Last day in Stuttgart

Aided by a map and five hours of free time, I went on a self-guided walking tour on my last day in Stuttgart. My intent was to expand my experience to other neighborhoods beyond the center of the city. 

About half a kilometer uphill from my hotel is Karlshohe Hill, a ridge that runs across the south and western parts of the city. The hill is a picturesque park with winding trails, plenty of benches and a vista overlooking the center city. Grape vines were grown along the slopes during the middle ages until the end of the 19^th Century; they have been reintroduced on some of the terraces.

View from the Milch Bar

I stopped at the Milch Bar on the Terrace which was designed for a federal garden show in 1961. I had a cappuccino, read Moll Flanders and sat at the edge of the vineyard overlooking the city. After reading a couple of chapters I set off to see the majestic Athena Fountain, built by Karl Donndorf in 1911.

Athena

I wound through the park, getting a little lost until I found the Hasenbergsteige, a steep ancient road which eventually leads to the Northern Black Forest. The steep road turns into a footpath, the Blauer Weg (Blue Path) that continues up the south side of Hasenberg Hill. Along the path are ancient stone walls with steps and narrow gates every so often leading up a terrace to residences. Looking down the hill, I had breathtaking views of Heslach Valley.

Back gate on the Blau Weg

The trail leads to Mount Birkenkopf, a 511 meter hill, World War II memorial and the highest point in the area. Between 1950 and 1955, 1,750,000 cubic meters of rubble from World War II were deposited on the hill, which locals call Monte Scherbelino (Mount Shards). From the top of the hill, there are panoramic views of Stuttgart and the country.

I returned via the Blauer Weg, but then took an alternate route back to Hasenbergsteige. I descended a narrow, steep staircase and path instead of the less steep, winding trail. I got lost on the way back to the hotel and accidently explored Bobblingerstrasse, a colorful and less ostentatious neighborhood than the one along the Hasenberg. 

Looking up the steps towards the Blau Weg

Cradle of Automobile Embraces Cycling

This is a repost from the Cleveland Executive Fellowship Blog

Stuttgart has been a car-dominated city for more than 50 years. Dubbed “The Cradle of the Automobile”, it is home to Daimler Benz, Porsche, Maybach, Bosch and Mahle.

“Nobody thought about cyclists for years,” said Claus Kohnlein, Stuttgart's Bicycle Officer in our meeting on Thursday. His department has been working to reduce speed limits and increase the number of bike lanes in this auto friendly city.

The newest part of his bicycle strategy is the Call a Bike Program which is designed to address traffic congestion, improve air quality and increase mobility options.  Call a Bike is a Deutsche Bahn program in several of Germany's major cities and Karl-Heinz Erdt, Duetsche Bahn Dispatcher for Call a Bike Stuttgart was also at the meeting.

One of Stuttgart's 65 Bike Stations

Implemented in 2007, Call a Bike has been widely accepted in Stuttgart with 60,000 bike rentals in 2008. There are 65 bike rental station in 10 square kilometers of the Downtown area. The city converted car parking spaces into bike stations, with 6 bicycles in each former car spot.

How it Works Herr Erdt and Herr Kohnlein demonstrated how to use they system and the time it takes to rent a bike is only slightly longer than it would take to unlock a personal bicycle.

1. There is a one-time registration completed online at www.callabike.de or by calling 07000 5 22 55 22. You must provide a credit or debit card number for the rental fees. There is a 5 Euro registration fee that will be used for your first bike rentals.

2. Call the number on the bicycle on your mobile phone and the automated system will provide a code that must be entered into a keypad to release the bike lock. The system will also text your phone with the number so that you may lock and unlock the bike multiple times during the rental.

3. There is a bolt that locks the wheels if you need to lock your bike, but don't want to return it to a station.

4. To return the bike, bring it to any of the 65 stations, lock the bike to the rack and enter the same four digit code. 

Who uses Call a Bike?

The largest demographic of Call a Bikers are residents and tourists 18-35 years old because this is the age group most comfortable using mobile phones. Although, using a mobile phone is convenient for many , Herr Kohnlein explained that it was also a drawback for people without cell phones. Stuttgart and Deutsche Bahn are researching the possibility of a kiosk to make the system even more user friendly.

User Cost

The bikes are free for the first hour and then can be rented by the minute, the day or the week. It costs 8 cents a minute to rent or a maximum of 9 Euro each day. Bikes can be rented for a a week for 36 Euro.

Multi-modal transportation is the goal.                                  Trains, Bikes & Car Sharing make a complete system. 

Transit Culture

“If you need mobility, we are your partner,” Herr Erdt said. Duetsche Bahn has a corporate mindset of true customer service. I also noticed this attitude at the local transit agency in Duisburg. There is truly a focus on the rider's experience throughout their entire journey. The transit agencies we have spoken with in Germany value customer goodwill and see it as their duty to provide the best possible user experience. 

In the future, Stuttgart would like to combine the bike system with Pedelc bikes because Stuttgart is a very hilly city. There are political, technical and financial obstacles to providing the electric bicycles, but it may be a bike rental option in the future.

Duetsche Bahn provides maintenance and ensures stations have bikes at all times. 

