The Tour of All Tours Tour

Today's tour was both familiar and completely different from anything I've seen yet: I had the chance to give a first version of The Tour of All Tours and to then watch it as it was given to me. The route was familiar as it is a distillation of much of the work of the last two weeks and yet the effect was not something I was able to predict.  

My guide today was Andy who I will be working with a lot more now as we go into the final week since Andy will be giving the tour in German. This was his first real chance to see what The Tour of All Tours was and fortunately the reaction was positive. I'm sure he'd manage to give a engaging tour anyway but it helps when there is some belief in the material you're working with. This is Andy in front of the Kunst Museum explaining their tours. 

This was a lovely moment in the tour when, squeezed onto this car he talks about the car museum tours. Today we went through every location and defined the spot to speak from, where the listeners would be standing and how to move to the next location. It was technical work in a way but it has now more or less allowed us to fix the route and with that done it is possible to start accumulating details for the spoken descriptions that we will give. Watching someone else give a bare bones version of The Tour of All Tours has given me plenty of ideas of things to add to the text that I will now have to set about including. 

I'm conscious that I want to leave Andy enough time to be able to become familiar with the tour so this has set me a very definite timetable to work to, which is not such a bad thing. Not that we'll be making a very strict writerly work, this will have to remain a guided tour style of presentation but, it should be defined textually and have its own formal contours all the same, so my next 48 hours are quite definitely accounted for.

The S21 Protest Tour

Today was a long day of back to back to tours in cold drizzle. I really had the feeling I was working on a performance today and not playing at being a tourist, as it has sometimes felt.

First tour of the day was the much anticipated tour of Stuttgart 21: the most hated rail development in Europe. At least that is the impression I got listening to my guide Mark, who I met in front of the campaign tent which is parked squarely opposite the main station where S21 is focussed. I heard that the tent has been staffed 24 hours a day by volunteers for the last 3 years which is quite an achievement in itself given that Winter temperatures drop to -15°C  with 30cm of snow. For more on their opposition and alternative proposals see K21 (in German).

We started with an overview of S21 looking at the map on the side of the tent. It appears to be an attempt to bury the train tracks and create a through station and thus free up a lot of land that is presently used as train tracks and service yards. It will involve a huge amount of tunnelling that will keep the construction companies happy for years to come. In spite of preservation orders on the station and surroundings these were brushed aside in the 'public interest'. That old one. 

So this building is one next to the station that will be demolished, indeed it has already been hollowed out and is just a facade waiting to be pulled down. It was apparently a rather attractive arts space with counter-cultural tendencies. Other arts venues have also been closed as a result of S21 so it would appear to be a washing of the city centre, clearing out smaller and medium scale cultural spaces and replacing them with prime corporate development opportunities. The whole atmosphere around the station was rather gloomy to tell the truth and it was apparently a rather attractive place in the past. Now some people prefer not to come into the city centre but to stay in their suburbs on account of this.

The one building next to the station which will not be disrupted is the bank offices. Indeed the tunnelling has to accommodate their underground spaces and is therefore rather squeezed. It seems as if the number of tracks envisaged will reduce capacity rather than expand current train capacity. Still the bank is important as they may be one of the financiers who stand to profit from S21 from the interest on loans.

The work has already begun with the sides of the station having been pulled off and a deep pit dug, among other things. It appears as if the strategy from the S21 team has been to keep plans quiet and advance the work as much as possible so that when opposition is encountered they can say it's too late to stop now. Indeed a regional referendum was fought on that tactic in 2011 and they got it passed by a small majority. It reminds me rather of the London Olympics and the case made to sell it to the British public. The entire public infrastructure was at the hands of the pro-lobby along with business and sports chiefs while those against were unfunded and without access to media and power. A level playing field it was not.

