Good CARMA Germany Trip - California Automobile Museum

The California Auto Museum/Saratoga Auto Museum Germany Cars & Castles Trip October 2013
Our German Expedition in conjunction with the Saratoga Auto Museum was a total blast!
10 days, 18 people, 1 famous racetrack, 3 factories, 5 museums, 2 restoration shops, 5 castles, a Beer
Festival, German Food! – All culminating in a fantastic experience brought to you by the California Auto
Museum!
The premise – a group of enthusiasts from each coast converge to visit the best of the German Auto
world and experience the culture and cuisine of the Fatherland. We started in central Germany, visiting
the Eifel Mountains and the 12+ mile Nurburgring race track. We toured castles on the way to a pair of
the world’s finest automotive technology museums in Heidelberg. Spent two epic days in Stuttgart to
visit the birthplace of the automobile – Mercedes Benz and then Porsche, as well as sampling some
German October flair at the Canstatter Volksfest. We concluded with a few days in Munich touring
BMW, the Deutsches Museums and several cultural venues. We had excellent company, shared
wonderful food and beverages, and experienced a great slice of Germany.
The group – a cross-continent contingent of folks sharing a passion for cars and traveling. This wasn’t
just a guy’s trip to drive cars and drink beer in Germany – sure we did some of that (well maybe lot of
that!). Almost half our group was comprised of couples, and we all enjoyed the variety of cultural (car,
historical, contemporary) experiences. We became fast friends, sharing our respective experiences form
each side of our country. The camaraderie of our car passion brought us together and we enjoyed each
other’s perspectives.
The highlights – Every day had a unique and special experience for everyone on the trip. We checked off
some big bucket list items right off the bat by commencing with time at the famed Nurburgring North
Loop – dubbed ‘The Green Hell’ by 3-time World Champion Sir Jackie Stewart. It was a blustery, rainy
day as we departed Frankfurt Airport and drove to Nurburg. We had lunch on the coach, and all got to
know each other a little on the drive. The afternoon agenda was focused on recon of the area, visiting
the public track entrance to look at some cars (our bus actually got to park on the track for a brief
time!); and investigate Nurburg Castel, the new Grand Prix track, and several other spots to view the
cars on the Ring . We capped our day with an authentic German welcome dinner.
The second morning more than half the group was able to get onto the track – whether it was driving a
track prepared car or riding in a “Ring Taxi”. We had a relaxed lunch near the Grand Prix track complex
then departed the ‘Ring and stopped at a pair of castles on the way to Heidelberg. We had in depth tour
of Reichsburg Cochem, along the Mosel River. A very picturesque castle well preserved. After our tour
of the castle and grounds we headed to Burg Eltz castle – a very different setting, being located in a
valley, but no less impressive or commanding a presence. We kept our Burg Eltz visit brief due to our
tight timetable, but our driver still ran out of “driving” hours so she stopped just short of Heidelberg and
said she was “kaput”. We had a tense rest stop but she eventually decided to drive the final 15 minutes
to the hotel!
Heidelberg hosts two of the world’s top ‘Technik’ museums – Sinsheim & Speyer. We had short visits at
each relative to their size. Each museum has a blend of car, truck, plane and even marine automotive
vehicles. The Sinsheim boasts having both commercial supersonic aircraft on display – the Concorde
and Tupolev, respectively. The planes are both open to climb up into – above the museum roof!! The
Sinsheim also has a very good display of vintage military hardware, as well as heavy equipment. They
also have a very respectable display of sports and racing cars – especially Formula 1 cars. The Speyer
features a Russian Space Shuttle, a 747 (you can get out on the wing) and a giant Antonov cargo plane.
The Speyer also hosts a great collection of Fire Trucks.
We spent a few hours free time late that afternoon and early evening in old Heidelberg, and met up
with some of the group who had elected to skip the Speyer and explore ahead of us. Heidelberg has a
very picturesque castle above the town, overlooking the River Neckar. The next morning was an early
start to wade through traffic to Stuttgart and our Mercedes Day.
We commenced with a tour of the Sindelfingen Assembly Plant. We met with our knowledgeable tour
guide at the Mercedes Customer Center where we were able to peruse some of the top of the Mercedes
model line, and see some vintage cars as well. This is a sprawling facility that produces in excess of 1800
cars per day! The press-line where most of the car body is created from coil steel is simply amazing.
From there the magic continued with the impressive amount of automated assembly and welding of the
body and throughout the remainder of assembly where the interior and powertrains come together to
form a complete vehicle. A totally impressive operation!
