Another stunner of a day in Germany. Our first task of the day was to pick some apples for morning tea. The farm and surrounds looked great in the early morning sunlight.

Apple picking ladder

The neighbour.

The farm is now run as a cooperative of the surrounding farms who have pooled land, equipment, resources and knowledge to run a bigger farm with greater productivity and profit. We were surprised to learn that caged chickens were banned in Germany over 10 years ago and free range is the only practice used.

The farm is surrounded by fruit trees and vines. We were presented upon arrival a bowl of grapes and plums and told to help ourselves to anything on the trees.

Off to Ludwigsburg Palace, opened in 1733, the largest Baroque palace in Europe. The guided tour in English was on way too late for us so we opted for the audio tour of the four museums; the residence, ceramics, fashion and gallery.

Once again in Europe we encountered the “no photographs” rule which is my red flag for action. So it is with great pleasure I bring you images of Ludwigsburg.

The ceramics were a bit ho hum but excesses of the period were well on display.

The fashion museum on the other hand even had Alan and I entertained. It covered the period from early 1700’s to 1970’s.

Red leather portfolios.

The girls were particularly enjoying this exhibition and the boys had snagged a visit to the Porsche factory for the afternoon so we left them to it and headed to Porsche.

It is regrettable but understandable that Porsche will not allow any photos in their factory and I didn’t even try. Phones and cameras are totally banned from the tour. If you want to see some images of the factory tour have a look at

https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/g6183/photos-inside-the-porsche-plant-at-zuffenhausen

which is pretty much what we saw.

Our guide was Jeff, a Canadian who came to Germany for a Porsche tour in 1967. He owned a Porsche and commented to the guides how it should be made better. As he was on holidays he asked for a job for 2 weeks and got it. He retired from Porsche in 2004 and retires from being a guide at Christmas this year. He is a real character who worked on the shop floor, in marketing, sales, management and racing and set up the Porsche trials programme at Mt Cotton, Brisbane which Alan had participated in.

It is a fascinating tour which demonstrated clever use of robotics combined with intelligent and progressive management/employee relations to have a production line that sings. Their computer programme allows for every single car to be custom made while still being a production car. An absolute must if you ever get to Stuttgart even if you don’t own a Porsche.

Exactly what the girls did we don’t know but they sent this photo saying “don’t hurry, we are busy”.

Tomorrow us couples split up for the last leg of our journey. Alan and Linda head for Prague while Collette and I head for Poznan in Poland.