Looking down I could see the chip on my left shoe where I always tie it. My bib number barely fluttered in the morning's light breeze. Other similarly clad runners were pressed closed together, each with a look of anticipation and excitement. We were ready. Everything was just as it normally is before a marathon. Well, almost everything except the race master of ceremonies was speaking in German. Come to think of it, the other runners were all chattering in German.

    Actually, that wasn't so surprising given that I was standing at the start line next to the Gottlieb Daimler stadium in Stuttgart to run Germany's largest ½ marathon event (June 5), the Stuttgarter-Zeitung Lauf. Situated in the Baden-Wurtemburg, Stuttgart is a city of 550,000 where one in three of its inhabitants are immigrants. Stuttgart is home to a world famous ballet troupe, but is perhaps best known for Mercedes and Porsche which have headquarters here. With the massive three point circle logo revolving on the roof of the main train station, it leaves little doubt that you are in Mercedes country. I was in Stuttgart with Tom Butz to represent St. Louis, Missouri, in acknowledgement of the 45 year anniversary of the St. Louis - Stuttgart Sisters relationship. Started in the mid-50's by President Eisenhower, the Sister Cities program works to foster intercultural understanding and cooperation around the world. The St. Louis - Stuttgart Cities established in 1960 is the oldest such relationship out of the fourteen sponsored by St. Louis.

    The night before the run at an inpromptu biergarten outside the Gottlieb Daimler stadium where event was to begin the next morning, we met Nadine Philipp from the Stuttgart municipal sports authority or Sportsamt. The Sportsamt was the umbrella group that organized the athletic events in the city. Nadine specifically was responsible for the setting up accommodations and arrangements for the Sister Cities participants. Tom and I met runners from St. Helens (England), Strassbourg (France), Wuhan (China) and Szczecin (Poland). While at the biergarten, Tom and I indulged in the well-loved runner's ritual of 'carbo-loading'. In the States, this entails eating copious quantities of pasta for energy storage the next day. The Germans had their own twist on this tradition. We were treated to Maultauchen and Spätzle, local Schwabian specialties. Maultauchen can best be described as a tasty Germany variant of a ravioli stuffed with a mixture of meat, cheese and spinach. According to legend, Maultauchen were invented by monks in the medival town of Maulbronn not far from Stuttgart. During a period of fasting where the meat was forbidden, some enterprising Maulbronner monks discovered they could skirt the ban by hiding meat in small pasta pockets thereby inventing the Maultauchen. Spätzle on the other hand belies good description. The closest might be short lumpy flour noodles. Served with a savory white sauce, they were quite good and hit the spot.

    The morning of the race, Tom and I arose and traveled by Strassenbahn (city train) back to the stadium to the starting line. We took the Stassenbahn U11, which the city specially activated to ferry people directly to the stadium. I was surprised by the total number of runners and on-lookers (Zuschauer). It was wall-to-wall people at the stadium and we were lucky to get on the train. In total, 21,980 participants took part in the day's events across seven different events ranging from wheelchair racing, in-line skating, speed walking and marathoning to set a new record for 12th Stuttgarter-Zeitung Lauf. Of these, 9698 took part in the half-marathon, a huge number even by US standards for a half-marathon. By comparison, the St. Louis full marathon attracted roughly 7000 runners in 2005.

    At 9:00am, the half-marathon got underway. The running course in 13.1 miles meandered through the city and was in many ways different than my other running experiences in the US. I thoroughly enjoyed past hills with grape vines clinging to them and past buildings and structures that were around when the US was just thirteen colonies. In my other marathons, it was not unusual to run along with a group of people, chat with them about where they were from and what they do for fun and then moving on to a new group. For me, marathoning is very much about getting to know the other runners. What struck me was how eerily quiet the Germans were. There was very little if any talking going on. People concentrated on their running. Everyone seemed nice enough, but unlike in the States, the Germans were all very serious and focused. The other thing I noticed was how the Germans actually ran. Personally, I subscribe to the run-walk methodology of marathon running where by my runs are interspersed by resting walks. The Germans however had a different notion. Nearly all of them ran the entire way without pausing, which surprised me. Near the end, a few looked close to exhaustion but continued to jog towards the finish. Unfortunately, the race was marred by the death of two runners who collapsed during the run and then died at the hospital. The fans themselves were wonderful. A very large contingent of them turned out to cheer the runners. There were viewers along nearly the whole path and appropriately enough, there were a number of brass bands too although no trace of Lederhosen was seen.

    The finish line was located inside the stadium. As runners entered, they saw a live fee on the jumbotron and each runner received an Erringerungsmedaille (commemorative medal) for their efforts. Tom finished in 1:36 hours and I finished in 2:25. From the Maultauchen to the Mercedes museum at Unterturkheim, Stuttgart will have a fond place in my memory.

While in Stuttgart…

    It's been nearly a decade since I've stayed at a youth hostel, and many things have changed. The facilities at the Stuttgart Hostel were under renovation, but what's already there is impressive. The building itself had multiple floors serviced by a number of elevators, 24 hour reception and wireless internet access. The rooms sported electronic carded door locks with two bunk beds. There were lockers and separate toilets and showers within each of the rooms. On one floor, I found the hostel bistro that served meals with walkout terrace. Situated on a hill a few blocks from the train station, the hostel provided a fabulous view of the city with convenient access to the tremendous Staatsgallerie. One of my roommates was a German, named Andreas. With unemployment raging at levels not seen since 1933, jobs are hard to come by. Currently, there are over five million Germans (12.6%) unemployed. Andreas had come from Unterfranken in Bavaria to take up a temporary help desk position at a company for six months and was staying at the youth hostel. He was one of lucky ones. He knows of a friend who had studied chemistry in college but now works cleaning homes. Andreas is happy to have a job, but doesn't know what the future holds. With economic growth at an anemic 2%, the economy is cooling. As with the other Germans I met, he was thoughtful and intelligent. We chatted each morning at breakfast as he got ready to go to work and I prepared to visit the city. Despite unemployment at record levels, I didn't see evidence of this on the streets. People still shopped, hung out at restaurants and sported the newest fashions.

    While in Stuttgart, I had the wonderful opportunity to met Manfred and Clara, Tom's relatives, and joined them on a visit by car of quaint German town like Bad Wimpfen along the Neckar River. A week earlier, I flew into Munich to visit friends and on my way to Stuttgart stayed with Dietlinde Biangardi and her husband Jürgen for a night in Ulm. Dietlinde gave me a personal tour of Ulm where the Ulmer Munster possesses the tallest church steeple in the world. Now it was time to return home. On my last morning in Stuttgart, Andreas kindly offered to drop me off at the train station in his old VW golf. He was only slightly joking when he said the stereo was worth more than the car, but at least it still ran. Sixteen hours later with stopovers in Heathrow and O'Hare, I was back in St. Louis.