Stuttgart was once famous for its cleanliness. Anyone who didn’t know the city knew what terms it wanted to be associated with: Mercedes, Bosch, Kehrwoche. For several years now, however, its center has presented an impossible sight: rubble everywhere, mountains of waste. As if a giant octopus, burrowing underground, had pierced the earth’s surface with its arms in widely spaced places.
The center of the devastation is the main train station. It was carved and undermined during ongoing operations; as is well known, a new underground station is being shoved like a drawer under the old building designed by Paul Bonatz. The billion-dollar project is called Stuttgart 21which has held the citizens under its spell for many years.
The city is, as they say, preparing for the future, but to its residents it seems as if it is imploding in slow motion. The construction, including the tunnels piercing the Stuttgart hills, was originally supposed to cost 2.6 billion euros, but now there is talk of at least eleven billion. The work began in February 2010, the meaning of which is disputed by many critics; Its completion is not expected for a long time. Immediate consequence for train travelers: Passengers are led across the excavated landscape of the station district into the city or to the train platforms using a ghost train-like ramp system.
The funnel for the masses has something of a chimney in it, it is quite narrow and surprisingly steep, and it leads the people in bends and inclines up to the trains – in a wide arc past the old train station building. During rush hour, this gangway is filled with the clatter of thousands of boots and the clatter of trolley suitcases; a stampede of commuters makes the building tremble; the scene has something rushed about it.
The ascending and descending masses are separated from each other by a central strip; The whole thing is reminiscent of a German highway, and like this one, every leisurely traveler has a speeding car, a Porsche Cayenne made human, breathing down their necks; the only thing missing is the flashing lights.
Anyone who lives in one of the towns in the suburbs and commutes to expensive Stuttgart completes this climb or descent hundreds of times a year, thousands of times in their lives. The route through the tunnel ramp is also called the Stuttgart Way of St. James and costs even the most fit people considerable calories; depending on your fitness, the walk to the train takes five to twelve minutes longer than before. For many people, this adds up to thousands of station bonus miles traveled on foot.
If you ask people from Stuttgart how they feel about the rise, you will hear a surprisingly wide variety of answers: some people curse the politicians who decided on the project decades ago every day; others talk about Kafka Lock, because the longer they are confronted with the unfinished train station, the more their hope of ever seeing it completed dwindles; and some are even afraid of the moment when this daily penitential route will no longer be available to them, because at some point, who knows, perhaps the new Stuttgart train station will even open.
But it’s not that far yet. Maybe not for a long time.
For now, anyone who arrives here by train is bound to take part in a performance called “Germany Stands Still”; As a small extra he is allowed to illustrate a large metaphor. The Stuttgart gangway, echoing under the constant footsteps of boots in the midst of the hustle and bustle of construction, is the real landmark of this city: a symbol of an unfortunately messed up future.
Most travelers, it seems, celebrate this state of affairs. They march upstairs with an expression of confident resignation. In calm Swabian rage. As if they wanted to say: This is our city, we won’t let it bring us down. You have to imagine Sisyphus as a happy man from Stuttgart.
