Day 14, 19 May - Home

Not much to say about today, except that we were met by Rolf at the dropoff location this morning. He was there waiting for us at 8:10am (Germany time) in a BMW 730Ld. After removing some Euro-only bits from the car (warning triangle, first aid kit, front plate) and packing them away, we were off to the airport. Rolf was great; much friendlier than a cabbie, and much more helpful. He even walked our luggage to the ticket counter.

The flight home was fine. We were able to get through about 1.5 episodes of Heros before my laptop battery died, but fortunately the movies showing were good (“Music and Lyrics” and “The Holiday”). Charlotte’s international arrivals procedure is so much more pleasant than Hartsfields. We were out of the airport and on the highway in 1 hour. I have to think that had we flown from Hartsfield that it would have taken at least 2 hours to accomplish the same task. We made it home in record time; even stopping at our local Waffle House for dinner. It’s all I can do to stay up to write this, but I want to get back on a normal time schedule as soon as I can.

Aside from the weather, the trip was fabulous. The Ring Taxi was simply amazing. The Driving Tours books were almost indespensible, as was the NAV system. We put a total of 1840 miles on the car and spent close to $500 on gas. The wait for redelivery will be agonizing, but at least we can look forward to getting our painting from Strasbourg in a week or two.

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…

Day 12, 17 May - Black Forest, Gutach, Wolfach

This morning we were greeted with the most dismal weather to date. The clouds were very low hanging, and we could tell there was a heavy mist in the air. Undeterred, after breakfast we set out on the D500 towards Freudenstadt and points south into the Black Forest.

Now, the D500 is known as the Schwarzwaldhochstrasse, or Black Forest High Road. As the driving goes, it is a very enjoyable road. At least I think it is, since the fog was so thick I could only see 50-75 meters or so in front of the car. The road struck me as something similar to the Blue Ridge Parkway, with rest areas and what I can only assume to be scenic overlooks dotted over the 75 or so km of its length. What really amazed me is how many people were camping or hiking in such dreadful weather. Today is a holiday (Ascension Day), so it’s possible that all those folks had already had these camping trips planned and weren’t going to let a little fog get them down.

As we descended down towards Freudenstadt, and got below the fog layer (at about 750m ASL), the driving got even better. At the end of the D500, we took a right (mainly because that’s what lane we were in) and took a shortcut to the back half of the Northern Black Forest tour. We found a busy guest house along the road and stopped in for lunch. Our plates of schnitzel were enormous, and delicious. We decided that, because of the weather, we would just finish out the tour and head back to Baden-Baden.

Passing through the small town of Gutach, we saw signs for the Vogtsbauernhoefe Freilichtmuseum. I had read in our “Best Drives” book about this open air museum that had authentic period farmhouses and sawmills from various locations and periods of Black Forest history. It would have been a much more pleasant experience were it not for the steady rain, but it was extremely educational nevertheless.

If there are shops, Angela will go shopping, and this was no different. She was able to find a nice little locally produced glass “mini-vase” at the museum shop. Outside the museum there was a small collection of shops selling all sorts of foodstuffs, cheap souvenirs, cuckoo clocks, etc. Angela came “this close” to getting a sample pack of different kinds of Black Forest honey, but just couldn’t pull the trigger. By the time we left Gutach, the rain had subsided to a spitting drizzle.

Speaking of glassware, on the road from Gutach to Offenburg, Angela spotted a sign for the glassworks in a town called Wolfach. By the time she noticed it, I had already blown past the exit, so we had to double back after emerging from a 1.5km long tunnel. It took us a while to find it (we drove right through Wolfach’s small “stadt mitte” and then out the other end before retracing our steps), but when we did, it was a real treat to see all of the handblown local glass in the shop. Since I was just along for the shopping ride, it was part humorous; part painful, to see Angela so conflicted about what to get. As they were starting to close out the registers, she finally decided on a piece described to us as a Fly Trap that uses sugar water in a corked vase with a hole in the bottom to attract and subsequently drown flies and other insects.

Satisfied with our purchase, we headed back onto the Black Forest tour towards Offenburg, then back up to Baden-Baden. By the time we got to Offenburg, we decided to just take the fast route back to the hotel; a nice jaunt up the A5 at about 110mph with bursts to 120mph. There’s no way I would ever feel safe driving that fast on a US Interstate, but with the quality of the road and of the drivers, it felt like I was just cruising along at 70 or so.

We had a nice chat with Heidi when we finally returned. When we told her of our day, she basically admitted that it was time wasted with such horrible weather. We asked her about a place to eat, and she recommended a place called the Rathausgloeckel (also recommended by Rick Steves). She was also very helpful in showing us the location of an art gallery where we might be able to pick up something done by a local artist of a local scene. We told her of our trouble in finding “street artists” during this trip, and she said that Strasbourg was the place for that. Angela and I had a little chuckle to ourselves at that, since we had been in Strasbourg for 4 days and never saw one street artist.

Our dinner at the Rathausgloeckel, while voluminous, was not spectacular. However, we did split a chunk of baked Camembert cheese on raspberry preserves that was exquisite. We had dessert at our favorite gelateria, La Scala, on the way back up the hill to the hotel. I’ve got to tell you, this ice cream was better than most anything we can find back home; the fruit flavors especially. We got sidetracked after locating the art gallery by a block party of sorts with tents erected by various local pubs and restaurants and a German band playing American “swing” type songs.

Tomorrow is our last full day in Europe. We have to make our way back to Munich, but there’s no rush since we’re not returning the car until Saturday morning. If we get back in time, I’d like to stop by the Niederlassung dealership in Munich to get a license plate holder.

Heroes is really starting to get good…

Day 11, 16 May - Baden-Baden

I woke up this morning to a sore throat; lovely. At least the weather looks half-decent, with some patchy blue sky. My plan was to try to play a little golf today at this course called “Baden Hills Golf and Curling Club.” Yes, that says “Curling.” Apparently, the course was part of a Royal Canadian Air Force facility that was turned over to the locals some years ago. Anyway, I had contacted them via email a few weeks ago and confirmed that they offered rental clubs and had room for me.

Breakfast at the Tanneck is certainly less satisfying than previous hotels this trip. The fruit choices are poor; the meats and cheeses are limited; and the cereal choices are very bland. The one positive is that the breads were superb.

I left Angela to her own devices and headed out to the golf course. Angela was going to spend her time at the Friedrichsbad Roman-Irish baths followed by some shopping while I played golf. I got to the course by around 10:15 or so and was able to line up my rental clubs and figure out that on weekdays, it’s just first-come, first served on the first tee. I headed over to the range to try to get acclimated to my rentals: Bridgestone Precept EV’s with “R” flex graphite shafts. Given the whippy nature of the shafts, the strong winds, and the 10.5 degree driver, I knew was going to have a very difficult time keeping the ball flight under control.

I managed to beat it around the front nine, but when I made the turn, I could see the weather was making a decided turn for the worse (as was my health), so I packed it in after 10 holes. See, this course was walking only, and I was headed directly into the teeth of the wind and right at a very dark rain cloud and out to the furthest reaches of the course. It turned out to be a very wise move, since right after I got in the car, it started raining pretty good.

I got back to the hotel around 2:30 and just slumped right into bed and waited for Angela to get back from her day. I left a message on her cell phone, hopeful that she would get it and maybe bring me back some lunch, but when she finally returned to the hotel around 5, she had already eaten and I was left to starve until dinner.

Today is our anniversary, and we had planned to spend it at the Casino, having dinner and possibly doing a little gambling. I decided to try to gut it out, even though I was feeling progressively worse, so we got dressed up and drove down the hill to the casino.

Our dinner was excellent. We ate in a newer restaurant right in the casino where we could watch the gamblers work the Roulette. Unfortunately, I really started to feel terrible over the course of dinner; to the point that I started getting really bad fever chills. This severely curtailed our time in the casino; only allowing us to blow 5 Euros on the slot machines prior to going back to our hotel. Obviously, I’m not so sick that I can’t update the journal, or watch an episode of Heroes, but I do feel like complete crap.

Tomorrow we will drive deeper into the Black Forest; following yet another of “Germany’s Best Loved Driving Tours” and searching for some decent weather.

Day 10, 15 May – transit, Baden-Baden

Today was another transit day. Our plan was to drive country roads from our hotel in Auderath down to the Black Forest town of Baden-Baden. The weather wasn’t terrible, but all that means this trip is that it didn’t look like rain was imminent. We said our goodbyes to the other guests at the hotel with whom we had shared some breakfast conversation, filled up with gas at the station next door, and headed out of town.

The drive was absolutely wonderful. Setting the NAV system to guide us avoiding highways turned out to be a fantastic idea. The visions of the countryside and forests would just not have been possible had we simply took the autobahn from one place to another. We stopped for lunch at a supermarket outside of Kaiserslautern and picked up some more waters and some sort of savory pastry that was very tasty. Angela also picked up a bottle of beer+coke. I’m anxious to try it out.

