The Porsche museum in Stuttgart

You don't have to be into cars to fall in love with this place - - but it is kinda of lucky that I am, so here are a few pics from our excursion around the new Porsche museum, which is an incredible piece of architecture by itself.

Notice the Porsche sitting on the roof to the foyer entrance.


The stairway to heaven








There is nothing tacky about a Porsche wing you have to admit.


You climb the levels subtly without noticing the climb.. then you are looking down on automotive history.. and your wife looking back.





A gift to the Polizei.. I would say that there were some hands going up for donut run volunteers


She has a pretty hot ass


It's diesel - it's hot

Bamberg

After camping for the night we decided to explore the heart of Bamberg and were pleasantly surprised to find such a beautiful little gem. Bamberg survived the bombings of the war by having a major artillery factory as protection from incoming aircraft. It has incredible history including killing hundreds of people during the witch trials of the 17th century - read more if you're interested here.

Triberg of Bavaria

This is it folks - The town that markets the black forest for your tourism pleasures.
as you travel in you can't help but notice that 9/10 shops sell Cuckoo clocks. A couple even advertise that they stock 1000 clocks or more!













Here's a shot of onc wall of the little noisy buggers.

There was only one last thing to do - gorge ourselves on Black Forest cake. So we hopped to the nearest backerei (bakery) and there it was shining in a cabinet. Obviously they get a lot of people like us ordering the delicacy as when I did place the order, the lady opened a drawer below the cake filled with hundreds of chilled pieces ready on plates.

This sounds a bit NZ - but in the way out there is apparently the worlds largest cuckoo clock on display (like the corrugated sheep in Taihape etc..) - with the pouring rain we missed it, instead finding the worlds largest TOILET... Something you may need after the worlds largest slice of black forest cake ;)

The black forest and Freiburg

Ladesha was convinced her birthday must be in the black forest surrounded by cake, fairies and magic. So we packed up next morning and hit the scenic route through the forest to Freiburg. On the way we passed through the town of Baden - Baden which has 2 things going for it;
A) casino
B) Slightly more attractive - A Roman time bath!! Yes for 21 euro you can go and get pampered.
Clothes are strictly FORBIDDEN, and the price includes a massage and showering soaps.
But with the time not being our friend we skipped the naked baths to get to Camp Freiburg.

First of all - it must be said that the South of Germany is hot. We had come from 17º - and arrived at 32º. But the next day a freak storm came in and we ended up very wet and cold. It was OK though as the town was once again beautiful! Incredible architecture and a vein system of miniature canals ran though the whole city which was a very nice touch.

Our only photo - of the camp. This place actually had power, wifi, and a fantastic restaurant.. MMM mmmm

Hunting out Heidelberg

What a beautiful city this is! With our Sat Nav (Natalie we called her) playing tricks and games on us, we actually ended up first at a town called Neckerhausen.. convinced we had arrived in the gorgeous Heidelberg.. strangely no one was about - so we explored and took some photos. It was only when we tried to map the lonely planet guide against the streets that we discovered we had no idea where we were. Here are some pics from the gorgeous wee town of Neckarhausen.















With Natalie back in shape we idled down the road to a town we couldn't miss - a truely magestic place cobbled and paved and banned from cars for it's pedestrian nature.
Above Heidelberg is the giant Schloss in disrepair from the French flattening it a while back - but now under reconstruction for the preservation of Unesco and I guess the tourism dollar this mecca attracts.





Ultimately Heidelberg is a student town - can you imagine that - being a student with this as your driveway to play in ?? Here is what the university they go to looks like.


Since the Euro is against us like an enemy lurking in the shadows close by, we decided to try and save a few by camping. Most camp sites in Germany are actually fantastic - with Wifi, hot showers, restaurants and some even with swimming pools. This one was almost none of the above - but it did have a river running beside it and a nice cafe breakfast.

This is a very typical German breakfast;
Bread rolls
Nutella - seriously - it's a home brand here - nutella everyday.. Mmmm
Jam
Coffee or tea
Ham, luncheon sausage, a boiled egg
Cheese and in this case half a block of camembert

All for 4euro - Yummmmmmm

Nurburg Castle

Waiting for my turn on the track was hours away, so we decided to go and visit the Nurburg Schloss (Castle). Quite a spectacular sight - and incredible place to view the surrounding counrtyside. If you didn't know this, the Nurburgring travels around the town of Nurburg.. so from the castle you can rotate 360º and view parts of the track that are exposed.

