After I was an expert at pushing buttons, it was time to go. As you can tell from the expression on my face, I was only a little excited!
I drove this baby through Munich back to our hotel to load it up with all of our luggage, with the help of my TomTom Go910. I went for the $400 portable GPS unit rather than the $2,100 factory option. The inner city roadways were surprisingly easy to drive on and navigate through. Once we were all packed up we headed off to Oberammergau, where we stayed at the Hotel Alte Post. Here are some shots I took along the way:
On the unrestricted portions of the autobahn, I was able to get the car up to 151mph (243kph). I was told not to go above 4,500 rpm for extended periods of time so my short bursts of excessive engine speeds were limited to just a few attempts, plus my wife wasn’t thrilled about the idea. I was trying to chase down a Porsche 911 Carrera 4S, which tops out at about 180mph, so it was impossible. It was a weird feeling when it stopped going faster, kind of like putting it on cruise control. The engine didn’t bump, it just stopped accelerating. Achieving these speeds on the autobahn wasn’t scary at all; the roads were smooth and traffic flowed nicely. In Germany, you get as far to the right as possible if you aren’t making a pass so that idiots like me can move unimpeded. When other cars are moving at speeds comparable to you, you can get very comfortable with cruising at 120mph.
With the exception of the rain, it was an awesome trip. It rained half the time we were there, but that is to be expected in a place that gets about 15 days of rain per month. Oh yeah and one day the high was 52 degrees, in AUGUST (so much for global warming)! My last gripe: I had to give up my new car to E. H. Harms for shipment to the U.S. The fake smile in this pic tells you just how happy I was.
And this is my wife waving good bye:
Here is my favorite picture from the whole trip:
Would I do it again? Absolutely! I put about 320 miles on the car, at about 22mpg, which was less than 1 tank’s worth of gas, so I never had to fill up. At about $8.00/gallon it was a good thing they gave me a full tank of gas at delivery! We spent about $3,800 on plane tickets, lodging, and souvenirs, which was offset by the $2,855 discount by picking the car up in Germany. The food was interesting and different from what we’re used to, but my super-picky wife didn’t starve. Also, the people of Germany were very warm and friendly (with the exception of the service workers in Munich) and not as stinky as you might think. The front desk people like to let you know when you are wrong and servers can be very grumpy. Aside from staying in Munich and driving ridiculously fast on the autobahn, we visited the major Bavarian castles (Neuschwanstien [pictured above], Hohenschwangau, and Linderhof) and various museums.
Thanks for reading through my lengthy European Delivery write up and let me know what you think!