Christine at the Porsche Museum

As stated before, Stuttgart is the car capital of the world.  We are headquarters to both Porsche and Mercedes Benz.  I have been patiently waiting for someone to visit me so that I could take them to the car museums.  I stopped waiting.  Today I visited the Porsche Museum.  First off, it is reasonably priced at 8 Euros.  It is a modern architecture building (left side picture).  The museum is across the street from one of the factories (right side picture).

 

I took some pictures of cars.  But, if you are a faithful follower, you will remember last summer, there was a car event in Stuttgart Mitte (center) and I took tons of car pictures there.  Today I learned more about the history of Porsche and racing cars, well racing Porsches.  

Guess who invented the Beetle Bug Volkswagen?  That's right -Ferdinand Porsche.  His son, Ferry went on to develop his own car because the ones out there were not his dream car.   On to my dream car.  I would look exceptional behind the wheel of this Porsche *:

Carrera 2S

This car can drive fast enough that it could drive on the ceiling.  Right now it's just rigged to be on the ceiling.

I found the cut away cars most interesting.  (It's kinda hard to get a good picture since it's in glass.)

I also liked the frame portions taken off the car so you could see inside.

More after the jump...

Per my Mom's request

What I look like skiing (from Chamonix, France):

From Mayrhofen, Austria:

Christine

Christine in Interlaken, Switzerland

As it turns out, you have to pay a toll to drive through Switzerland.  This is different then when I went to Zurich for the day.  Going there, I drove by the boarder patrol and did not pay a toll.  No one stopped me or anything.  Either going into Switzerland, or leaving.  Even though I drove right by the agents.  I have no idea why not.  For my New Year's ski trip, the driver stopped to pay the toll.  For cars, it's 40 Euro for the year.  I think you get a couple of Francs back.  (Side note:  there is also a toll for Austria in case you ever drive there in your own car.)

Rule #1:  Find out where you are staying before committing to a trip.  We stayed in city part of Interlaken.  This is a 1 1/2 hour commute to the top of the mountain.  Yes, you read that correctly 90 minutes to get to a place where you can ski.  Not cool.  We took a bus to the train, then switched trains half way up.  The 2nd train reminded me of that book "I think I can, I think I can".  Yes, it was a slow ride up.

Rule #2:  If you are out of college, do not stay at a hostel.  It is just not worth it.  The place was clean enough, but the walls were thin (I had earplugs so that helped).  It's just hard to share a shower with others.  Also, for the shower to run, you had to hold in the button/handle thing.  It is hard to shower that way.  I agree with Chris, a participant on the trip-they are called hostels because that is how you leave.

Rule #3:  If you plan to eat somewhere on New Year's Day-make a reservation.  Otherwise you are stuck eating (surprisingly good) burgers at the hostel.  The Swiss lit off fireworks on New Year's Day.  They party like everyone else on New Year's Eve.

The mountains:

The mountain was fairly big with plenty of intermediate runs (reds in Europe, Blues in the States) and a few blacks.  The Friday afternoon we arrived, the mountain was closed due to weather (winds).  Saturday it snowed a ton.  Sometimes visibility was not great.  Also, it was a wet snow.  I didn't think my jacket would dry for Sunday, but it did.  Sunday had perfect conditions.  Lots of powder to ski on.  I did a black run and hit some powder.  I also fell on my ass.  It happens.  It is hard to get out of powder, well get up and get your skis back on.  Monday we skied a half day in order to drive back.

In addition:  the Weltcup (World Cup) holds an event at Interlaken.  They blocked off the downhill run.  They were grooming and salting it for the race 13-15 January 2012.  But I skied next to it (just this red fence between the run and me) so I am counting it as skiing a World Cup run.

Start House 

Part of the Weltcup run

Francs and dollars aren't quite even in converting, but close enough I thought of them as a 1 to 1 conversion.  But a soup and bottle of water cost 16 Francs.  Rule #4:  Switzerland is expensive.

Christine

Christine in Chamonix, France

If you can't spend Christmas at home*, I suggest skiing in the French Alps.  Chamonix is a beautiful city, near the boarder of Switzerland and Italy.  In fact, you can ski 3 different countries and 6 different mountains in the area.  How great is that?  For this trip, I stuck to the French Alps.  I skied at Brevent (2,525 meters- 8,284 feet) and Domaine de Balme (Le Tour) (2,270 meters-7,447 feet).   The sun shined at Brevent.  This made for lovely skiing conditions.  I prefer to ski in the sun, since I hate being cold.  The mountain had amazing snow for the 2nd time going there.  Loved skiing that day.  And the restaurant on the mountain had excellent tomato soup.  Best I've had in Europe.  And I've had my fair share of the soup.

Not my best picture ever in terms of framing for the top of the mountain.

Skiing above the clouds.

Le Tour had power though.  If you ski, then you know that most everyone wishes for a powder day.  It snowed all morning at Le Tour.  I won't lie, I had trouble skiing in the poor visibility.  You have no idea what the condition of the snow is right in front of you.  But I loved skiing in the powder after I could see it.  So much fun.  A tip I learned- lean back a bit to keep your ski tips up (over the powder).  So there are no pictures of Le Tour.

I stayed at Gustavia.  This hotel is Swedish owned and operated.  They are quite nice people.  Who love to party until 2 in the morning.  Interestingly, they celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve.  At 3pm they watched the Disney movie Donald Duck.  They do this every year.  The bar was packed with people.  Some could not even see the tv; that's right they just listened.  Apparently the Swedish think that Donald is like them- a pull yourself up from the boot straps, can't keep me down type.  They said the busy season is actually the summer time.  They can keep summer, I want snow.  Lots and lots of snow.

I managed to have 2 types of fish on Christmas Eve.  Not quite like my family tradition of the 7 fish, but I tried.  And mine included oysters, which I like.  The hotel served a turkey dinner for Christmas.  But the dessert was lousy.  Some kind of English plum pudding or something terrible.  To the British people that may read this:  put butter in the cake/pudding batter.  Don't serve it as a garnish to add to make it taste better.  It doesn't help.  At all.  I'm just sayin'...

Waiting for the bus, there was a picture that I will paint some day:

Those are the real mountains.  They just look fake.  And this is my obligatory church picture.  ha ha

Christine

*I did have the chance to Skype with my family and it was wonderful to see you all.