So there we were on Saturday in Stuttgart, standing in front of the Rathaus (city hall). According to all the information Chris had found on the Internet, the Rathaus in Stuttgart is the building that has a most unusual elevator, called a paternoster. It’s an elevator that is always in motion, that goes up and around in a circular pattern, instead of the standard up and down in a shaft movement that I associate with elevators. There are no doors on the paternoster — you have to hop on and hop off while it’s in motion. This kind of elevator isn’t very common now. There is a nice animated graphic of how a paternoster elevator works in the Wikipedia entry here.

Now, back in 2003, Chris had a conference in Stuttgart, and I did then what I usually do when he has a conference and I can go with him – I wander around the city and explore. I happened upon a paternoster elevator there in Stuttgart, and I dragged Chris back to see it when he had a break from the conference.

So, we had both visited that paternoster in Stuttgart, and so when we stood outside the Rathaus, the place that houses the Stuttgart paternoster if you read all the current guidebooks, we were both struck by the fact that neither of us felt like we’d ever been to that Rathaus building before.

In fact, we were both certain that the paternoster we saw was in a different building in Stuttgart, in the Markthalle, which is a big, multi-story building with an atrium that houses numerous food stalls (e.g. fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, etc). For those who have been to Granville Island in Vancouver, the Stuttgart Markthalle is what the food market in Granville island aspires to be, IMHO.

Anyway we walked over to the Markthalle building and stepped inside. But the inside of that building didn’t look like where we remembered the paternoster being, either. The little floor map didn’t indicate that there was any paternoster … it didn’t indicate the presence of any kind of elevator at all, actually.

Hmm.

Now, last week we established here on the blog that my hair can, at times, be perceived as being white, and there are some implications about my age that goes with that … so I’m willing to concede that perhaps my memory isn’t quite as good as it once was. And in point of fact there aren’t a lot of details I remember about that 2003 trip to Stuttgart.

What I remember most about that trip, actually, is that after Stuttgart, we took the train down to Verona, Italy, and on the way noted the curiosity of stopping at a station in northern Italy where the signs were all in both German and Italian. It was a city with the curious dual name of Bolzano/Bozen. A few years later, when Chris was offered the job in Bolzano, we each recalled that moment stopping at that train station in 2003 as being the one and only time we’d ever heard or seen anything from Bolzano.

But I digress.

The point today is that while my memory could be going, how likely is it that both Chris and I would remember seeing that paternoster in Stuttgart, but we would both swear we’d never been to the Stuttgart Rathaus where the guidebooks all say the paternoster officially lives.

Hmm.

Well, we’ve subsequently done a little sleuthing … and here’s what we’ve discovered:

• The paternoster in the Stuttgart Rathaus was renovated from 2001-2003. During that time, it was closed to the public. Which means it was likely to have been closed while we were there in 2003.
• There is a service elevator in the Markthalle which is also a paternoster style elevator. However, it’s used only by the people who run the stalls in the market, and is not currently accessible to the general public at all, and most people don’t even know it exists.
• The Markthalle was renovated and remodeled in 2004, which completely changed the look of the interior of the building

Aha!

Based on all that, here’s my reconstruction of what must have happened in 2003: the usual public paternoster in the Rathaus was closed to tourists, so for a time they allowed tourists to see/ride the one in the Markthalle. Then, in 2004, when they renovated the Markthalle, they blocked any kind of access to the paternoster there, so as to dissuade tourists from using it. And, of course, the Markthalle doesn’t look anything like it did in 2003, which explains why Chris and I couldn’t figure out that there was a paternoster there at all on Saturday.

Which explains how we saw a paternoster in Stuttgart 2003, even though we’ve never seen the paternoster in Stuttgart.

Ah yes, I remember it well.

*****

OK, well, that is a song cue if I ever wrote one. But in fact, the point of that song is the opposite of my point in this post: in the song, the couple remember things differently, where as Chris and I both remembered that paternoster the same way, it’s just everyone else (guidebooks, friends, tourist information center) who remembered things another way

Anyway, FWIW, here are links to versions of the song I Remember It Well:

• Clip from movie version with Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold
• A sweet version with husband and wife Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows