Today I want to introduce the city of Stuttgart to you. I guess a lot of you didn´t even hear the name because when you think of Germany, your thoughts are obviously connected to Berlin, Hamburg, München (Munich), Frankfurt and maybe Köln (Cologne ). But for me being born and living the biggest part of my life here, it´s the Stadt (city) in Germany that I know best. And there is one association to Stuttgart that might sound familiar to almost everybody: The car was invented here.

Stuttgart is located in the south west of Germany. The Zentrum (centre) itself isn´t very big and counts about 600.000 inhabitants. The most important reason for this is the fact, that Stuttgart is geographically situated in a kind of Kessel (caldron) so that there´s simply not enough space to enlarge the city. So with this number of Einwohner (inhabitants) it has the status of being rank six among the biggest cities in Germany. But there are zahllose (countless) suburbs around the centre and altogether it´s called the Region Stuttgart.  With about three million people living here, it is number three after Berlin and the Ruhrgebiet among the biggest agglomerations in Germany.

For being the capital of the land Baden Württemberg, the Landtag (parliament of a land) is situated in the heart of the city. So this makes the city the political centre of Baden Württemberg as well.

As I mentioned before, the Auto (car) was invented here. More than 100 years later, the automobile industry is still the most important economical Standbein (main pillar, supporting leg) of the whole region. For having the headquarters of Mercedes Benz and Porsche in Stuttgart, thousands of people are working for these companies and during the decades Stuttgart evolved to the capital of fine engineering. I often call it “Motorstadt” (motor city) because of its background and its countless cars running through the streets. Even the top of the Hauptbahnhof (main station) in Stuttgart is decorated with a giant star of Mercedes Benz. But when I call it Motorstadt, it also has a negative touch. Due to the geographical situation and the horrible traffic, there are a lot of places where the air is heavily polluted.

Fortunately the city offers big parks and is surrounded by Weinberge (vineyards) so that it´s easy to see, breathe and feel something green every once in a while!

Various universities, colleges and academies are located in Stuttgart. In combination with a lively Nachtleben (nightlife) and a big range of cultural choice such as theatre, museums, opera etc., it also is an attractive place to live for students and young people. By the way, Mercedes Benz and Porsche established some extraordinary museums in Stuttgart the last years. But they are worth an extra blog post, so you´ll read about them later!

As you can imagine there would be a hundred things to write about the city, but at this point I encourage you to read more on Wikipedia and watch the following clip:

So after all Stuttgart has a lot to offer and I really can recommend to visit the city. By the way, the dialect that is spoken in the south west of Germany is called “Schwäbisch”.  It´s a real strong dialect and I guess a lot of you who are learning German won´t understand a word if you heard us chatting among each other…therefore there was an advertising for the city of Stuttgart some years ago that says: “We can do everything…but speak German” 😉