German Language Blog
Menu
Search

Stuttgart Posted by on May 24, 2010 in Culture, Food, Holidays, Language

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” 😉

Tags: , , , , , ,
Keep learning German with us!

Build vocabulary, practice pronunciation, and more with Transparent Language Online. Available anytime, anywhere, on any device.

Try it Free Find it at your Library
Share this:
Pin it

About the Author: jan

My name is Jan and I live in the south west of Germany. My profession is being a project manager at a company that creates digital media (first of all internet related things). This is my job since over a decade so I´m quite familiar with the web and its tools. Whereat today almost every school kid does. But that´s one of the main reasons why nowadays there are quasi no more limits in the internet and so it can be used for all imaginable types of things. For example learning languages! And that´s where we are at the moment. I first got in touch with Transparent Language when my family and I used to live in France a couple of years ago. I just had a break from work and by coincidence I produced some cultural videos in French. A few months later the whole blogging thing came up and I was lucky to be a part of it. So now my (second) job is to feed you with information, exercises, vocabulary, grammar and stories about Germany and German language. For being a passionate videographer I´m trying to do this more and more by videos. If you have any wishes or needs of topics that should be treated here, please don´t hesitate to contact me via a comment field. I´m open to your suggestions (as long as they are not too individual) and will try to satisfy your needs.


Comments:

  1. María Dávila:

    hahah so agree with that of “We can do everything…but speak German” haha my ex bf is from there… n he always changed words like Schatz to Schatzle or so… xD So funny!!

    And let me tell you that this is the first post i read from the group “german” in Facebook, i really liked your post. hope i can read soon something more about your culture. Anything you want, music, food, architecture… I just love your country. Hope someday I can go there.

    Im planning for my graduation visit some cities: Stuttgart, Munchen, Berlin, Koln, Dresde… haha for me, each town in Deutschland!!!

    Well to much bla bla bla from me, just wanted to say Vielen dank for sharing each time a little bit more of your wonderful country.

    Viele liebe grusse aus Mexiko ..

    María Dávila

  2. Chuyen Nguyen:

    oh great! Thank you for giving us an overview of yr hometown.It s really nice. I intend to get there in Juli or August to explore this city and collect some interesting pics for my album.

    Chuyen

  3. Scheich Josef:

    Dear Jan,

    you write about Stuttgart:
    “And there is one association to Stuttgart that might sound familiar to almost everybody: The car was invented here.”
    Do you really think so?
    In the Wikipedia article “Automobile” you can read: “An automobile powered by his own four-stroke cycle gasoline engine was built in Mannheim, Germany by Karl Benz in 1885”
    and the Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft was founded in Cannstatt.
    With best wishes from Germany,
    Josef

  4. jan:

    Hi Josef, you´re right! But Cannstatt is practically a part of Stuttgart. Daimler lived in Schordorf by the way which is not far away from Stuttgart as well. So to keep things simple, you can say that the car was invented in the Region Stuttgart. Is this OK for you?