We then drove across town to the Mercedes Museum in central Stuttgart. We had a quick lunch ahead
of our scheduled guided tour. The Mercedes Museum has unique stylized architecture said to remind
one of a freeway interchange (which once you hear that it makes sense). The tour starts at the top floor
and you wind your way down two paths, through sequential time periods of the company’s history, or
an alternate path that features different types or themes of vehicles. Both paths land into an
exceptional display of Mercedes Motorsport history through the ages – simply amazing! I think we all
felt we could spend much more time to explore this museum – we caught maybe 40% of the displayed
collection.
We had a short time after the guided tour to self-explore more of the museum and hit the gift shop. We
then departed for a 15 minute drive to Felbach to visit Mercedes Classique. The Felbach facility is not
open to general public tours but they opened especially for us as a museum operators group. It was
quite special to see the restoration shop – including a rare pre-war Sliver Arrow Grand Prix car (which
we got to explore the undercarriage of on the lift) – as well as meet some long time Mercedes
Motorsport staff. The director of the Classic Center worked on the Silver Arrows GP cars as a young
man, and he was providing us the tour!
We adjourned from our full automotive agenda that day to our hotel. A small group sojourned out and
discovered the Stuttgart version of Oktoberfest was underway – Cannstatter Volksfest. As we later
learned, the Volksfest is second only to Munich’s Oktoberfest for beer festivals. It had the full German
Beer fest experience of giant beer halls full of happy souls dressed in Lederhosen and Dirndls hoisting
Liters of beer singing and dancing along with the Oompah bands and having a rollicking time! It was a
great time with the train ride back to the hotel full of happy Germans and various Volksfest visitors like
us.
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The next day was our Porsche-day, fortunately for the Volksfest attendees it was a later start, with our
factory tour starting at 2:00PM. We had a great tour of the Porsche assembly plant in the heart of
Zuffenhausen. While much smaller in scale than the Mercedes Sindelfingen plant, it was every bit as
impressive, especially seeing the engine assembly line. Perhaps a bit more hand assembly in areas also.
We were able to see 911 and Boxster assembly and got a great lesson on company history. After our
factory tour we had a guided tour of the new Porsche Museum. It’s also an impressive architectural
design example in its own right. A special surprise for our group was a tour of the museum restoration
shop – again, not part of a normal public tour of any sort. We were treated to seeing a 550 Spyder in
progress as well as several special 911 derivatives and a 944 race car being seen to. The museum
collection focus at the time of our visit was celebrating 50 years of the 911 model. They had quite a
display of 911 heritage and racing. Our guide was quite knowledgeable and as our tour progressed
opened several of the cars for us to look at closer. We had a fantastic 2 hour tour of the collection
experiencing Porsche heritage.
After our tour concluded we stayed in the museum and enjoyed an elegant gourmet dinner at the world
renowned Christophorus Restaurant located in the Porsche museum. They prepared a fantastic menu
for us, including some delightful local wines. The presentation was superb, and the company even
better! It really topped a wonderful afternoon. After dinner, most everyone decided to visit the
Volksfest. Those who elected to not go the previous evening were convinced they should at least see
and experience the festival environment and enjoy the camaraderie and fun. All agreed it was well
worth the visit to see over 1500 happy people singing and dancing together in just one of the 7 beer
tents!
The next morning we boarded the coach for our drive to Munich. Again we encountered wet weather
We quickly walked from the coach into the BMW Museum and got our tour time confirmed. We were
purposely early to allow the group time to explore the BMW Welt independently. We initially were not
expecting a factory tour at BMW, as they had informed us all group tours were booked out months in
advance through year end. We inquired if anything was available and were pleasantly surprised to
discover we could get 2/3 of the group in! We had concern about not getting everyone in, however
several folks were quite happy to rest instead of walking through the factory – it all worked out to
everyone’s benefit!
We all adjourned for our independent exploration of the Welt and the gift shop and then met up for our
1:00PM guided museum tour. It should be noted that BMW was not letting Mercedes or Porsche outdo
them with both architectural and collection impact. The BMW Welt is architected along the lines of a
Midwest Tornado, and the BMW Museum is housed within a Roundel-style building (Roundel being
what the BMW logo is called), next to the 4-cylinder BMW Corporate headquarters building. The Welt is
BMW’s Munich customer delivery center and has a large amount of space dedicated to delivering cars to
new owners. They also have a full exhibition of the entire BMW corporate model lineup for BMW, Mini,
and Rolls Royce. The Museum collection, of course, covers the company history in both cars and
motorcycles and also has quite the artistic touch on many displays. The museum had a special display
of Rolls Royce cars, which was impressively displayed over several floors of the Roundel building itself.
Once again we had a wonderful tour guide who led us through most of the collection.
