Thursday, July 26, 2007

Porsche Museum, Stuttgart, Germany, then to the Black Forest

The day after the Mercedes museum -- elegantly done, highly educational, and somewhat geared toward marketing -- we visited the Porsche museum. Porsche is in the midst of building its answer to the Mercedes museum down the street. Their current museum, hard to find and located in an office building behind the factory, is simple and lets the cars and motors do the talking, making the Mercedes museum look like a shrine to itself. I liked the contrast -- it sort of typifies the two companies: Mercedes is about elegance, refinement, style, and marketing, and Porsche about small, fast, race-winning, driving excitement. However, but from the looks of the new Porsche building being built they are chasing the Mercedes marketing-museum scheme.
I choose my race car...
and Case chooses his. This car brought back memories of learning to drive on Dad's 1969 VW bug.
An old favorite...the bathtub Porsche. (Another one that Case wanted to take home.)
Ever dissected a car?
They took a perfectly beautiful Cayman S and cut it a part...??? How could someone do that???
Moving on to the new car showroom. 100,000+ euro....
and it comes with a fire extinguisher in case it catches fire!
Fresh off the assembly line to a showroom near you!
From Stuttgart we headed to the north end of the Black Forest (Schwartzwald). Along the way we happened by a restaurant advertising vegetarian food. What a lucky find!
Winding our way through the Black Forest (oh, we needed that Porsche for this!)...
...we eventually arrived at our lodgings in Furtwangen. Despite the unusual name, we were pleasantly surprised with our inexpensive, comfortable accommodations in a classic German Gasthaus.

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