Day 13, 18 May - transit, Munich

What do you know! Our day was greeted with cloudless blue sky. It figures that it would be our last full day here. We woke up, packed up, ate breakfast, and checked out of the Tanneck. We left the car in the small hotel car park while we finally were able to walk around and snap some good pictures of Baden-Baden. We found the gallery to which Heidi referred us and were able to pick out a very nice watercolor of the Baden-Baden “skyline” as seen from the hill on which sits the “Neues Schloss, “ or “New Castle.” The gallery owner proclaimed that as his favorite place in the whole town. He gave us directions on how to get there, so that we could compare the painting to the actual scene. The painting was right on.

After getting a decent sample of pictures of this nice little spa town, we hopped in the car and headed back down the Schwarzwald Hochstrasse. Let me tell you that the drive was, in fact, spectacular. This time, we basically turned left at Freudenstadt and headed slightly northeast towards Stuttgart to pick up the autobahn back to Munich. I had expressed a moderate desire to see the Porsche museum in Zuffenhausen earlier in the trip, and since time wasn’t really a factor, we decided to see what was there to see.

Walking into the museum entrance, we encountered a guy from Wisconsin who had availed himself of Porsche’s European Delivery plan and had picked up a Boxster and drove around Austria. We chatted for a minute while he waited for his taxi and I learned that he had to pay $1000 for the privilege of picking up his car in Germany, while I saved a considerable amount by doing the same thing.
Anyway, the museum was a bit of a disappointment, although it was free. They had an old Porsche police car that looked suspiciously like a VW beetle or Audi TT, a Porsche CART racecar, a Porsche F1 car from the early ‘80’s, a Carrera GT supercar, and some of the Porsche endurance racers from the Le Mans series. I guess, now that I think about it a little more, that maybe I gave it a bad rap at first.

It took _forever_ to get back on the autobahn from the museum. Instead of using some common sense and just going back the way we came in, we allowed the NAV lady to guide us through the heart of Stuttgart in Friday rush hour traffic. It took us over an hour to get back on the highway. It was at this point that Angela _finally_ expressed an interest in driving. Two weeks of quietly “passengering” and _now_ she wants to drive? I think she just wanted to try to eclipse her previous high speed of 128mph. Unfortunately, construction and congestion all along that section of highway prevented her from even mustering a legitimate attempt.

Lucky for me, we got back to Munich just in time for me to get a license plate frame from the big BMW dealership. Sometime between our last ED and now, the export plates got a little longer and are now the same size as the standard 520mm EU tags. Now, when my car gets back to the states, I can mount my front ED plate in a cool Euro frame. Georgia doesn’t require a front plate, so that makes it easy to show off the second most obvious souvenir from the trip.

We didn’t even bother to find anywhere authentic for dinner; we just walked from the Renaissance to the Marriott and had cheeseburgers in the “Champions” sports bar there. Actually, the burgers and fries are quite good there.

We parked the car on the street. I think I got a spot that should be fairly immune to any sort of “park by feel” damage, and the car is actually visible from our bedroom window, so that’s cool.

We are meeting a guy named Rolf Raffelsieper at the dropoff location tomorrow morning at 8:30. He is semi-retired from BMW and runs a limousine service on the side; shuttling people from the airport to the delivery center and wherever else they need to go. He comes very highly regarded by the Internet Euro Delivery community.

We really like the Hiro/Ando subplot in Heroes; and Nikki/Jessica is smokin’ hot…