At this stage, our group split, with part meeting up with the coach to get all the gear to the hotel and
bidding farewell to our coach and driver. The balance of the group quickly made their way to the factory
tour meeting place back in the Welt. We had a quick introduction and orientation then embarked on a 2
hour walking tour of the 5 story BMW factory. Once again we were impressed and amazed at the end to
end construction processes from stamping/press plant, body construction/assembly, to engine assembly
and then paint and interior/final assembly. Each of the three manufacturing plants were simply amazing
and impressive in their own unique ways. At the end of the tour we collected our gear and made our
way to the train station to get to the hotel (a short walk from the Munich Hauptbahnhoff). As we
originally thought the BMW factory tour was not in the cards, we had arranged a Beer Challenge tour of
the local Beer Gartens – unfortunately we just did not have enough time. . We ended up as a group
getting dinner at the famed Hofbrau Haus in old Munich. I don’t think anyone felt anything lost as we
were inside a warm beer hall with great food and music and not trekking about in the cold and rainy
evening.
Our next day was planned as a free day, however with the weather forecast being continued rain and
potential snow flurries (yes - snow!) we made a change to visit the Deutsches Verkerszentrum and
Fluwerft respectively. The Verkerszentrum is the German Smithsonian of ground transportation and has
an extensive display of rail, bus, truck, car and motorcycle/bicycle history and technology. Our visit was
self-guided this time and we had a leisurely independent visit of the facility. They had some very
interesting displays of a variety of vehicles, technology, and systems. It was very nicely done and laid
out in a facility a short walk from our hotel (and near central historic Munich).
As the group completed their self-tour of the Verkehrszentrum, we again broke into two groups. One
portion of the group departed to explore Munich. The ‘die-hards’ trekked to the Flugwerft – the
German National Air Museum. The Flugwerft was a short train ride away in the suburb of Schlessheim,
and was housed on an original Luftwaffe (air force) base dating back to the early days of flight. The base
later on was where US Army helicopter wings were based in Germany. The museum has an excellent
display of German aircraft through time, as well as some modern cold-war military aircraft from various
parts of the world. Planes of note are an HE111 (WWII bomber), Douglas C47, Eurofighter, Tornado,
Phantom, Sabre, Bell UH-1D, Sikorsky S-58 and a variety of pistin, jet and rocket engines on display.
They have a unique display of VTOL aircraft which include the impressive Dornier Do 31 transport plane.
Another group visited Dachau that afternoon. It was a very meaningful and moving tour for those who
visited. It’s a great reminder of some darkness in the past and very evident how modern Germany is
moving forward but not trying to ignore or hide this part of their history. Others tooled about central
Munich, shopping and sightseeing. Some folks also ventured up to the bell tower of St. Peters for the
incredible view of the city and surrounds.
The groups met back up at the Glockenspiel and joined together for dinner. We elected to dine in the
Ratskeller Rathaus Munchen restaurant immediately under the Glockenspiel and Rathaus (Town Hall).
We were impressed at how large and sprawling the restaurant was under the square, and had another
delightful authentic German style meal. The local beer featured here was Lowenbrau – one of 5 local
breweries. Once again we had a wonderful meal and another great day in Germany.
Our last full day was a totally free day, concluding in our farewell dinner. We ended up in a few small
groups with some exploring the old center of Munich in more depth, including the Residenz, some
catching a train and exploring Salzburg in Austria, and some renting a van to explore out to
Neuschwanstein Castle and Kloster Andechs Monastery Brewery (did you have any doubt?). As your
author was part of the van group, we can describe that outing – we are certain the others had as equally
good a time. They told us so!
We started after breakfast by heading to the Hauptbahnhoff to rent a van for our sturdy group. Once
we acquired our Mercedes Vito Van we headed to the Southwest of Munich towards Fussen and the
Alps on the Autobahn. The forecasted snow flurries in Munich, which we experienced the previous
evening, made for a beautiful drive with a dusting of snow on the fields and leaves changing colors. The
castle was extremely picturesque, as one might expect being on the edge of the Alps after a dust of
snow. The Monastery was very hospitable with some great food and of course their trademark grog,
brewed on sight since 1455. They got it right!
We sped back to Munich (hey, we were on the Autobahn – it’s only right to do as the Germans do) to
reconnect with the group for our farewell dinner at Augustiner Bräustuben. We had a wonderful meal
and recounted our respective experiences for the day. Collectively all had a great time and experience,
and we topped the day off with another fine German meal, and more excellent German beer. We
strolled back to the hotel for a nightcap, then adjourned to prepare for our travels home or onward to
the next destination. Certainly an enjoyable and very memorable expedition with some of the best
company one could ask for.