My 1998 Germany Diary
A Whirlwind Invitation
My brother worked for the Mercedes-Benz plant in Tuscaloosa, and the company was sending a group of employees over to Germany to give a presentation from the local plant to the main corporate office. Originally, my brother’s wife was going to make the trip with him. However, because she was pregnant at the time, she wasn’t able to travel—so he asked me to take her place and go with him instead. Overall, it was an 8-day trip spanning 10,238 miles traveled.
Looking back, the whole trip was an absolute whirlwind. It felt non-stop from the moment we landed until the second we left, with barely a breath in between.
Day 1 & 2: Wheels Up to Swabia (July 29–30)
Leaving Tuscaloosa around 11:00 AM on July 29, 1998, marked two major firsts for me: my first time leaving the Country, and my first time ever stepping foot on an airplane. Flying Delta Business Class made the intro easy, though. We flew up the U.S. East Coast before cutting across the Atlantic and down into Europe, with The Man in the Iron Mask playing on the overhead screens. Between the pure novelty of the experience and the 8½-hour flight time, I couldn’t sleep a wink.
We flew out of Birmingham on Delta Flight 958 at 2:20 PM (Seat 12B on a 727), connecting through Atlanta where we boarded Delta Flight 134 at 5:50 PM (Seat 10C on a 737-300). We checked our bags in Birmingham and didn’t see them again until we arrived in Europe.
We landed in Stuttgart around 8:30 AM on Thursday, July 30, took a shuttle bus to the border guard station, and got that very first passport stamp. From there, we headed straight to the Hotel Residence in Sindelfingen to change clothes. The group’s anti-jet-lag strategy was “stay awake and stay busy,” and they put that theory to the test immediately.
From the hotel, we boarded a bus for a tour of Castle Hohenzollern. When our tour bus reached the area, our guide casually announced that we were going to park at the bottom and hike up. She instantly had a full-blown revolt on her hands! It was pretty funny—it’s like she didn’t know much about us Southerners. We ended up taking the bus to the top and hiking down instead.
Perched high on the hill, the castle offered unreal views of the valley. We took an English-guided tour inside, where we had to wear giant fabric booties to protect the historic floors, and photos were strictly forbidden. As we drove out to the castle, my brother spotted several hunting blinds in the nearby fields and asked our guide what kind of deer they had in Germany. Her deadpan response was simply: “German deer.”
After the castle tour, we stopped for lunch at Restaurant Lamm in Hechingen Stein. It was our first taste of authentic German food, and “great” doesn’t even do it justice. We also quickly learned that ice doesn’t come in drinks over here unless you specifically ask, and free refills aren’t a thing. We returned to Sindelfingen for a guided walking tour of the town, finished the evening with Swabian dishes at Restaurant Funzel, and finally crashed back in our hotel rooms around 10:30 PM.
Day 3: The Main Event in Sindelfingen & Evening in Tübingen (July 31)
Friday morning started with an 8:00 AM hotel breakfast before diving into the core reason for this entire trip: Daimler-Benz.
At 9:45 AM, we took the bus to the Daimler-Benz Customer Delivery Center to celebrate the Motor Trend Truck of the Year award. We went on a guided tour of the massive assembly plant, grabbed lunch inside one of the Sindelfingen plant cafeterias, and attended the official award presentation ceremony with Dr. Schöpf at 2:00 PM.
With the official business wrapped up, we took a short walk back to the hotel and hopped on a bus to Tübingen. After a walking tour through the historic streets and a little shopping, we headed down to the Neckar River. We all boarded a traditional wooden boat for a Stocherkahnfahrt (punting boat tour) along the water. We wrapped up the day with dinner at Wurstküche, a classic old-town restaurant, and the bus had us back at the hotel around 11:00 PM.
Day 4: Cruising the Black Forest (August 1)
After an 8:00 AM breakfast, the Black Forest (Schwarzwald) was our main agenda for the day. Our guide, Herr Rathke, met us at the hotel at 9:30 AM to lead us on a scenic tour through Nagold, Freudenstadt, and along the Schwarzwaldhochstraße.
We stopped for a picnic lunch right beneath the mountain Hornisgrinde at the Mummelsee. The packed lunch was a nice change from standard hamburgers and hot dogs—a boiled egg, a cheese sandwich, a ham sandwich, an apple, a Twix bar, a container of yogurt, and a juice box.
After lunch, the tour continued through Bühlertal, Bühl, Sasbachwalden, and Ottenhöfen on our way to Hausach. There, we visited the Freilichtmuseum Vogtsbauernhof, an open-air museum featuring a preserved Black Forest farm dating back to 1570. Having watched a special on the Discovery Channel a few months prior about the people of this area and how they lived and traded, seeing it in person made it all the more interesting.
