The first thing Germany gave me was cold.
Not the polite, soft kind you ease into. The kind that meets you on an exposed train platform and doesn’t negotiate. I had flown in from Donegal, missed my connection, and was standing on the upper deck of Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof waiting for the last train south. It reminded me of 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. That same semi-exposed, industrial grandeur.
I finally boarded the train.
If there’s one thing Germany gets deeply right, it’s trains. The Deutsche Bahn felt less like public transportation and more like a moving hotel. Warm. Smooth. Quiet. I remember sitting back and watching the dark countryside scroll past the window and feeling the cortisol finally drain out. I had made it. I was moving. The train would do the rest.
By the time I checked into Motel One in Stuttgart it was nearly midnight. Cold, tired, hungry, and the kitchen had already closed. The bartender looked at me the way bartenders look at late arrivals. Unbothered. Competent. Slightly amused.
“I’ll take a gin and tonic,” I said.
Liquid dinners are underrated.
My friend Mike’s company is headquartered in Stuttgart. He had been trying to get me over there for years. It’s hard to say no to travel when you’re already moving. And yet I had managed. I had no real expectations for the city. No real interest, if I’m being honest. I wasn’t sure I could have found it on a map six months earlier.
He was in back-to-back meetings all of the first day. So I did what I always do in a new place. Found a reliable omelette. A good cup of coffee. A bookshop. An outdoor retailer. Another coffee, this one “a roadie” as I watched the city move.
Stuttgart is organized around Königstraße - a long, wide pedestrian corridor that everything else seems to orient itself around. Not unlike the central arteries you find in other European cities. But there’s something grounded and gritty about this one. Less performative than some. The stores were prepping for Christmas but nothing had been fully switched on yet. The city felt caught between versions of itself.
What surprised me most was how many people were out on a regular Thursday. Moving, shopping, sitting in the cold. Not tourists. Just people. Living their day in their city.
The Globetrotter in Stuttgart deserves its own sentence. It’s the German experiential equivalent of REI. Multi-level, immersive, slightly overwhelming in the best way. The staircase is lined with thousands of photographs from customers, from expeditions all over the world. I stood there longer than I planned to. Something about that wall caught me off guard. All those places. All those faces. I bought a set of SealLine dry bags I still haven’t used. No regrets.
That first full day ended with schnitzel and a Dinkelacker. Both earned. Mike and I walked off dinner through the Christmas market, cups of mulled wine in hand, as expected in late November in Germany. Then he mentioned a speakeasy he’d heard about.
We found it. We stayed too long. At some point we were outside a McDonald’s at an hour that should not be named, attempting to bribe the staff into making us a burger before they closed. They declined. Diplomatically. We walked home.
Day two started the way most days start anywhere — breakfast, coffee — and then opened up. The Altes Schloss. The Markthalle. The art museum a friend in Italy had recommended.
There’s something that happens around the second day in a new city. The initial disorientation settles and you start to actually see the place. Stuttgart did something to me that second day. I found myself genuinely attached to it. In the “I could stay another week” kind.
I still want to go back. Dürrbachklinge and Wernhaldenpark are said to be beautiful hikes. The Mercedes-Benz Museum has been pulling at me since I left. There’s still so much there I didn’t get to.
The drive back to Frankfurt did not go as planned.
Mike had been excited about the Autobahn. The legendary highway. No speed limit. The kind of road you hear about in other countries. We sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic for what felt like the entire route. I think we peaked at 50 kilometers per hour. The train I had originally booked, the one Mike had talked me out of, whipped past us in the other direction at what looked like lightning speed.
We laughed about it. What else can you do.
Mike flew home early the next morning and I had Frankfurt to myself for two days.
The first one followed the usual pattern. Omelette. Coffee. Bookshop. You know how it goes by now. Then late in the afternoon I took a notion and wandered into the Städel Museum. The crowd was surprisingly thin. I had the corridors mostly to myself. The Städel holds world-class work and to land a quiet Saturday afternoon, that kind of access feels like something you’re getting away with.
That night I ate a burrito alone in my hotel room and watched terrible television. No shame. No apologies. No regrets.
Day two: breakfast at Café Hauptwache. At the next table, a group of guys in their 20s were piecing together the previous night. Proper breakfast talk. A stag party. The details were chaotic. Probably illegal. I appreciated the preview of what lay ahead for whoever was getting married.
