Yesterday, Heike drove us to Böblingen, a larger nearby city, to run errands – mainly to get SIM cards from a German cellphone company so we can use our iPads for internet. Böblingen sort of runs into another city, Sindelfingen, where the Mercedes factory is located. Here’s a view of Sindelfingen from the hill above the old part of Böblingen; the Mercedes plant is on the left with the stacks.

Jörg works at Mercedes and Heike and her father, Hans-Jürgen, used to too. There are 35,000 enployees working here – the size of a medium size city!

After observing the view, we walked around the old city center. These buildings date back to the 1400s.

Böblingen was badly damaged in the war, but a few of the very old buildings survived the bombing:

We were fascinated by the old construction style. These buildings are very old; you can tell by the diagonal support members. This type of construction ended in the latter 1400s.