Mercedes Museum and Ludwigsburg

Today we woke up at 10am and headed out for the day. Had some bakery food for breakfast along the way, then straight to the Mercedes Museum. We arrived around 12. The building was pretty big… so we thought it should be good.


We were not disappointed. The museum was English friendly, with audio headsets and every sign being in Deutsch and English. We ended up spending nearly 5 hours in there! Very entertaining way to spend a day.

Timeline:
As you went through the floors, it worked its way forward in history. As you went between the floors there were snippets of major events in history and it showed where Daimler fitted into everything.
Daimler invented the first ever combustion engine to power a horse drawn cart. It went a massive 18km/h. And was called the “Grandfather Clock”

Daimler were involved in the World Wars, creating planes and other weaponry. They even had forced labour using POWs to do their manual labour.
After WW2 they admitted their faults and turned the image of DaimlerBenz around. They created their safety first approach and headlined the automotive industry… and still do today. They invented and were the first to commercially install ABS (anti-lock breaking system) and airbags. Also, they were the first to initiate crash testing.
They merged with Chrysler for financial reasons (and now have recently split after a massive loss in the company).
They are still producing a large number of cars, and are number 2 in Germany for car registrations (after VW).

Highlights:
The guy who founded Porche, was a designer for Daimler in the early days.
The Pope-mobile was designed by DiamlerChrysler.
Mercedes are still headlining the safety systems research for automotive companies… and that’s what I’m working for guys ;-) I even saw some people I work with, and software that I have seen on display in part of the museum, which is quite cool.


After this most of the day was gone… so we decided to grab some dinner then see Schloss Ludwigsburg by evening light. This time we got into one of the restaurants Alex wanted to go last night and had some traditional German food… really, A&A had schnitzel and I had pork roast.

We made it to the Schloss around 7pm. It was quite pretty by the evening light and seemed like a really new castle. You could walk through the courtyard for free… then you had to pay to go see the gardens. There were hundreds of people heading there and we had no idea why. We found out that there was a fireworks display on tonight. So we decided to spend the evening here… why not?


The evening was pleasant. We found ourselves a seat and enjoyed a couple of drinks. The entire place was lined with tea-light candles and reminded me of the lantern festival in Auckland. Shortly after dark they started the fireworks… to the songs of Queen… random. They didn’t last too long, and weren’t overly exciting. But they were still fireworks!


After that, we found our way to the S-Bahn and made our way home… straight to bed because we were shattered. It was a really pleasant day, and a nice way to spend the evening.