Sunday in Stuttgart: Teehaus, Weissenburgpark

Jens had proposed that the next morning we meet at the tram station Bopser. I had every faith in his excellent choice of places to go. It would have been fractionally quicker to take two trams but it was another gorgeous day. I decided to walk again along Haußmannstraße again and take the scenic line 15. The sky was blue and the tram glided up the hills around Stuttgart. I saw more of the smart, well maintained villas one with a tower dated 1900. The state of disrepair of buildings of the same era in Buenos Aires, buildings perhaps even more elegant than these made an extraordinary and sad comparison. I wondered what it was that made for such differences - culture, economy, attitude?

Typical villa, Photo:  J Streck, Stuttgart 2016

At Stelle I got off to walk to Bopser, not realising that my walk would be along a forest trail.  It was a surprising and fortuitous turn of events.  The trail seemed well used and I was not worried, still less upon exchanging smiles and hellos with two older couples out for a walk.  The Japanese have a term: Shinrin-yoku - forest bathing. They believe walking in the forest is restorative, that it actually improves and protects health. I live in a part of Scotland where we are surrounded by gorgeous, mysterious but welcoming wooded hills with many walks.  I have often thought how apt this Japanese idea seems when out in those forests. In this wood, the energy of growth was everywhere yet the forest was calm and restful: its scent, the greenness of the leaves, the dirt trail, the quiet and the sound of the birds. I felt lucky and happy to be there. 

I arrived to a street apparently two minutes from Bopser but was confused when Google maps wanted me to return into the forest. I had forgotten to distinguish between the centre of Bopser and Bopser tram stop. I realised that I was only five minutes from a Teehaus in Weissenburgpark. Jens had mentioned a Teehaus. I figured that was the one.  He was tolerant and understanding of my tourist error and we met there instead. 

It was a marvellous setting and felt very European. 

Teehaus

If you go, don’t forget to climb the slope, covered in aliums that day....

....to look at the view.

We had coffee and chatted like everyone else.

Eventually we ordered lunch. With extraordinary patience Jens once again answered my endless questions about the menu. Lentils, here, I said?   Jens said that when the area was poor they grew, and in fact still grow a kind of mountain lentil. I was curious to try a local dish of lentils, sausage and spätzle, a south German noodle. Lentils and noodles in the same dish? I queried. He shrugged. The lentils that arrived were not apparently the mountain variety but they were tasty. Noodles are less my thing and I had ordered them from curiosity. 

As in the Schlossgarten children ran about exploring.  I saw some gazing at tadpoles caught in their hands from the pond while their parents relaxed. It did not feel like worried, stressed Brits I sometimes see trying to control unruly children. The children I saw looked absorbed and happy.  The statues we saw below the Teehaus outside the Marmorsaal (what floors, for dance!) reminded me of a stylised form of that absorption in play:

Photos, 2, 3, 4, 6 (clockwise from top left) by J Streck, Stuttgart 2016

I remember with my babies how it seemed to me they sometimes picked up on how I was feeling. Many times I noticed that as I relaxed, stopped worrying about the baby and toddler and got distracted by tasks I found the baby calmed down too. Perhaps it is not so unlike men and getting dances - you relax, maybe they choose you, if you are not relaxed it is unlikely they will. Yet, like trying to sleep you cannot really make yourself relax.  I think whether you do or not can have a lot to do with how you feel in the prevalent conditions.