We visited the exhibition in the tower advertising S21 and it was a very slickly designed space. From there we had a view over the roof of the station which the protesters occupied. Over 4000 are now on trial as a result of civil disobedience actions such as these and Mark himself spent 10 days in jail for such naughtiness. In the exhibition space they played videos like this one here:

If Mark's predictions are correct the final station will look nothing like this but instead be a compromise as they will have to keep some tracks and an above ground station to deal with capacity. Time will tell. I guess time will also tell if they encounter difficulties with the water drainage which is quite a thing here and a definite unknown.

While I cannot verify any of the information my instinct from the start of my stay in Stuttgart was that this was a big swindle that is more about property development and money passing hands within a tight circle of people at the top than it is about improving the rail network. This tour has only gone to deepen that impression so while the future is not looking bright for Stuttgart I wish their campaign the best of luck.

In spite of all that my guide Mark was still able to smile and for this much more incisive tour than any of the ones I have been able to find I have to say a big thank you.

Now onto the second tour. This will be briefer as it was in many respects a much more predictable tour. It was the Stuttgart Marketing Ltd City Centre Walking Tour. The weather was still wretched but we soldiered through the city stopping at point to point to get a description of the buildings and their history.

The thing that most struck me was that this tour made an effort to make Stuttgart look as nice as possible. And it worked, more or less. The major problem with the tour however was that it was a bilingual German and English tour with 95% of the group following it in German. This meant that most of the group had to stand in shivering drizzle whilst listening to the guide repeating the information to the three of us following it in English. Unsurprisingly the German descriptions of the locations were longer and more detailed than the English ones which most of the people simply experienced as a nuisance.   

That tour finished on the market square where I also saw another tour. This was one of the costumed tours, a woman dressed as a cleaner giving a local style tour in the Swabian dialect. I had wanted to follow one of these tours but after nearly 4 hours of tours in such miserable weather, I was done.

The Stuttgart Shopping Tour

Today was all about shopping. I've been trying to concentrate my attention of a certain stretch of Köningstrasse. Many of the tours I have taken pass through this pedestrianised precinct, which is the central spine of the city, but none seem to have any reason to stop here as it is a particularly generic shopping area devoid of all charm.

I have been collecting shopping guides, those small glossy booklets that offer a list of attractive premises where you can unload your euros. I guess these guides are a rather out of date concept but these free maps are still circulated so presumably they must be somewhat effective. I looked at a number of different shopping guides and noted that each guide was tailored to a slightly different ideal customer. Cross-referencing them I noticed that in my part of the street only one shop appeared in all of the guides: Yean's Halle. I went inside.  

At the entrance they were selling traditional costumes for beer festivals. This is the men's section and I was particularly impressed by the pointed hats, they had a small button half way up the hat which, when pressed, makes the top of the hat wiggle to and fro.

The women's section was similarly colourful with bretzels hanging from the ceiling and a ironic wink in the presentation of the tradition. I heard that at the beer festivals it has become quite popular with younger people to dress up in these costumes and to embrace their kitsch qualities. It has got to the point that it can be considered cool (at least to uncool people) to wear this stuff, have a few piercings and combine it with contemporary fashion while packing in the beers and wines. The first of the festivals Stuttgarter Frühlingsfest opens this weekend and by the look of their website it's about as subtle as 30 litre beer barrel. The thought did cross my mind to wear this sort of costume while guiding next week. Fortunately, no sooner did the thought come than it also went.

I then took a look at another sort of shopping tour. This was the guided tour of the Market Hall. It was mostly historical in nature, about the various ups and downs of the place. Like much of Central Stuttgart it was badly damaged during the war and had to resist attempts to tear it down.

Being situated next to Karsplatz, the coach tour drop off point, and being central and amongst the luxury shopping area, it is no surprise that the place has become a tourist attraction in its own right. The place really does not cater to the average shopper, it specialises in expensive foods stuffs on the ground floor and nic-naks for the home around the galleries upstairs. So much has it become a tourist shopping destination that you can buy Market Hall souvenirs such as the highly desirable apron this man is sporting.

And how about this the Market Hall DVD. I bet that would make a great present... 

