In total this trip we drove 3558km at an average speed of 72km/h and got 6.5L per 100km and were on the road for 47hrs and 16 mins round trip. It really didn't feel that long because even on the autobahns there was so much to see. Germany is trying to phase out its nuclear power and move to natural sources so windmill farms and solar farms are everywhere. In every village half the houses have roofs covered with solar panels. Australia could power the world if we covered the interior with these things. M did a fabulous job driving on the right, getting back to England without a scratch.
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| Cheers - GO FAST |
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Yes that is 130ish mph or 210km/h !
Our top speed photo is badly out of focus |
The autobahns are amazing in Germany, when the 'go fast' signs popped up the Audi jumped to. One feature that was a bit tricky were the exits - instead of having one off ramp and then an intersection to choose which way to go they had two separate exits one after the other that our GPS didn't differentiate between - luckily it listed the destination so we were able to choose the right one in the nick of time. We were heading steadily south and the south exits were always after the north ones - it takes a lot of confidence to drive past what the GPS is pointing at - especially when changing down from 210km/h to 70! Another weird thing was that they slowed traffic for all dips and high bridges - just out of Cologne we would only have a couple of kms on 'go fast' then would be slowing down past 120km, 100km, 80km signs for another km then open road again. It actually seemed more dangerous than leaving the go fast because a few drivers obviously had their cruise controls set on 120k and just kept going through all the slower ones which meant more passing later on. There had been an accident on the autobahn between Stuttgart and BadenBaden so we saw another downside of the big roads - the crawling four lanes could pack in a colossal amount of vehicles which takes a very long time to clear even if the accident is cleared super fast. A 45 min journey became nearly three hours.
We noticed that the two lane go fast was much more dangerous because of people pulling out to pass without looking whereas the four lanes were a blat - we drove in the third lane and had porches screaming past in the the fourth. Our Audi A6 was born for European motorways with its big wide tyres and fat exhaust - the boot space is phenomenal so a week's luggage for four + groceries + souvenirs and multiple coats still had room to jiggle.
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| A canola patch |
The landscape was dotted with bright yellow patches of canola (it's called rapeseed over here) and fields sprouting green shoots which are probably grain crops coming up. We saw strips of field covered with polyurethane - covering the precious weiss or stengle Spargle (white or stalk asparagus) that enjoys its own festival time in May. It's also covering the early strawberries that are out in the markets. In lots of places we saw
“Blumen Zum Selber Schneiden” where the land owners plant out 1/2 acres of seasonal flowers, provided cutting tools, plastic bags and a box to drop in the cash. A big bunch of flowers could be gathered for about 5 Euro - we saw masses of tulips when we were there. People must be honest or there wouldn't be so many of them. They cheer up corners of land that farmers or landlords aren't using for anything else. A very
socially disciplined enterprise.
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| The scenery was almost as dangerous as the 2 lanes - just out of Zurich |
On our way from Worms to Stuttgart we stopped in at Pforzheim. Willow was flying in from her week visiting friends from school in their hometowns - Milan, Venice and Genoa and Stuttgart was the closest airport to the Black forest drive we wanted to do, that had flights from Milan. We would have gone straight to Baden Baden for the day and night - Germany's Bath - instead of an fairly ugly industrial city if not for this commitment
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| The City welcome |
Pforzheim was completely flattened in 1945 from allied bombing raids. As the German centre for jewellery and watchmaking it was decided that this could be where precision instruments were being produced for the V1 and V2 rockets. Intelligence prewar stated that most businesses had workshops attached to their homes so wholesale bombing of residential and town centers was given the okay. On the 23rd of Feburary 90% of the town was destroyed killing over 17000 people. The bomber crews could still see the fires when they were 160 miles away, that would do my head in. Only one plane was lost in all the raids here, the surviving crew, bar one that escaped, were shot at a nearby village for war crimes. The rubble was put into a huge mound outside the city which filled an old volcano valley and covered with soil and vegetation, it is called Wallberg.
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| Lunch stop in Pforzheim A great kabab shop by the Enz river with a confusing street sign |
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I will always associate the scent of lilac
with this city, bushes of it were growing
out of cracks in canal walls and in the
river beds, just beautiful. |
Pforzheim was rebuilt over the next 20years but instead of reproducing what had been there this city decided to go modern and built pedestrian malls and wide roads with many iconic 1950s buildings. One of the ugliest buildings I have ever seen was a newly (in comparison to the ancient Cathedrals) built church in this city. Since reading about this city though I have come to realise that it is really a memorial Church now. The church tower (Right in the image above) replaces the land mark church tower that was still standing after the bombing (Bottom image above). The barn shaped church standing completely separate and beside it can be forgiven for being built in the late 60s.
