Stuttgart Warnings Or Dangers Tips by Nemorino Top 5 Page for this destination

Don't sit behind the crown!

Most of the 1396 seats in the Stuttgart Opera House are quite all right. In the second balcony, though, you should try not to sit directly in the middle of the first row behind this ornate golden crown, because it will obstruct your view of the stage considerably.

Other problem areas are the extreme right and left sides of the second balcony, and the back rows of the third balcony, which are very far from the stage.

What third balcony? you might ask, since you can't see one in the picture. Well, it really isn't an additional balcony, just an extension of the second balcony going much further back than any other seats in the building.

(You can meet some nice people up there, though, and there is a terrace where you can go out for some fresh air and a view of the park and the city.)

Website: http://www.staatstheater.stuttgart.de/

Don't try to cross this street! Public Transport Review

Stuttgart is a notorious automobile town (the Mercedes and Porsche factories are nearby), so it's no wonder we non-motorized individuals are treated as second-class citizens and banished into underground tunnels, as though we were rats or moles.

Even the central station (Hauptbahnhof) has a high-speed six-lane motorway passing right in front of it, with no surface-level crossing for pedestrians or cyclists. So to get to the station you have to go down an escalator (if it's working) or a flight of stairs (if not too many people are sitting on it) and find your way through a maze of passageways.

(We used to have this problem in Frankfurt too, by the way, but there were lots of protests and now we have equal and adequate time to cross the street.)

Another indication of Stuttgart's auto-mania is the fact that there is a Mercedes star on top of the clock tower of the train station. (Enlarge the photo to see this.)

On the roof of that tower there is a free observation platform (recommended) and on three floors of the tower there is a free exhibition about "Stuttgart 21" (see next Warning tip).

Don't believe it! It's a stupid idea! Public Transport Review

On three floors of the clock tower at Stuttgart Central Station there is an elaborate multi-media exhibition on "Stuttgart 21", trying to convince us that it would be a good idea to destroy the station and replace it with a space-saving underground mini-station.

Of course I don't want to discourage you from looking at the exhibition -- it's free, and there are some pretty pictures -- but please keep in mind that any time saved on the train would be lost as you tried to find your way up to the surface with all your suitcases or whatever. Notice that the stylish people in the fancy animations don't have much luggage, nor do they have bicycles or baby carriages.

Fortunately there is little danger that this hare-brained scheme will actually be implemented, mainly because it would cost millions of Euros that nobody has in their budget.

They wanted to finance it by ripping out all the tracks and selling the resulting real estate at premium downtown prices, which would have doubled the size of downtown Stuttgart. What they didn't take into account was the Law of Supply and Demand. Even I know that if you double the supply of something, the price is bound to go way down.

But we have to keep our guard up. One of the candidates in the current mayoral election in Stuttgart is campaigning on a promise of reviving "Stuttgart 21", and for other reasons he even has a good chance of winning.