Tag germany

Having spent a great deal of my youth in Germany, my ten year absence made me wonder what would have changed since I graduated high school there at the beginning of the millennium. What made it all the more exciting was that this time around I was old enough to drive! We set a course for Heidelberg, and drove through the countryside in relative silence looking out the window. Stores I recognized passed by the window, and once again street signs in a language I could read were a real comfort having left France and Belgium in our wake. Nostalgia floated in and I daydreamed about the six years I spent in Germany. We set up camp in Heidelberg that night at a campground directly on the Danube. Somewhere in the hills behind us, church bells rang and the hills on either side of the river displayed proud, traditional German homes. The air was clean and easy to breathe.

We awoke early and had to get a move on in order to make it to the party in the Czech Republic that night. We strapped everything to the roof and set off to Nurnberg, only a few hours away. Having driven little on the trip thus far I decided I really wanted to drive the autobahn as we ventured towards my old stomping grounds. I am still learning to drive stick, so it is a bit more involved than simply putting on a seat belt and pointing the engine end forward. I got the hang of it after a few minutes and enjoyed the drive, Audi and BMW cars zipped past me with annoyed looks, but I wasn’t phased. Even if I’d wanted to go faster, our little Citroen Saxo can’t muster more than 60. That’s why they have the slow lane.

Nurnberg is a beautiful city, one I used to visit on the train from Parsberg. This time, coming in via road, it was totally different and I was disoriented. Nevertheless, we found an ATM and in the distance I spotted something of extreme value and interest. I wasn’t sure I’d seen this mirage correctly, so I paced quickly ahead. I let out a wild scream and turned around to see Mike and Bill standing shocked behind me on the pavement. “Weinerwald!” I yelled, and they agreed to have lunch at one of the best German chain restaurants in the country. We ran in, and I videotaped and took pictures of the food, then ordered and waited giddily for my food. What a treat, and I’d heard all the Weinerwald shops had been closed since we left ten years ago.

From there, we set off on a detour to Britenbrunn, my old town. We found Parsberg and I noticed how much larger it has become. Britenbrun was no different. The old military families were no longer there and a civilian German owned our old house. She was there so I talked to her briefly, but she wasn’t amused to find a car full of Americans, covered in stickers and flying a pirate flag, in her driveway. I took a few snapshots and told Mike and Bill about my time in the house and in the neighborhood while they looked out the window at the town.

But, with time running short, we had to jump back aboard and head to the Czech Republic, flag flying high and flapping in the wind at 50mph on the autobahn as sports cars zoomed past.

It’s official! We’ve finally ironed out our route details to the finest detail. We have decided to head from London to Paris, and from Paris to Luxembourg. After a break, we’ll head to Nuremberg and the Prague for the 2010 Czech Out Party, which we’re all very excited about. From there we head south to Bratislava and Budapest before entering Romania for a few castle tours and vampire stalking. We then head to Chisinau and then into Ukraine to the famous port city of Odessa. From this point on the trip gets really interesting. We head due east through Russia, hugging the Black Sea coast until we enter Kazakhstan. We’ll cut inland and aim directly for the Aral Sea inside the Uzbek border. We’ll cut across Uzbekistan and then re-enter Kazakhstan heading north into the mountains. Back into Russia for a moment before entering Mongolia and racing across the open Steppe to Ulaanbataar. Yup, that’s what we’ll be doing this summer, driving across 1/3rd of the distance around the trodden earth. If none of this made sense, check out the nifty map we made (yeah, I should have led with that!):

View Central Asia Route Map created by ATC for the 2010 Mongol Rally

This map is awesome, and really shows the distance and scale of the land we’ll be covering. Some 8-10,000km through 13 countries in a car that even Mickey Mouse would say is too small– a 1.5l engine auto. Below is a picture of a rally car from 2009, ours will be very similar.

If you are more interested in the car, aka- how to buy, register and insure one in Europe, or even cooler (if that is possible) a post on all our awesome media coverage, or possibly the list of woe-is-me updates we made when we were feeling down, then check out these other posts or head to the Mongol Rally and Sponsorship pages, which explain it all.