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The stained glass reminds me of
the streets of rubble. (Outside view) |
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| Left: 1960 Right: 1970 |
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Above: Schmuckmuseum on a much clearer day
Below: Wall display to the right has J's gold lace choker |
It is still considered the 'gold centre' of Germany. We visited the Schmuckmuseum which has a huge collection of jewelry
on display. One necklace in their 'historical' gallery was Josephine's (Napoleon's
wife - Empress of France until he divorced her for someone who could give him an heir). It was a choker, a delicate web of gold that was studded with perfectly colour and sized matched rubies. It was truly
beautiful. Unfortunately all belongings - including cameras had to be locked away before entering so I haven't got a photo.
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Left: Colombian Emeralds Right: A Byzantine - 6th C gold and pearl necklace
Images from http://www.schmuckmuseum-pforzheim.de/ |
I had read that there was a museum with a solid gold wall - but had gotten us to the wrong place - we needed the Shmuckwelton not the Schmuckmuseum proving that one schmuck is not the same as another! I looked a bit of a schmuck myself when fighting through the German English divide trying to ask the curator which room the gold wall was in. She was wonderful and was able to show me a tourist brochure - in English that had the information we needed.
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Top Left: farht just means ride people - it's not a bus for gaseous folk. Right: Where we couldn't find the wall of gold.
Below - The wall of gold from a tourist brochure |
We put more money in the parking machine and headed off through town. The building we were directed to had a minerals museum in the basement and a jewelry
museum on the third floor. Both places knew of the gold wall and said that they were at the other place. Another person told us that it was on the middle floor but all we could find were art and jewelry shops. We were running out of time so gave up looking. Petal found a gold bar lighter for her collection. (Yes unwise but most of them have no fuel!) Meanwhile waiting M had sat outside on some stairs and got 'gypsy slobber' on his hand so we rushed back to the car for hand sanitiser (Strangely Petal didn't have her?! Thanks Mrs Worker for that little dependency) to prevent the imagined typhus
infection. The new areas were very similar to Sydney's Pitt street but with shorter buildings.
As we drove into Stuttgart we passed a Porche Museum and several buildings had huge Mercedes stars lit up and turning round on the top. Going by the material in the hotel, Stuttgart has a vibrant arts community and claims to be a big shopping haven. Trams rattle through the city and the train line close by sees hundreds of double decker car trays full of Audis. Mercs and BMWs being hauled to showrooms all over Europe. The airport is small but seems to have a lot of traffic, Willow was one of only three women on her flight (none of who were offered any of the 'snacks') and the rest of the plane was full of suits. The Milan Stuttgart ticket was nearly double the price of the London Stansted Milan ticket - that doesn't make a lot of sense unless demand sets the price.
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| Two ways of catching solar energy snapped from a moving car. Doesn't seem much sense in the Bavarian snow but there are lots of them so it must make economic sense or the clever Germans wouldn't do it! |
The hotel I had booked through booking.com had some water damage to the 'family room' we'd reserved so had passed us on to a sister hotel not far away. I googled booking.com to make sure the room prices were comparable and found that rooms at both hotels were half what they had been when I booked. I couldn't cope travelling without most of the hotels pre-booked because I'd have to be making bookings each night while travelling or risk a drive by. So I pay the extra for peace of mind - still I don't like paying more than I have too - maybe I need to be braver next trip!
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| Audi GPS - Near to the highest altitude in the Black forest |
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Bad means bath in German - this car in
the Baden Baden parking garage so the
letters must be a registration district thing.
Vdub is a very big global co. now |
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| Willow smelling the Grimms bros. forest |
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One of the narrowest roads we travelled on in Germany - looks like State Highway One in NZ
This road goes past Schloss Linderhof, between Fussen and Omberammergau, through Austria. |
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| The Audi didn't like the cobbles in this Ghent Convent, the whole car joggles. So much can fit in the boot. |
Read:
Ken Follet, 'Century Trilogy'. Pan books
It took snippets of time over the whole trip (Had to keep M awake and be a second pair of eyes on the road so couldn't read in the car) plus a couple of good long reads before Willow got up to get through the 850 pages of the first one. (Lesson learnt - never let someone else start to read a book you're reading because they are sick of their text reading but don't have anything else to read and you aren't reading at the moment!) Guiltily read all last weekend to get through the 912 pages of the second. M couldn't complain because he bought them for me!
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| The third is not out until Sept 2014 - Oh the pain of waiting. |
A fair bit of detailed romance, violence, politics, faith in man and bravery. An excellent blend of Fiction adn Non-fiction. The first has the clearest summary of how WWI started than anything I've read BUT not suitable to be prescribed for YR9 History as his relating of Edwardian 'relations' are quite explicit! Seeing the Tsar's Russia through the eyes of the peasants and the Third Reich through the eyes of Social democrats and disenfranchised Nazi supporters at the collapse of Berlin is teary. How do we fill our parliaments with thinkers and doers instead of those that feel entitled. I found the descriptions of how intelligence operatives did their jobs fascinating and have realised that I am not a brave person.
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