After 5 hours in the car, Angela began to get impatient, so we concluded our trip to Baden-Baden by taking a slight shortcut through France and across the Rhine back into Germany and into Baden-Baden. It was a bit of a challenge finding the hotel, since the route chosen by the NAV lady took us headlong into a barricaded pedestrian area. I was able to detour around the blockade, and we checked into our hotel, the Tanneck. It’s up on a hill above the Kurhaus casino and is in a very quiet area, which will be nice when it comes time to get some sleep. Now, it wouldn’t be our 2007 vacation without some rain, and today didn’t disappoint; a light drizzle falling upon our arrival.

After checking in, we set out to get an orientation of the city. We availed ourselves of a free concert performed by the Baden-Baden philharmonic, then walked into the pedestrian-only downtown area to see what we could see. An ulterior motive was to locate the two main thermal baths in town, the Friedrichsbad and the Caracalla Therme. We decided to go back to the room to get our bathing suits, since we wanted to experience the Caracalla baths after dinner. The baths were fantastic. There are several different pools of varying temperatures, as well as sauna rooms, aromatherapy, tanning, etc. You pay by the hour, with a two hour minimum, so we purchased 2 hours. There were more than a few couples in there who really just should have gotten hotel rooms with Jacuzzi tubs.

I should mention a word about our hotel. It’s perfectly satisfactory with two critical exceptions: the bedding and the towels. The pillows are terrible and flat, and the towels are as abrasive as steel wool; so much so that Angela had to use a dirty nightshirt to dry her face. I just consider it an exfoliation treatment.

Tomorrow, I’m going to try to play golf while Angela does some shopping and hits the spas again. Will the weather cooperate? Who knows.

Day 9, 14 May – Mosel Valley, Burg Eltz, Cochem, Beilstein, Bernkastel-Kues

Back to the gloomy weather today. No big surprise there.

With our Nurburgring experience out of the way yesterday, we got back to our daytripping today. Today’s plan was to drive a portion of the Mosel river valley, which is purported to be a stunning drive with beautiful wineries and small towns.

Our breakfast this morning came with a movie. One of the hotel guests was at the ‘Ring all day yesterday and had rigged a camera to his front bumper. The video he shot was excellent; and it was obvious that he knew his way around the track. All of the folks besides us at breakfast were from England, so it was nice to strike up conversation with them. There were two older couples there who have been coming to this hotel for 20 odd years.

Our hotel is very well located for both excursions to the Ring and to the Mosel valley. Our drive down to Cochem took only 15 minutes or so. The first stop on our agenda today was the castle of Burg Eltz; it’s been in the Eltz family for 800 years. The castle is completely isolated, sitting alone in a valley away from the Mosel, with a small stream flowing past. Apparently, the castle was actually 3 houses for 3 different families that shared the same common areas. This was evidenced by the different types of stone used in each house. Of course, being in Germany, our tour was in German. Had there been enough English speaking folks, we could have gotten them to give a tour in English, but not today. Even in German, the tour was excellent. The one house we walked through was decorated from various periods of the castles inhabitance. In fact, the Eltz family still occupies some parts of the castle to this day.

The hike back to the car park from the castle was brutal. This was the only time to date that I was thankful of the overcast skies and cool temps. Even in 55 degree weather, I was sweating like a pig when we finally got to the car.

Our next stop was Cochem; a charming town on the river. After a quick “bratwurst mit brot” for lunch, we took the Sesselbahn chair lift up to the rim of the valley with a terrific view of Cochem and its castle, the Reichsburg. We elected not to go to the castle, simply because we didn’t really believe that it could possibly be any more impressive than Burg Eltz.

Upriver we went to the idyllic town of Beilstein. According to Rick Steves, it has only 180 residents that run 30 guesthouses and eateries. From what I could tell, that’s really all that Beilstein does.

One thing I should mention is the vineyards. They grow the vines here on the steepest hills! So steep, in fact, that the folks that work the fields have to use cog-rail type appliances to go up and down hill. I wonder about the quantity of wine they can produce in this region, considering the limitations of the geography.

Pretty much every town on the river is just a different version of the same thing. We made a quick stop in Zell, and then again in Bernkastel-Kues; so named because the Bernkastel half of the town is on one side of the river, and the Kues half on the other side. This town was a little bigger than Cochem or Zell, but still very familiar in its character. Instead of waiting to get back to the hotel for dinner, we ate at a nice place with a terrace that faced the river. We got a kick out of the name, the “Bikers’ Station;” obviously a place familiar with the motorcycle crowd.

A note about the weather today... While the weather looked pretty crappy all dat today, it never actually affected our activities. It would be nice, though, to have just one day where we don’t even need to think about the umbrellas and rain gear.