Nailing the Nurburgring

We were pretty excited about our road trip from Berlin to the South and back - and the Nurburgring was to be the first stop. But first I had to create a Nerd-burg map with colour coded pages - yellow being the first day.
We picked up our Ford focus diesel and set off on the autobahn with a cruising speed of 140-160km/h. It was kind of embarrassing as VW campers were passing me and looked a bit pissed that I was slowing down the slow lane.
The autobahn is pretty amazingly efficient as all German inventions seem to be - the idea behind it is that if you are doing 200kmh the chances of you being overtaken are slim, so you can concentrate on the blurring road ahead. Perhaps it is also designed to keep you awake on the long open highways. Our Sat Nav tried to get us to cross meadows and pull handbrake turns at 100mph so the nerd map paid off in dividends. We pulled into Nurburg after 5 1/2 hours of driving and almost 700kms.. with the little diesel returning 5 litres per 100km - pretty incredible 'efficiency'.

We checked into our guesthouse called Pension Muhlenhardt which has a view up to the Nurburg Castle and is surrounded by amazing green hills and the track close by!

Here's the view from our balcony.

The next morning I woke up to the pitter patter of rain and dark heavy clouds outside. This is the day.. the one and only.. one of the most challenging tracks in the world to be noviced in the pouring rain! We jumped into the car and took off to RSR Racing - which have a whole range of cars that are track prepared for hire.. such as the Renault Clio Cup 197 I was to pick up.

Here is the rear end of my track toy for the 6 laps.

Their GT3, that you can hire, but may be better off doing a taxi lap in for 170euro
Note there is another right at the back that has been written off - I would hate to be that customer as you pay through the nose for excess - something along the lines of 25000Euro

Their back yard is full of cars that are privately owned and stored or for rent. This GT2 is used as a taxi.. apparently the owner is a wee bit scared of it.. and you would be with the widow maker legend this bloodline has.

The Alfa graveyard. This is how RSR came about as a racing team company, but as the years went by less people took the cars to the meets and opted to lease them instead. I personally love the GTV6 poking out - as I used to own one. The 75 shares all the same parts - so easy to gather spares.


These Prosports are for hire - you would have to be a brave brave man. I believe they are 3000Euro a day for the blast, but they wont let you out before a day of training.


Anyway..
Fortunately for me, there was a clerical error - and the public testing wasn't to start until 4pm as there was an event on. By this stage I had learned that the weather changes here remarkably quickly, and it was possible that it would clean up by 4pm.

Guess what? The weather cleared and the track dried up just for me! Chris at RSR offered to drive the first lap to teach me the lines and braking points (A very detailed robot-like instruction). We cruised the lap at no more than 70mph and at the end I was feeling ill... not because of any motion sickness or the like. No it was because of the terrifying nature of the track itself. Let me give you a small background to the creation of the Nurburgring;

The Nurburgring was designed by the Eichler Architekturbüro in the 1920s to show case German engineering and driver talent. In the 1960s Jackie Stewart called it 'The green hell', and in '67 Formula 1 was banned from it as it was deemed z track TOO DANGEROUS.
It is truly like a roller coaster ride that will test not only your commitment, memory and skill.. but your stomach too as you leap over a crest at 180kmh only to bottom out before a hairpin.
The track will tighten on itself where you least expect it to, and corners that look safe at speed will suddenly present their second tighter cousin metres later to shake the rear end loose.
For the first half of the lap you travel downhill constantly over 1000feet.. and then on the second half you climb it again. Corners change their banking from positive to negative and almost every next turn is hidden as a surprise for when you get there.

If you have ever played a game of golf, you will know that it is all in the swing. If you have a great technique you can hit the ball twice as far as someone using twice the power and a poor technique. That is exactly how you treat this track.
For the first 2 laps you just leave the car in 3/4/5 gear and concentrate on getting through smoothly and learning what you can. Then you build some confidence and gather some more speed as each lap progresses. Just before my last lap there was unfortunately a large accident and it took an hour to clear.. but with the time to clear the mind, I jumped back in the Clio and had such an amazing last lap.. apart form the occasional slow and fast traffic everything seemed to go right, and the track rewarded me with a superb drive. When I say superb, I was still a long long way off being quick.. but 20 more laps and I reckon I'd have it mastered, and the Porsche.

Me and the Clio heading out for a scorcher

I have never seen so many Porsches gathered like a bunch of mazdas in a supermarket lot.. they are just so normal to be here - but the attention was all for them still. Right here we have 3 GT3s together, and there were more.. oh yes there were more.

I got overtaken by a couple of these R8s - and I was truly afraid when they came into the rear view mirror to hunt me down.

Lovely UR quattro.. got eaten by the Clio though

The attention seeker of the day.. and in the BG was this skyline - one of about 3 here. They are terrifyingly fast on the track and just blur past you.


As a last story. There were a couple of jokers around - this starlet was one of them. The Germans tried everything to stop them from going on the track. First they were told to remove the roof racks - and then 4 Germans went around kicking bumpers to see if anything would fall off.. eventually they were allowed on to become a rolling road block.