Mike Horn visits the MB Stuttgarter Sternstunden

From the 10th of August until the 14th of August, thousands of people are invited to the Stuttgarter Sternstunden in central Stuttgart. This event is to celebrate the 125years celebration of Mercedes-Benz in the companies hometown Stuttgart,  and is packed with exciting activites and special guests.

Mercedes-Benz Ambassador, Mike Horn takes a short break from his sailboat in Canada and goes to Stuttgart along with 14 International Young Explorers to present the Pangaea Expedition. The Young Explorers hold workshops to an interested public about their participation in the Pangaea expedition and Mike Horn motivates the public towards caring for our planet during the evening's trendtalk with Mr Joachim Löw (Germanys football coach) Dr Joachim Schmidt (Head of sales and Marketing MB) and Dr Anders-Sundt Jensen (Vice president of MB Brand Communication)

Mercedes Benz Sternstunden 10.-14. August, Blog written by Saskia Bauer

The city center of Stuttgart was crowded and full of people of all different ages. They were there to celebrate the 125th birthday of Mercedes-Benz which has built a huge exhibition area, the mb! Lounge. Here the ecological and brand new cars were presented and people got the chance to gain first hand information about the newest technologies and inventions.
But not only cars could be found in the mb! Lounge: A big part of the the exhibition is Pangaea as Mike Horn is brand ambassador of Mercedes-Benz.
So 16 Young Explorers from Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Canda, USA and Austria came together to give on their experience and knowledge about Pangaea and the Young Explorers Program to convince other teenagers to participate in the program and live a more sustainable way of life.
In different workshops the youths could learn about Mike Horn and the Pangaea expeditions to India, New Zealand, Mongolia and the Magnetic North Pole as well as how they can make a difference by changing peoples minds and living a more environmental friendly life.
Every workshop organized by 2-4 Young Explorers who passed on their experiences with Mike Horn was a great success. Often there were more then 12 people interested in one workshop and it was a lot of fun for everybody who took part. Sometimes the teenagers were sitting there, completely astonished and couldn't really believe where the YEPs have been and what they've seen there.
It was great to see the face expressions changing: While in the beginning some of the participants were only more or less interested a smile appeared on their faces after a few minutes. In the end of the one hour workshop many of the teenagers were really enthusiastic about the project and decided to apply for one of the two final expeditions to Brazil and East Africa. We even had some participants who don't want to wait until the application window for the Amazon Expedition opens but just started to work on their applications for the USA expedition, this means only a few days of time!
Not only the youths participating in the workshops were interested in Pangaea, also people walking by and actually only stopping for a few minutes to see what's going on were so impressed by the photos and videos which were shown and the stories which were told by the Young Explorers, that they joined the workshop until the end. Often the workshops took longer than planned or we continued the conversation with the visitors because they became infected with the exploration virus and had a lot of questions.

Exploration was also the topic of Mike Horn's TrendTalk on Thursday evening which was definitely the highlight of the day! People became more and more silent when Mike passed on his experience about Latitude Zero or the Arktos expedition as well as the expedition in the Amazon river. When he finally showed a short video sequence of him fighting on the last few meters on top of an 8000-meter mountain without any additional oxygen the auditorium was completely quiet and it was real goosebumps feeling in the mb! Lounge in the heart of Stuttgart.
In the following discussion with Joachim Löw, German's national soccer coach, and Jensen Mercedes-Benz they talked about their different experiences in the field of exploration, motivation and pioneering.

For us Young explorers these few days in Stuttgart were definitely an incredible time and a perfect platform to pass on our own experiences and discuss the topics we love with other people: exploration, sustainability and preservation of the environment.