\"the little city that could: a percussionist's loose guide to stuttgart"
i woke up to the hum of a diesel engine idling outside my rented room. smells like old pizza boxes and gasoline. the thermostat in my apartment said 5c, but out here? feels less like a joke. just checked and it's... there right now, hope you like that kind of thing. ground feels colder than whatever weird elon musk NFT project this is.
i asked the reception lady about good spots to play drums, she just raised an eyebrow and pointed me to the train station. "there's always some tourist with a backpack banging on suitcases," she said. crew cuts and suspicion in the air. first lesson in stuttgart: don't explain yourself.
*bam. first stop was the marktplatz, that square everyone fawns over. tried to tap out a rhythm on the fountain. got side-eye from a woman in nurse's scrubs. maybe not the wisest move. pro-tip: if you want strangers to clap, learn the weissenseerPsalm. or just fake it.
sssd school of hard knocks taught me to avoid the Hohenzollernplatz after dark. some guy in a green puffer screamed about "muzieklegers" and hurled his saxophone like it was a cricket bat. classic stuttgart, baby.
found a shack called bierkeller am staadhaus. engine room grungy, beer frothy. asked the bartender if he knew any proper drums to spit on. he snorted and tossed me a kalbfleisch bun. "here. feed your instrument. it likes pork." started arguing about jazz fusion with a guy in lederhosen who insisted "macht nichts, die bas ist alles."
map:
abandoned zoo. now just a parking garage masquerading as art. went in to check the vibe and got mugged by a seagull. turned out it was Nobel prize-grade seagull architecture critic. claws were sharp. told me never to trust ducks north of the neckar river.
bolded phrase: the Adlerhaus bar. real talk. bartender's a former circus ringmaster, says the cocktails have more edges than a skullphone. ordered a "hackedenfelsen" and watched a woman in fishnets do interpretive dance moves. no one knows why.
Yelp entry says the Museumsmeile has "soulful cobblestones." balanced Yelp review says "this place makes you question life choices at 2am." TripAdvisor called the Uhland house "a kinda-machine-but-more-consensual experience." actual quote.
suddenly remembered the weather app said 5.93c max. turned out to be a lie. when i walked back to the hostel, the wind felt like a keyboardist playing E minor. my hands hurt more than my ego.
hit up a gay karaoke bar called punks & queens. tried to explain chops to a bouncer who only spoke about avocado toast. they kicked me out for rhythmic indecency. next time: bolded phrase*: learn basic German. 'danke' and 'bitte' won't kill you.
wrote this rant on a napkin. found a broken xylophone in a dumpster. now it sings. doesn't stop. stuttgart owns me now. and the seagulls.
neighbors? they're in pforzheim. says so on the bus sign. better get a shovel.
i hit up the racecourse. saw a man in a tuxedo eating schnitzel alone. stared at him until he ate the side of a bread. he gave me his mustard packet. secret tip: dipping sausages in amber ale here requires no regret.
i heard that the bibliotheca universitatis stuttgartae has bard-lined staircases. went to check and got stuck behind a group of children reenacting Kafka. one of them misquoted the metamorphosis while juggling hardboiled eggs. classic. somewhere, a scorpion weeps.
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