One thing I didn’t care for was that at each point of the trip, our main tour leader would reward the local guide with a small gift, but at this old farm museum, she didn’t give him anything. I thought the local guide did an outstanding job, so when I returned home to Alabama, I wrote a letter to the museum letting them know what a great job he had done and how pleased they should be with him. The guide actually reached out to me directly to thank me, and we ended up maintaining a good friendship for a few years after that.
We ended the circuit with dinner at Restaurant Waldgericht in Aach before getting back to the hotel around 11:00 PM.
Day 5: Lake Constance, History & Border Crossing to Switzerland (August 2)
Sunday was an early start with a 7:00 AM breakfast for a two-hour drive down to Lake Constance (Bodensee). The ride sounds long, but there were plenty of sights along the way.
The bus dropped us off in Überlingen, where we had the choice to take a boat ride or walk the town. I decided to walk around on that beautiful, sunny morning. Überlingen is a clean, quiet town, and the water in Lake Constance is crystal clear—you could see 10 to 15 feet down into the water from the pier, with several large carp swimming near the shore and scuba divers exploring off the dock.
After meeting back up, we continued on to Kloster Birnau for another boxed picnic lunch, followed by a tour of Pfahlbauten, an open-air museum of prehistoric stilt houses over the water (which reminded me a lot of the park back home in Moundville, AL).
At around 3:00 PM, we boarded an auto-ferry from Meersburg over to Konstanz and crossed into Switzerland toward Mt. Säntis. As we got closer, the weather turned, bringing a thick fog and cool mist. Some in our group took the cable lift up to the 2,500-meter peak, but looking at three thin wires lifting a large car up into the fog, I decided to stay grounded at the base station—I just didn’t have the nerve to go that high!
We finished the evening on the flower island of Mainau, enjoying a great dinner at Schwedenschänke before the bus returned us to the hotel around midnight.
Day 6: Rooftop Gardens, Sister Cities & Wine Tasting (August 3)
We had some free time after our 8:00 AM breakfast, so we took advantage of it to explore more of Sindelfingen. We walked through the older part of the city again, catching a few things we missed the first time, and visited a central cemetery (which was remarkably neat, with zero plastic flowers anywhere).
At 11:00 AM, we headed to the DBAG Headquarters in Moehringen for lunch and a tour of their executive offices and art gallery. The architecture was unique—all the buildings were covered with living grass on top, as they are required to maintain a certain percentage of green space per square meter.
At 2:30 PM, we traveled to Schorndorf, the sister city of Tuscaloosa. We met the Mayor inside the historic Daimler House, where he presented our team with a book on the city, followed by a walking tour until 6:30 PM. Our guide was very knowledgeable, though the town itself felt a bit tired and run down.
Dinner at Restaurant Lamm in Remshalden-Hebsack was easily the highlight of the day, followed by a regional wine tasting. Our host served Trollinger—a delicious wine mostly grown and consumed right in Swabia. Even though he didn’t speak English, his enthusiasm made him a huge hit with everyone. And to top it off, I actually managed to get a glass of ice water!
Day 7: Engines, Museums & The Swatch Smart Car (August 4)
Our last full day in Germany started with a 7:30 AM breakfast and was packed from start to finish.
- M-Class Engine Factory (Bad Cannstatt): We toured the plant first thing in the morning. It was fascinating to see the teamwork required to build an engine, especially their real-time “Bingo” boards that showed whether each section was ahead of or behind its daily quota.
- Mercedes-Benz Museum (Untertürkheim): Next, we visited the museum, which traces automotive history from the original single-cylinder engine all the way to the modern M-Class. Afterward, we ate lunch in the plant cafeteria, which was neat, clean, and served great food.
- Downtown Stuttgart: We took a bus tour of the city followed by about three hours of shopping and sightseeing along the main pedestrian strip. It’s over three-quarters of a mile long with shops on both sides and full of live bands and street musicians—a very different vibe from Tuscaloosa or Birmingham.
- Final Dinner at Funzel: Our final dinner back in Sindelfingen was the best of the trip. The head of the Mercedes plant in Tuscaloosa joined us, and everyone on our team got the chance to test-drive the tiny Swatch Smart Car outside. They even invited a local Mercedes employee who was dining at the restaurant to join our table, which really showed how much they appreciate their staff.
If I had one piece of advice to offer anyone going on a trip like this: if you’ve got kids, leave them at home—or at the very least, keep them under control! There was a little girl who joined her mom and dad on this trip, and they seemed to expect everyone else on the bus to watch her. My friends, that is your rug rat, not mine.
Day 8: Journey Home (August 5)
After an 8:00 AM breakfast, we said goodbye to Sindelfingen and returned to the Stuttgart airport for our flights home.
We departed Stuttgart on Delta Flight 135 at 11:25 AM (Seat 12C on a 737-300), landing in Atlanta at 3:15 PM. From there, we caught Delta Flight 483 at 5:50 PM (Seat 2A on a 757), landing in Birmingham at 5:44 PM due to the time zone change. We made it back home to Tuscaloosa around 6:30 PM, ending a whirlwind, unforgettable first trip abroad.