as if it were a gulag in northern Siberia. No soul inspiring cathedral as in Cologne to lift the spirit, no grand 19th century apartments with their curved windows and wrought iron balconies like Seville. I wonder if the post war architect was from the Soviet Union who loved gray and hated trees and pedestrian zones. The town near the station is choked with galloping traffic and efficient buildings devoid of character.
I return to my group, huddled in the Dunkin Donuts which is only a little warmer than the rest of the freezing station. Their breath forms clouds of steam as they clap their hands to stay warm. With no other choice, I pull out my phone and begin to call hotels in the suburbs. The Centro, the Emilu, the Zauberlehrling, the Zur Weinsteige, one after another. With each answer of ‘no rooms at the inn’ Stuttgart gets uglier. 11 frustrating calls later, number 12 is a joy. A lady named Stephanie tells me, because of cancellations, she has 9 rooms and the Hotel Mercure is located on a major subway line, solving the problem of how to get there.
“We’re in the suburb of Zuffenhausen,” she explains. I have no idea where the neighborhood is.
“Press record,” she says, knowing it is too cold to write. Besides, I have no pen and paper. I press record.
“Buy your subway tickets at a yellow ticket machine. Board the S6 towards Zuffenhausen and ride 8 stops. Get off at Zuffenhausen. Walk up the platform and go straight on that street to the end, bend right for 1 block and you’ll be here.” I ask her if she wants my credit card to hold the rooms and she laughs.
“The panic in your voice is enough guarantee for me!”, she says.
I thank her and ring off. I replay her instructions until I have them in my memory and gather my group. Less than 30 minutes later we are standing in the lobby of a comfortable, warm hotel. My people have not even asked the price of the rooms because no one cares at this point. We are out of the cold, no one has fallen on the thick ice, and the gray utilitarian city has been left behind. We feel as if we have escaped.
Dinner is a celebration of schnitzel and beer at a pub filled with locals wondering where in the hell this group of bedraggled tourists came from. The place is packed so we sit crammed into tiny spaces and eat with our elbows tucked in like on an airplane in coach. No one complains and we join in when the revelers sing happy birthday to different resident patrons. We toast to their good health, not knowing who they are but enjoying the cheer, return to the hotel and fall into bed. I lie down for a moment to gather my thoughts and wake up the next morning, still in my clothes.
As so often after violent storms, the morning the next day dawns brilliant and blue skyed. Still cold but now cheery, we take the subway back to the station and hope for a train to Munich.
“Still drab,” says Connor as we come up from the subway and look around. “I hoped the sun would brighten up the place but I was wrong. Stuttgart still looks like it probably did in 1946.”
The same cranes and craters, 8 lanes of honking traffic, Soviet-style buildings, and the propped up station, are not improved by sunshine. The first train platform I see has a sign displaying the next train’s destination: MUNCHEN, Munich. It is an express and I hurry the group to where the first class carriages will stop. The train rushes in and we board. I’m surprised because the car is nearly empty. The conductor explains that all of the passengers who had seat reservations have not been able to reach the station. We store the luggage and ease into our seats for the 3 hour journey to Munich. At last, we have some luck. The train shoots out of Stuttgart across the snowy landscape of fields, villages and farms. I only half see them because I’m thinking about why Stuttgart looks the way it does.
Despite being 70% destroyed in WWII, Munich is the most beautiful big city in Germany, rebuilt in much of the old style. Even the historic parts of Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen have been restored to their Medieval or Baroque splendor. But Stuttgart forged ahead with utilitarianism, functional but gray and soulless. The car museums of Porsche and Mercedes are famous but added as an afterthought and in the suburbs. The town near the station, which greets most visitors, is disheartening.
Americans who visit the Continent enjoy the beauties of Paris, Vienna, and Prague. Their central cities are chockablock with grand museums, monuments, squares, palaces and bridges. Even some of the smaller towns and villages are gorgeous. Avignon in Southern France and Volterra in Tuscany, are lovely just to walk through let alone savor the exquisite cuisine. But Stuttgart is the exception, a well-built diesel engine, practical but not attractive. In fairness, I begin to list the positives of the city: friendly, helpful people; good food; a comfortable hotel but stop after number 3.
“Hey,” says Connor, “Stuttgart isn’t Somalia or Gary, Indiana.” I will add that comment as positive number 4.
