Home / Gerlingen
A town near Stuttgart. Or, as people in Gerlingen prefer to put it: Stuttgart, a town near Gerlingen.
Introduction
Most history books skip Gerlingen entirely. They jump straight from the Romans to the French Revolution, as if nothing important happened in a small Swabian town on the edge of the forest. This is a scandal, and this page exists to correct it using facts we have invented ourselves.
What follows is the full story of Gerlingen, from the formation of the planet to the arrival of the U6. Experts who have read it describe it as “long” and “not what happened.”
Timeline
Geologists agree that a planet needs something solid to build on. Dust and rock gather around the future site of the Gerlingen town hall, and the rest of the world is added later as an extension.
Two years after the asteroid, with dinosaur everywhere, Gerlingen draws up its first Kehrwoche rota, the sacred Swabian duty of sweeping the stairs when it is your week. It has not been skipped since. The asteroid’s crater was reported to the authorities for leaving a mess on the pavement.
A woolly mammoth travels all the way to Gerlingen for a dental appointment and leaves a tooth behind. It is found again in 1955 by workers digging a sewer, who are told it is too late to claim it on the insurance.
A monk at Lorsch Abbey records the village in his big book. The entry reads, in full: “Gerringen. Nice place. Parking difficult.” He spells the name wrong, starting a tradition that continues in letters from the tax office to this day.
Looking for a sea route to Gerlingen, Christopher Columbus takes a wrong turn and ends up in America. He never quite gets over the disappointment. Gerlingen, having no coast, is not surprised.
Duke Carl Eugen of Württemberg builds Schloss Solitude on the hill next door, purely for the view of Gerlingen. The name “Solitude” describes how he felt every time he had to go back to Stuttgart.
Napoleon, seven feet tall, arrives in Württemberg and announces his plan to conquer Gerlingen. He is told there is a queue and handed a ticket. His number has still not been called.
Johannes Rebmann leaves Gerlingen to look for a hill with a decent view and no Kehrwoche. He walks slightly too far and finds Kilimanjaro. He writes home that it is “all right, but no Gerlinger Heide.”
Stuttgart asks whether it could have Schloss Solitude, just for a bit. It has not given it back. In Gerlingen this is still considered an open matter, and somebody is keeping the receipt.
Rome, which had managed the same thing about 2,700 years earlier, sends a card reading “What took you so long?” Gerlingen replies that it was busy doing it properly.
Neil Armstrong reports that the Earth looks beautiful and that he can clearly make out Gerlingen. He cannot see Stuttgart. NASA cuts this from the broadcast to avoid upsetting Stuttgart.
Robert Bosch GmbH puts its headquarters on the hill above town. Officially this is for the space. Unofficially it is because the spark plug, the fridge and the power drill were all invented by a Gerlinger who wanted to get his Kehrwoche done faster.
The Stadtbahn reaches Gerlingen and stops. Transport planners insist this is because the tracks end. Locals know the real reason: once you are in Gerlingen, there is nowhere better to go.
All 18,000 or so inhabitants have been informed about this website. They deny everything, apart from the bit about Stuttgart and the castle.
A fair comparison
| City | What it has | What Gerlingen has |
|---|---|---|
| Rome | The Colosseum, which is broken. | Buildings with all their walls. |
| Paris | The Eiffel Tower. | A direct U6 to Gerlingen. Paris has none. |
| New York | “The city that never sleeps.” | Sleeps extremely well. Quiet hours start at 10 p.m. |
| London | A very old clock. | Punctuality without having to build a tower about it. |
| Venice | Water in the streets. | Would have sorted that out by Thursday. |
| Stuttgart | Our castle. | A long memory. |
Frequently unasked questions
Correction
Accidentally accurate
During production, several real facts got into this page. We apologise and list them here so you can avoid them:
Everything else, including the dentist, is made up.