After breakfast I walked up to Grüneburg Park and back through the city, stopped at Coffee Fellows before the Frankfurt Archaeological Museum. Then I looped through Römerberg and found a bench in Nizza Park. The river was there. The light was good. Retirees were being directed off cruise ships and corralled toward the old town for dinner and drinks. They looked content. Or at least prepared.
That evening I went back to Römerberg and had dinner at Alten Limpurg, a traditional German restaurant right on the square. Busy. Loud. Exactly right.
One thing stayed with me from the whole trip.
We were out one night in Stuttgart, the three of us, when someone mentioned the flags. The way you don’t see German flags the way you see American flags. Not on private homes. Not hanging from porches. Not on bumper stickers.
Mike put it plainly. Germans don’t do that. Not after what their nationalism produced. There’s a shadow side to pride, to power, to any big beautiful plan that goes badly enough. They’ve lived inside that shadow. They built their culture in the aftermath of it. So the flag stays folded.
I sat with that one for a while. Still am.
This was my first proper “quick pop out of Ireland.” My friends there talk about it like it’s nothing. Hop over to Germany. Pop to Barcelona. Be back Sunday. It didn’t feel especially convenient to me. Not for my lifestyle, anyway. But it gave me something I wasn’t expecting: a genuine taste for the German cities, a warmer feeling for the people, and a fuller picture of a country I had only held in the abstract.
What it also clarified was something I had been quietly sitting with for a while. A long weekend is a preview. A postcard. What I actually wanted was more time on the European mainland. Something with real roots. Somewhere I could stay.
But that’s a different postcard.
Where to Find Yourself in Stuttgart
Cafe Hegel Hegelplatz 1, 70174 Stuttgart
A breakfast place in the truest sense of the thing. Unhurried. Reliable. The kind of morning anchor a new city needs. I came here both days and left each time feeling settled. If you need somewhere to start the day before you’ve figured out what the day is, start here.
Leonidas Chocolate Shop (inside Königsbau Passagen) Königstraße 28, 70173 Stuttgart
Belgian chocolates inside a beautiful old arcade. I came in looking for gifts and stayed longer than I needed to. Worth a slow browse even if you leave empty-handed. The building alone earns a step inside.
Altes Schloss (Old Castle) Schillerplatz 6, 70173 Stuttgart
A mid-day activity with no agenda required. The castle sits at the center of the old town and holds a regional history museum inside if you want to go deeper. I spent most of my time in the surrounding square. There’s a pace to that part of the city that slows you down in a good way.
Carls Brewery Stauffenbergstraße 1, 70173 Stuttgart
A proper dinner spot. Good beer, good food, the kind of atmosphere that earns a long evening. Go with someone. Order more than you think you need.
Jigger & Spoon Calwer Str. 21, 70173 Stuttgart
A speakeasy that delivers on the premise. Find it late. Bring someone you don’t have to explain yourself to. It earned us a very long night.
Where to Find Yourself in Frankfurt
LUME Boutique Hotel (a Marriott Autograph Collection Property) Wiesenhüttenplatz 36, 60329 Frankfurt am Main
Boutique feel without boutique anxiety. Comfortable, central, well-staffed. A better base than I expected and one I’d go back to without hesitation.
Café Hauptwache An der Hauptwache 15, 60313 Frankfurt am Main
Start here. The building anchors the pedestrian zone and the breakfast is dependable in the best way. Good light in the morning. Worth arriving before the city fully wakes up.
Nizzawerft Nizzawerft, Frankfurt am Main
A footpath running along the Main river. I walked it twice and it was different each time. Quiet in the morning. More leisurely by afternoon. Worth the time in either direction, with no particular destination in mind.
Städel Museum Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
One of the better art museums I’ve spent time in. The collection is world-class and the building doesn’t get in its own way. Go on a quiet day if you can. Lunch at Cafe Wacker afterward held up.
Römerberg Römerberg, Frankfurt am Main
The old town square. Go in the evening, after the tour groups have cleared out. Walk the cobblestones without a plan. The architecture earns a slow look.
Alten Limpurg Römerberg 19, 60311 Frankfurt am Main
Traditional German food on the square. Busy in the way that means things are going well. I ordered the obvious things. They were the right call.
Sullivan Cocktail Bar Seehofstraße 30–32, 60594 Frankfurt am Main
A good room, a well-made drink, a place to end the night without needing an occasion.