Last stop today was Tourist Information also know as City Shop, which is telling. The Tourist Services are run by the company Stuttgart Marketing Ltd. They act as the first port of call for visitors and position themselves as the official tourist service.

Looking at their board I then noticed something rather telling: their partners. I remember when I first walked in there and asked for a recommendation of what to see, the woman behind the desk said the Mercedes Benz Museum and the Porsche Museum were the two best attractions. I guess she was simply doing her job of plugging the partners of Stuttgart Marketing. Nowhere in any of the Tourist Information or in their web material did I see any mention of Arttours, but then again I suppose they are simply working for their partners. I did in fact write to Stuttgart Marketing Ltd asking for an interview but I never received a reply. Their business, it appears to be, is in ensuring that the conferences keep coming to Stuttgart Messe and the coaches keep offering tours of the Mercedes Benz Museum. Culture is somebody else's problem. 

The Porsche Museum Tour: big toys for big boys

I have been putting off the Porsche Museum as I heard it was not so exciting and one car museum a year is probably about my limit. Still, in the interests of The Tour of All Tours I felt obliged to make it over to the Porsche Museum as it is a major tourist destination and they do offer tours. 

The lobby was very slick looking, polished white and groups of men in suits standing around waiting for a tour or talking over coffee at the bijou cafe. The people who entered when I did were all wearing name tags, they looked like this was their treat and afterwards they'd head back to the conference centre.

This calm however was abruptly broken when a school party of French teenagers spilled into the museum, their teacher trying to herd them towards the audio guides. This was the type of tour I too was to get: an audio guide that relates something about the object in front of you when you tap in the corresponding number. The guided tours are reserved for groups I learnt. 

And I was off! One attractive car followed another. Unlike the Mercedes Benz Museum there was little or no effort to contextualise, it was enough to show the car itself. What's more the commentary had a unintentionally funny sound to it. They had hired an American actor to read the script and he was overdoing it badly, so much so that in places it sounded like a trailer for an action movie. The script he was reading from was rather smug and kept coming back to "what a great company we are" and, "see how our cars are the best!"   

The disturbing thing about the commentary was that, it was in a certain sense, somewhat true. The cars, like this 911, are indeed very attractive. This got me thinking that the people who produce desirable things are not themselves necessarily desirable. 

There was one moment when they made a short demonstration of a car by revving up the engine. If you look you'll see the sort of people who were watching: middle aged men. This whole museum is completely toys for the boys. In that sense, it is sort of dumb as a museum but it is sure to be a hit all the same.

This will probably be the only time in my life I'll sit in the driving seat of a Porsche so I asked a fellow tourist to take a picture of me. I suspect there must be 250 pictures like this taken every day.

Finally, I noticed they had the sketch in which Mr Porsche (it is a family company) first laid out the logo. It is significant how Stuttgart is central to the logo: both the name of the city and the city's emblem: the black horse rearing up.

When I was finally released and was looking around the city centre I noticed a nice location where I can introduce the Porsche tour. First of all there is this attractive little toy car for children to play on, this brings in the car theme and toys for boys subtext. Then, in the background, there is a public toilet on which the city emblem of the horse is displayed. That's all I need to get started on the Porsche Tour.

I then took a second tour, this one of the Landesmuseum Wurttemberg's musical instrument collection. This again was an audio guide tour. The device was relatively simple, they didn't need to show off their tech credentials like the car museums, but it worked just fine. You hold it up to the ear, press play and listen.

It made some sense to have an audio tour of this collection as it made the instruments come alive, the tracks were of the instruments being played. They had most of the conventional classical instruments you'd find in a modern orchestra and some rather unusual historical ones too as well as early mechanical music devices, such as a primitive pianoloa and an Edison wax cylinder player. They too offer guided tours from time but not anytime soon. 

Finally I was looking into the shopping tour and I kept seeing this sign popping up: Global Blue tax free. Now I see how some of the uninspiring yet large chain stores manage to become attractive to visitors. With tax removed the prices must surely make these stores become beacons to follow, lighting the way along the shopping tour.