Start-Up Costs

The investment and risk of the program is assumed by Deutsche Bahn and it does not profit from the Call a Bike program, but the bikes are excellent advertising and the system encourages people to ride trains because they know they can hop on a bike when they arrive. The City of Stuttgart pays Deutsche Bahn a fee to provide and maintain Call a Bike. Each bike costs 1,000 Euro, each rack costs 300 Euro and the bikes are very well maintained. 

Bike Rental in Cleveland 

Could a program like this work in Cleveland without an entity such as Duetsche Bahn? Herr Erdt and Herr Kohnlein don't believe this type of bike rental will work without a partnership between the city and a large partner—whether it is a public, private or charitable entity.

I am not sure which organizations could best create a bike sharing program, but I imagine a Call a Bike Station at Cleveland's forthcoming Bike Center, Public Square at the CSU campus and at University Circle to start. 

Duisburg Nord Landschaft Park

This is a repost from the Cleveland Executive Fellowship Blog.

Duisburg Nord Landschaft Park

Duisburg Nord Landschaft Park was once a 200 hectacre industrial wasteland. Over the past ten years, the area has been transformed into a park. It was not a forced greening of a post-industrial space, but a graceful transition that combined fecund growth, decomposition and re purposing of structures.

Nature has undeniably returned to the area. Springtime bird songs provided the soundtrack to my park experience. I glimpsed rabbits hopping and ducks splashing in the wetland areas that formed in structures and tanks left to collect water.

Wetlands

The park provides many activities: hiking, biking, diving, climbing, playgrounds,tours and entertainment.

Climbing Wall

The park is a lovely juxtaposition of wild growth, maintained buildings, decaying structures, landscaped gardens, fields and a large area called the Wilderness—a restricted area where people are verboten.

Wilderness Area

The park reminded me of the unintentional transition that is already happening in some of the vacant industrial areas in Cleveland. One could perceive vacant factories with busted windows, climbing vines and trees erupting from its parking lots as blight. However, Duisburg Nord Landschaft Park demonstrates that redeveloping industry can be both a passive and positive change.

So, what is the potential for Cleveland's Industrial Valley, the vacant buildings along the RTA's Red Line Rapid? Can we ditch the golf course aesthetic for our green spaces and allow nature and industry to coexist as a recreational space? I think we could with a lot of foresight, patience and a small amount of human intervention.

More photos of Landschaft Park on my Flickr page. 

London: in 3 days

I apologize at the start for compressing three full days in London into one blog post. However, free internet was hard to come by and I opted for doing more and blogging less.

Because we only had three days to relax and sightsee in London, my travel companion and I made a generic, flexible list of things to see in London:

Palace, Park, Pub, Market, Museum, Window Shop, Cafe, Fish n Chips (just chips for me!), show.

Thursday We arrived last Thursday morning, checked into our hotel, grabbed strong coffee and walked to the nearby Hyde Park and Kensington Palace. The gardens were lush and green, a nice contrast to the gray drizzly weather. The rain didn't stop anyone from enjoying the outdoors and the park was filled with people playing in the rain. After a short nap, we had lunch of miso soup and vegetarian sushi at the Hare & Tortoise, took the tube to Covent Garden and walked around and peoplewatched. Last stop after being awake for nearly 48 hours was a semi-swanky dinner of gnocci at a restaurant whose name eludes me.

 

Kensington Palace

Friday We overslept, skipped breakfast, grabbed coffee and headed straight to the Tower of London. We did a self-tour and took in amazingly old architecture, the crown jewels and a swarm of other tourists. Sandwiches at the Pret a Manger, a walk across the Thames on the Millenium Bridge and on to the Tate Modern.  We walked to and around the crowds in Picadilly Circus, had 2 pints of ESB Ale at the Duke of Wellington pub in Soho, got takeout from a China Town restaurant for dinner and made a tipsy trek on foot and tube back to the hotel.

Millenium Bridge

Saturday I had traditional English breakfast (minus the bacon and suasage) at the hotel and set off by underground to the Spitafields Market. We got completely lost and asked for directions from a lovely couple. They were going there anyway and we walked with them to the market.

They also suggested we check out Camden Market, walk to Primrose Hill and then see the show, La Clique at the Hippodrome. W'e decided to take free advice from locals and spent the rest of the day doing those things. Camden Market was souveneir central, Primrose Hill and nearby Regent's Park was a quiet respite and La Clique was a hilarious and entertaining show.

Camden Market

Tiny Bubbles, Big Smiles

I am thrilled by the sound of the cabbage fermenting. I wasn’t sure it would actually work. I am making my first ever batch of sauerkraut.

The bubbling noise is the sound of bacteria feasting on the sugars in the cabbage and, well, passing gas. This is called lactofermentation.

I attended the recent Sandor Katz fermentation workshop at Pilgrim Church in Tremont. If this experiment works, I might try kimchi next. Learning fermentation and other food preservation techniques is part of my ongoing attempt to eat more locally year-round.

For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,

of statistics

lie before us.

the steep climb

of everything, going up,

up, as we all

go down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that,

they say,

are valleys, pastures,

we can meet there in peace

if we make it.

To climb these coming crests

one word to you, to

you and your children:

stay together

learn the flowers

go light

-Gary Snyder