Lucie Visits Stuttgart! (February 27 - March 1, 2007)

Complete Set of Photos

This time, Lucie (the former Mason exchange student from France) came to visit me! I picked Lucie up at the train station a few hours after my exam and got to show her around my "home country" now! First stop was the tower of the Hauptbahnhof with the huge rotating Mercedes emblem, which has a really great view of the city of Stuttgart! It was very convenient that Lucie came now - it gave me a chance to practice being a Stuttgart tour guide for my parents!

The next morning, we headed to the Fernsehturm, the world's first TV tower. We stepped off the elevator on top and were almost blown away! It wasn't very windy on the ground, but up there, it was very blustery! It was sunny and fairly clear though, so we got some even better views of the whole Stuttgart area. This was cool because I could point out where I lived and where we would go later.


After that, I showed her some of the sights of downtown, like the Neues Schloss, Altes Schloss, and so on. We even went to the museum inside the Altes Schloss, which had everything from antique glass to caveman bones to Roman artifacts from the area to medieval art. It was very cool and I was surprised that I had never even been there before!


Later, I showed here around the downtown campus of the university. It had started to rain a bit, so we went into one of the tall buildings when it stopped raining and the sun came out. We saw a really cool double rainbow! (Note the Mercedes tower of the train station).
Luckily, it stopped raining so we got to walk around some more and check out some other stuff.

At her house in France, Lucie's mom made me all sorts of good French food like fois gras, so I though it was only fair to (attempt to!) return the favor! While Lucie was here, I made Sauerbraten (German marinated beef stuff), and then, coney dogs from Michigan!

Later that night, my roommate Justin told us that he knew a friend who lived in the Max-Kade dorm downtown who could get us onto the guest list for the famous "Max-Kade Party" that night. Max-Kade is a ~15 store dorm downtown with a bar/club on the top floor and the residents throw a party every Wednesday night there. These are quite popular and therefore only people who live there and their listed guests are allowed in. So, later that night, a bunch of us headed down there and took the elevator to the top to the club. It was the first time I had ever been there, and Lucie and I both thought it was very cool. The bar part was inside, but there was patio around the perimeter where you could go outside and look at the city at night.


The next morning, Lucie wanted to go the Kunstmuseum (art museum), which again, I had never been to, so we went there. It was quite interesting, but it was the weird crazy modern abstract art that makes no sense. One thing was a huge square of seeds laid out on the ground. That was it. But, Lucie enjoyed it and I finally got to see it!

To kill the two hours or so until her train left back to France, we bummed around some more and finally decided to eat at Subway, because neither of us had had it since we left the US. Then, I made a wonderful discovery - Mountain Dew!!!!! It was very expensive though and tasted different even than the Slovakian one. The sub (my usual, the Italian BMT!) was also different - they had a different salami and didn't have Italian dressing. There was even an American guy working there that I talked to for a minute about it. They also still have the Sub Club stamps here, so I have a card going already!

Well, then Lucie had to head back home for here mom's birthday. I'll probably go visit next to her school in Strasbourg!