Living in Germany comes with a lot of rules attached to it – you might have noticed that already 🙂 One of them is applicable in winter, when there is snow: Winterdienst.

Winter duties mean that you have to clear the sidewalk from snow or ice. It is your responsibility that walking on it is save. If someone slips and gets injured because you haven’t cleared the sidewalk, you will be liable.

You have to rid the sidewalk in front of your house of  the snow and ice on weekdays before 7 am, on Saturdays before 8 am and on Sundays and public holidays before 9 am. Winter duty in Stuttgart ends at 9 pm. And you have to make sure walking on the sidewalk is save throughout the day. When you are not present when it is snowing you have to make sure someone else cares for the part of sidewalk you are responsible for. You can ask a neighbor or book the services of a company that offers Winterdienst.

Stuttgart Hack: sand and gravel help make the sidewalk safer to walk on even when there is some ice left after you’ve cleared it. You can buy gravel in shops like OBI, Bauhaus, Hornbach… but sometimes even in supermarkets like Edeka or even discounters like Aldi. Please be aware that you are not allowed to use salt for your winter duties in Stuttgart! 

More information:

Kiramiga – Winter duties

Disclaimer: Please note that I put together the posts with great care. However I can not be held responsible for any missing, inaccurate or outdated information. 

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Micha Ullman is an Israeli artist and was appointed Professor of Sculpture at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart between 1991 and 2005. While he lived in Stuttgart, he created several artworks, three of them are known (or better, not know to many people :-)) as Minimente. And one Miniment is New Moon in front of castle Solitude.

The name Miniment is perfectly chosen for those artworks. They are not monuments, standing somewhere tall in the landscape, screaming “look at me” at everyone close by. Ullmans Minimente are tiny and even if you know where they are supposed to be, you need to look really hard to find them (friends of mine gave up after looking for them for ten minutes and even I had to ask in the museum shop if someone can show me the New Moon 🙂 ). But that is part of their fascination! 🙂 When you have found them finally you feel like a member of a secret club!

But what is the New Moon you might ask now. It consists of 29 little holes in the floor. They look the differnt shapes of the moon – from full moon to crescent moon. The tiny moons are arranged in a circle of nearly 16 meters in radius and represent the circle of the moon. When the sun moves over castle Solitude and the New Moon, the walls of the 29 moon shaped holes throw tiny shadows. So the artwork changes every day and every minute with the change of the light and the seasons.

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The idea of sister cities was born after World War II to increase friendship and understanding between different cultures. But sister cities also support each other in terms of tourism and business development. Stuttgart has ten sister cities and you can find their coat of arms at the intersection of Königstraße and Schulstraße.

The 10 sister cities are:

• Brünn (Czech Republic)
• Cardiff (Wales, UK)
• Kairo (Egypt)
• Lodz (Poland)
• Menzel Bourguiba (Tunis)
• Mumbai (India)
• Samara (Russia)
• St. Helens (England, UK)
• St. Louis (USA)
• Strasbourg (France)

The friendship between St. Helens in the UK and Stuttgart dates back to 1949. The bond between Samara in Russia and Stuttgart is the youngest, it was formed in 1992.

The friendship between Stuttgart and its partner cities will be celebrated on June 30 at Treffpunkt Rotebühlplatz! There you can learn more about the ten cities, taste typical food and participate in workshops. More infomation here (only in German)

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Stuttgart Cable Car, Standseilbahn in German, opened on 30 October 1929. At that time it was the first with automatic steerage! The conductor only had to press a button to operate the railway. Until today two cars run between Südheimer Platz and Waldfriedhof to facilitate visitors all the way up to the forest cemetery. 

Stuttgart Cable Car is actually a funicular railway. This means that the cars are connected with a cable which loops over a pulley wheel at the upper end of a track. When one car is descending, it pulls the other one up. You can see the wheel at the upper station.

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When locals talk about Birkenkopf, they usually refer to this hill “Monte Scherbelino”. Sounds Italian, right? But it’s not, it’s “fake Italian” and could be translated to “Mount Debris”. And when you walk all the way up to the top of Birkenkopf aka Monte Scherbelino, you might get an idea where that name comes from: the higher you climb, the more pieces of broken facades of houses you see next to the path. Strange, right?

In the years between 1953 and 1957 around 15,000,000 cubic metres of debris were deposited on top of Birkenkopf, making it rise 40 meters. This debris stems from the ruins of buildings that were destroyed during World War II in Stuttgart. This makes this hill not only a beautiful viewpoint but also a memorial for the destructive power of wars.

You can also visit masses up there. For more information and dates visit www.kirche-im-gruenen.de/orte/birkenkopf-monte-scherbelino/

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One every side of the building you find a word written on the facade: library. But in four different languages. When you look at the building from the west, it says “Library”, from the north “Bibliothek“. On the wall facing the south you find the word library written in Arabic and from the East in Korean – because the architect of the new city library is South Korean.

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Where the Metropol Cinema is located today used to be the first central train station of Stuttgart. King Wilhelm I wanted the station to be in the center of Stuttgart and so the location close to the New Castle was chosen. When it was opened in 1846 it operated four tracks and you could catch a train to Ludwigsburg and Esslingen from here. However, the station grew too small quickly and all that is left of it today are the pillars and the semicircular arches that marks the entrance to the cinema.

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The Stadtpalais is located close to the U-Bahn station Charlottenplatz in a beautiful building that’s also known under the name Wilhelmspalais (because king Wilhelm II used to live here). It is home of the new museum of Stuttgart and well worth a visit (entrance to the permanent exhibition is free of charge!) as you will learn heaps about the history of our city. (->If you want to find out more, visit my post A museum for our city: Stadtpalais Stuttgart.)

When you enter Stadtpalais you will stand in a hall. And when you look up you will see a very extraordinary chandelier.

Fun fact: The chandelier is made of five streetlights, the same you will find all over Stuttgart! They are even attached to the energy circle of the real streetlights and will light up with them! What a fun idea and a great symbol of the museums purpose: bringing the life of the streets of Stuttgart into this new museum!

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