On our last adventure to Germany we travelled south to Stuttgart just to visit the Porsche museum. Like many of the missed opportunities on that trip, we arrived at Porscheplatz only to find that the museum was closed. We had forgotten the golden rule of European museums – pretty much all of them are closed on Mondays. Ensuring we didn’t make the same mistake again, this fine Tuesday morning, we again headed south on a day trip to car nirvana. The great thing about the high speed ICE trains in Germany is that you can speed across the country effortlessly making it possible to complete this 500km roundtrip in a day with plenty of time for sightseeing. The other advantage is the big comfy chairs and the beverage service to your seat.

After alighting from the train in Stuttgart and navigating the local train network, we arrived at the (very open) Porsche museum. There were some fantastic cars in this museum (and some lemons) but I’ll get to that later. One of the things that always appeals to me in a museum is the design, not just the design of the building but the interior design and the small details that really bring the whole place together. One of the main reasons I like Porsche is the quality of their design and detailing. This showed in the museum – in the flow through the museum and details such as the stands that turned a row of cars in unison, the sots that anchor the exhibits featuring measurements so they looked like a steel ruler right down to the matchbox car display outside the entry to the gift shop which picked up on the building detailing by encasing the cars behind glass in the black part of a black and white line graphic on the wall.

There was a quite extensive range of cars on display right back to the early days of Porsche, with a special extended display of my favourite era of the Porsche – the 1950s and 60s, which even paid homage to James Dean in the display. The gift shop had a Steve McQueen range but not James Dean for some reason – I could have spent some serious cash in there if they did. (Nihilism – Rancid – songs about hopelessness and nihilism are he bread and butter of punk rock – especially the type that comes from the East Bay area of San Francisco but Rancid do I better than most.)

What did become obvious to me was the hideous range of Porsches available in the 70s and early 80s before they hit upon the 911. They were appalling – a couple even resembled a Saab. There were also displays of the experimental cars that didn’t make it and Dan’s favourite section – the modern day range though for some reason (engineering probably) Dan always favour the 4WD version. While admittedly the 4WD Porsche is more stylish than most SUVs, I am yet to find a single SUV that is more stylish than a sports car (or even several of the little zippy things available). Those familiar with my design sensibilities – simplicity but drawn from organic curves – will not be surprised that the roadster is my favourite Porsche, probably followed by the modern day Carrera. While I can definitely see the appeal of the 911, it just doesn’t quite get there style-wise for me. Having said that, of all the 1980s cars it would have to be the pick. It or the late 80s Mazda Miata (MX5).

The standout part of the museum for me was the inclusion of models, concept drawings and renderings. Like visual notes from the designers, these development tools take you into the mind of the designer and show the inspiration behind the design and the process of turning that idea into the final product. Some of the renderings were particularly impressive and inspiring –the aircraft engines that inspired the dash instruments- clichéd but effective and particularly well sketched. It made me nostalgic for the days of pantone markers and pastels and what might have been…

Once we got to the end and Dan had once again pointed out how affordable a Porsche would be almost anywhere in the world apart from Australia, it was time to visit the gift shop. Like most museum gift shops it was hideously expensive and there wasn’t even a James Dean postcard in sight. I did however pick up a Lego kit of a Porsche – which I subsequently found in department stores (thankfully for the same price.)

From here we navigated our way to the second museum for the day – the much larger Mercedes Benz museum. I have to say I’m not the hugest Mercedes fan – the best bit is usually the insignia which have of course disappeared from many a Benz over the years. The museum did have my favourite Benz – the gull wing. Dan had always wondered how the windows worked as the shape had no capacity for a standard straight winding window. It turns out they are hinged to come out like the back windows on an old mini. (Run to the Hills – Iron Maiden – a little bit of metal goes hand in glove with the power and polished chrome fantasy world of the car industry.)

What was really interesting about this museum is the way they tied in historical and pop cultural events, which of course influence the way cars are designed and used, and the bits of trivia about the cars, particularly in the stars gallery which holds the first ever pope mobile (designed originally to protect the pope from the elements rather than an assassin’s bullet, the car that Princess Diana purchased privately and had to return after outcry from the British public about her driving a non- English car and the fact that the Sultan of Morocco was the first monarch in the world town a car.

The museum was over about seven or eight floors with ramps that spiralled down with the relevant history of the time displayed on the wall of the ramp and a viewing platform to take a photo from above of the time’s cars. I think my favourite display was the elevated oval at the bottom with the series of Mercedes Benz racing cars – including the silver bullets of the 1950s. The display looked awesome.

We wandered through the gift shop – again nothing that appealed to my sensibilities. Dan found a whole book about some Mercedes truck used by the army – a unimog. He was most disappointed that there wasn’t one in the exhibition. Of course in a museum the gift shop and café prices are always about double what you think they are going to be but we hadn’t had lunch and we needed some sustenance for our next museum adventure. Dan enjoyed a small pork schnitzel and a beer of course. I had what was essentially cheese noodles. We were then well prepared for our next destination – the Schwein Museum.

After the disappointment of the Porsche museum on our last visit we had gone to the tourist information centre to try and find some other things to do. The Schwein Museum was suggested to us but I couldn’t talk Dan into it. This time with some arm twisting, he reluctantly agreed. As it turned out the museum was only 10-15 minutes’ walk from the Mercedes Museum so we wandered over there in the heat. The Museum was housed in a kitschy German beer hall and included what would be described in Australia as the big pig (not to be confused with the famous-for-a-minute-in-the-80s –Australian-band). Of course I had to have my photo taken with it. But even the big pig outside couldn’t prepare you for what was to come. We had expected that the pork museum might tell the story of the pork industry in Germany – after all that’s what you got with Cork’s Butter Museum. The first room was promising – there was a chart of world pork consumption as a percentage of overall meat consumption. Germany was beaten by Austria and while Australia has the greatest meat consumption per capita, pork is quite a small percentage. Apart from some other weird anatomical studies (and what I am pretty sure was a taxidermied baby wild pig) the museum was basically a collection of pig memorabilia and figurines that got seriously out of hand. It was just incredible and not in a good way – how many pig figurines there actually are in the world. The pick of the bunch though has to be the collection of plastic dinosaurs (and other random animals like an octopus) which all had pig’s heads grafted on to their bodies. It was truly the stuff of nightmares (and not just the dinosaurs). It was also really hot and the place had no air conditioning. It was even too hot to stop and have a beer.

We walked across the road to the U Bahn station that was baking in the sun and attempted to work out how to get back to the Hauptbahnhof. A little girl who couldn’t really speak English was trying to help us. Unfortunately it turned out she was wrong and we missed the next train which of course meant 30 minutes baking in the sun waiting for the next one. By the time we got back to Frankfurt, it was again 8:30pm. We sat in the air-conditioned room but decided to venture out for dinner – we found ourselves at a hipster burger barn. How did I know it was hipster? Because all the furniture was made out of palettes. But the burger was pretty good. I am not so sure the whisky ketchup was quite as good as the waiter made out. Dan again chose the schnitzel because apparently you can never have enough pork. After dinner we wandered back to our hotel and crashed.