A lovely half hour walk takes us past the old Rathaus, currently under renovations, with its Rubble Lady statue – to pay honor to all the women who removed the stones and built Germany after the war – and over to the very modern VW factory.  Transparent, because, well, it is made of all glass and everyone could see how the factory operated when it was in use. 

We are early for our 3:15 visit, so we head out into the park behind the factory in search of the Botanical gardens.  The actual park itself is huge, no way we could cover it all in the time allotted, but even our short walk is beautiful and lovely – and the Botanical gardens (although a bit confusing in terms of entry and exit) are comprised of wonderful winding pathways.  Vegetable gardens (with Kohlrabi – who knew it grew like that?), rock gardens, a bizarrely interesting wooden statue whose explanation had something to do with the application of mathematics in construction.  It was pretty to look at even if we didn’t understand it!

We circle back to the Factory, following Google Maps, which of course does not give us the proper directions, taking us to the staff entrances, not the factory tour entrance.  Ugh.  But we finally make it there with plenty of time to explore the little shop (cute grill set!) and then onto a fascinating tour.  We walked the whole production line, saw each stage as the vehicle was put together, totally fascinating for both of us – we only wish we could have toured when they were still in production. We were only 8 months too late! Bummer. 

At the end of the tour, we get to see the concept cars they produced, and then the very last car to come off the line – signed by everyone who worked in the factory.  So sweet.  And sort of sad.  They ended up moving the production to another factory for financial reasons, leaving this building for tours and events.  You can still have your VW delivered here though – which would be totally fun to see it in that huge glass circular carousel and have it come down to floor level for you to drive off.  And our only question that still remains….why can’t we have ID.3’s in the US?????  Such a bummer.

A nice walk home – with some very unusual sights – why is that Bear riding on the back of that man’s bicycle? – and the castle like house next door to our apartment (does Falk live there???).  We’ll never know!

Then some down time before dinner – right next door at Gastmahl des Meeres, an excellent seafood restaurant.  We grab a seat outside – overlooking our apartment, and the parrots that the restaurant has here as well (yes, they are Falk’s too!) – and commence to have a lovely evening with the sweetest waiter who talks our ear off about his trips to the US.  He is so excited to have American guests – and we have a blast talking about Disneyland (of course!) and his daughter (pictures on his phone) and just all things travel.  For food he has us come over to the display case so he can show us what he has because his “English” isn’t that good (they all say that!! And it is not true at all!). Anyhow, there was a fish he kept calling Pangasius which we didn’t know, turns out it is Swai!  Nah, we eat that all the time, we switched to Catfish from Canada and all was well. The food was excellent, the staff wonderful, atmosphere great. An overall wonderful meal.

Again, except the damn water!  What a rip off.  At least it was a bottle of still water and not tap water, but still…..sigh. Back at the apartment, we settle in with the parrots for a nice, relaxing evening.