Bathing in Baden

One of the main things that we planned to do in our trip was to drive, and obviously not just along highways but also along some other more scenic routes. The Black Forest region of Germany is one of its most picturesque routes, obviously with a lot of trees but also beautiful scenery. It was quite a lovely drive and since it wasn’t yet summer and full tourist season, we pretty much had the roads to ourselves most of the time. Baden-Baden is one of the stops along the Black Forest route and we stopped by there to explore a little.

City of Baden-Baden

Baden-Baden actually means ‘baths’ in German so obviously one of the things we did was to visit one of its famous baths, the Caracalla Spa. The spa contains many pools of different temperatures, a sauna, steam room and you could also get a massage for an additional fee. It’s a bit like soaking in the hot springs of Japan or Taiwan but here, the pools are shared so everyone wears a swimsuit and the pools are a lot bigger. In the sauna though, even though it’s shared they go the Full Monty. We gave that a miss as we thought it would be too weird and sit amongst strangers of the opposite sex with our bits on display. Yes, the germans are very open about nakedness. Since it wasn’t yet peak tourist season, we had quite an enjoyable time going from pool to pool and just relaxing in the thermal spring waters. We also managed to get a massage (on a different day though as their system was screwed up and we couldn’t get one the day we went for the spa) which was rather good but a little weird at the same time. Again you go the Full Monty here, unlike massages in Singapore where they at least provide you with disposable underwear. The thermal spring water is also supposed to be beneficial for health if you drank it. After trying some, I say better to soak in it than to drink it :p

Pork knuckles, Bavarian sausages and a good beer

Spatzle (german noodles) with stewed beef and another good beer...

With the city tax we paid as tourists, we get a free tour of the city, BUT it was conducted in German so we gave up after about 15 minutes and decided to walk around it ourselves. We were lucky that the weather was good and the flowers were blooming. It seemed like everyone was out that day just enjoying the weather, all in all very lovely place to visit and just spend some time relaxing.

Beautiful blend of flora

A, B, C, E, M, R, S, which is the right class for you?

After going crazy drinking kolsh and buying up all the Haribo sweets we could carry, we moved onto Heidelberg to visit its castle, supposedly one of the best castles in Germany.

The drive to Heidelberg was uneventful enough but getting to the castle was a whole different story. We didn’t want to drive up into the castle as we had read that parking could be a problem. There was a train ride you can take to go up the hill but it wasn’t working the day we were there, so the staff told us to take a bus. However the directions were so bad, we ended up taking it in the wrong direction and spent about an hour being lost. After a lot of grief, we finally drove up to the castle and found parking pretty quick.

Heidelberg, not our expected image of a castle

The castle is one big ruin with an intact façade but we couldn’t enter most of the rooms, you can imagine how bored we quickly got. We did get into the Wine Vat Building that had a Great Cask which is capable of is capable of holding more than 208,000 liters of wine. You can climb to the top of which was quite cool. There was a wedding that night, thus it was fun to see them setting up for it. In all honesty, if we had a tour guide with us or if there were more explanations for the buildings, it would have been a lot more interesting, however as it is, the place was really a bit of a bore.

Giant wine vat

After that disappointment that was Heidelberg, we headed to Stuttgart, home of Mercedes and Porsche. We had originally wanted to visit the Mercedes factory but they couldn’t fit us in and thus they offered us a tour of the Mercedes museum instead which we took up. There is a Porsche museum in Stuttgart but we gave it a miss as CS wanted to co-drive the Porsche on a test track in Leipzig. We thought we could do the Porsche tour in Leipzig, though eventually we missed it due to lack of time.

The original Daimler

The Classics

Notice the Singapore Airlines logo?

(apparently they sponsored a London to Sydney rally in 1977!)

There were only 4 people on the tour, us and another elderly couple (can't remember where they were from). The tour was rather informative, and we learnt some interesting facts like how Princess Diana drove a Mercedes 500SL but she gave it up due to public pressure as she was expected to drive a British made car. There was also a secret prototype Mercedes in the courtyard when we were there, but since it was a secret prototype, it was all wrapped up in black plastic and we couldn’t exactly see the shape.