We’re almost half-way through with our episodes of Heroes now, and we are really enjoying it. Not really sure how we missed it when it started.

Tomorrow we leave the Eifel region and head down to the Black Forest town of Baden-Baden for a little soaking in the thermal spas. Hopefully the weather will be good enough to allow me to play a little golf, too.

Day 8, 13 May – Nurburgring

Would you look at that! Blue sky with high cirrus clouds. Maybe our weather worm is finally turning? I’ve felt this way a couple times on the trip already, though, so I’m not going to get my hopes up just yet.

Today was our big Nurburgring day; really the only reason we’re not still in France somewhere. I had purchased our BMW Ring Taxi ticket last December, and booked our ride back in late Februrary. I got some bad news in April that the export plates that are used for the various European Delivery programs are no longer allowed on the Ring, so that put a huge potential damper on the day; since I was really hoping to be able to take my 3er around a few times. I was hopeful about getting at least one other lap as a passenger in another car, but even that wasn’t a guarantee.

We got up and got ready. You should have seen me trying to take a bath/shower. It would have made a great “funniest home videos” sketch. No shower curtain, and the hose/shower head was positioned very low, by the main faucet. Additionally, there were very few electrical outlets, so I had to jury rig an extension cord so Angela could use her hair dryer in front of a mirror.

The ‘Ring isn’t but 20km or so our hotel, and it was a very easy and fun drive to get there. When we got there, it was pretty much what I had envisioned in my mind’s eye. It wasn’t nearly as crowded as I would have thought, given that it’s a weekend day and the weather is so nice. While Angela sat in the car reading, I made a quick lap of the car park, taking note of the sign by the ticket machine and office explicitly forbidding cars with export plates from driving on the track. Damn! I thought to myself that maybe if it got crowded enough, I could slide through in relative obscurity assuming that the marshal wouldn’t want to break the line just to get me out of it. Unfortunately, the track never really got busy enough to even attempt my plan. The thing of it is, I think I could have gotten out, since I saw several cars driving with plates that I thought were “verboten.”

Anyway, back to the Taxi ride. Since it was just Angela and me, I offered to allow the Ring Taxi operators to try to line up a third passenger. It turns out that a guy from San Francisco was there and wanted a ride in the Taxi. He introduced himself as Jeff, and we settled on a price of 50 euros and a passenger lap around in his 325d rental. I was a little disappointed that our Taxi Driver wasn’t the famous Sabine, or Hans Stuck, but her name was Claudia Hurtgen, and she has quite the pedigree in sports car racing. The lap itself was pretty much over as soon as it started. I was able to instantly recognize most all of the corner complexes from driving the track on my Xbox. The couple of things I noticed were that the track surface itself is very bumpy; there is not nearly as much runoff room on the real thing as on the Xbox; the turn complexes are much more compact than on the Xbox; and no video game will ever give you the same sense of elevation changes as the real thing will. Anyway, Claudia flung the M5 taxi around like she knew what she was doing, and before I really got into it, she was slowing down on the Dottinger Hoehe straight and exiting the track.

My pax lap with Jeff, while not nearly as fast, was just as enjoyable. He was much more conservative and more accommodating of other traffic on the track, but my lap with him was his 8th of the day, so he had a decent grasp of the track surface and where the traffic would get bunched up.

Since it was obvious that I wasn’t going to get to drive the circuit, I decided to find some of the more famous spectating spots and try to get some action shots of the Taxi. I found the spots at Brunnchen and Flanzgarten and was able to get some decent shots of various cars going around; including the Taxi.

After a quick lunch at the trackside café, the Grunne Holle, I set out to find a place to watch the Spanish F1 Grand Prix. I found one in the bar of the Dorint hotel, right on the grounds of the F1 GP track. I was very surprised at the total lack of interest in the race among the folks at the track. I fully expected the various places showing the race to be packed with motorsports enthusiasts taking a break from driving the Ring. Not so; the bar was practically empty. I watched most of the race, and went back to Angela who was waiting in the car. We drove around a little; walked up to the ruins of the Schloss Nurburg, and headed back to the hotel around 5 or so.

Another good dinner in the hotel restaurant (Lamb pot pie for me and cheese spaetzle for Angela), and we are all settled in to watch a couple more episodes of Heroes.

Tomorrow, we are going to drive the Mosel valley from Burg Eltz, past Cochem and Beilstein, and down to Buernkastle-Kues and then back to the hotel. It’s supposed to be a marvelous drive, so we’re looking forward to it. Maybe if we finish up early enough, I might try my plan on the ‘Ring tomorrow evening.