The future, green technology

(or blue efficiency as Mercedes Benz calls it)

Ahead of the times

Race cars

The "secret" prototype

German wantons and noodles at the museum

Other than the exhibits inside, the building itself was also quite remarkable, the interior has a double helix structure to maximize space. They also had a cool fire safety system which generates a 37m high artificial tornado to channel smoke out of the building in the event of a fire. After the tour, we ended the day with a meal at their in-house café which was quite lovely. All in all a rather good way to spend a day. We didn't do much for the rest of the stay in Stuttgart other than relaxing in our lovely jacuzzi in our room :)

TUV-ing it out

After arriving in Germany, we realized that Germany has implemented low emission zones in various cities and only vehicles which meet these emission standards are allowed to be driven into those cities. All vehicles thus had to obtain an Emission Disc/ Badge that states their particular emission and affix this disc/ badge onto the windscreen. No exceptions are made for foreign cars. Without the relevant disc/ badge, authorities could tow the car away even if its parked, so being the law-abiding Singaporeans that we are, we made sure we got one. And thus our adventure began…

While these discs/ badges can be obtained before arriving in Germany, we only knew that we had to obtain them after arrival. Apparently these discs/ badges are obtainable from car dealers, so off we went to Renault to get one, however the lady there informed us that we had to get it from TUV (the German equivalent of our LTA) instead. She didn’t just dismiss us though, she gave us the address, called them up to ensure that they were open, that they had the stickers and that it was indeed the right place to go. Really helpful and nice, I hardly think we would get the same treatment in Singapore. Thus, armed with the address and with the help of our trusty GPS, off we went again.

When we reached the address, we actually wound up in the wrong building since the address we had pointed us to what looked like a shopping centre. We eventually got there and it was a crazy long queue! What was weird was that almost everyone who was queuing had car plates with them. We just couldn’t figure out why though. We were the only 2 Asians in the queue and after getting our number from registration, we had nothing else to do other than wait. I felt like I was waiting to see the doctor at the polyclinic as there were so many people and they will flash the number outside the room when it is your turn to go in. After waiting for what seemed like forever, we finally made it in. We were served by this slightly eccentric German lady who seemed quite tickled by us and our requests for the disc/ badge. When we handed her our passports, she kept chuckling and muttered something to her colleague which we obviously didn’t understand. In any case, after waiting the whole morning we finally got our disc/ badge!! Now CS can zoom down the autobahn in peace, lol…

Our ride.. (eco certified on the corner of the windscreen, it's the green sticker in case in case you are still wondering where it is)

So after TUV-ing it out for one whole morning, you can say that we rewarded ourselves pretty well after by stopping over at Bonn…. Now you may think why would we go there and the reason is CS is a HUGE, and I mean HUGE fan of Haribo sweets and since we were in Germany, of course we had to go visit their flagship store in Bonn. We would have loved to do a factory tour but sadly they don’t conduct any so we had to satisfy ourselves with the flagship store instead. The store itself wasn’t exactly the biggest, but it had the largest variety of Haribo sweets ever and it was really busy! What was interesting was that there were the young, the middle aged and the elderly ALL buying sweets. I mean in Singapore, its mostly the kids and teenagers buying sweets, we hardly see grandmas and grandpas buying sweets for themselves. The lovely grandmas and grandpas were definitely buying it for themselves cos we saw them snacking on the sweets, haha...

Haribo museum and megastore

Unending rows of gummies, chewies, stripes and bears!

The Governator has his own Haribo gummy!

Suffice to say, we both went a little crazy at the store. We had a lot of fun deciding which sweets to buy and we bought so much, that even though we bought the sweets at the end of March, we are still eating the sweets now in August so you can just imagine the amount we bought. Well, if you can’t here are some photos to help you out, crazy huh?

As much as I can squeeze into the photo