rroberts

Am just back. Stuttgart museum tour on May 16th (a lot more history there than just MBZ, highly recommended); then pick up at Sindelfingen with the factory tour on the 17th; and an AMG factory tour on the 18th (one-on-one!). Herbert Haemmer of MBZ Escondido Calif. had everything set up perfectly. The weather was nice and I drove to Kurta Hura (outside Prague; monks that built things with bones and silver mines; a UNSCO world heritage site) on the 17th. Two days later I drove to Berlin and picked up my lady friend and after some time there we drove to Poznan and then Gdansk (major history) Poland. We then took the overnight ferry to Stockholm (also highly recommended). Stockholm was great, albeit expensive. Next we stayed in rural Sweden one night and went on to Copenhagen (great food, lousy otherwise). On the way onward back to Germany it rained very heavily but cleared up by the time we got to Hamburg (totally different personality than Berlin). The next day I put the lady friend on a plane home, took the car for drop off in Bremerhaven, and proceeded to take a train toward Amsterdam, where my airline return ticket was from.

Europe has been having some worst-in-a-century type lightning storms. Southern England had gotten hammered a few days earlier. Leaving Copenhagen we saw similar. When I left Bremerhaven the weather looked bad and when I tried to change trains at Osnabruck Germany things got real ugly. Trains going West were not going anywhere and most going East were being seriously delayed. At first the rail line said they would bus us to the next station past a track blockage, but then there apparently was another blockage further on. This all was seemingly unprecedented for them, so it took a while for them to figure out what to do. In the end they issued taxi vouchers. Three of us took a taxi all the way to Amsterdam (233 Km, 130 miles). The meter read over 500 Euros (US$650) but it did not cost us anything. Our taxi driver had apparently never left Germany before. He was shocked to find out that the Netherlands has great roads but a national speed limit, after doing 150 Kph on some stretches of the German autobahn.

The weather was not done with me yet. Two days later airplane boarding was delayed an hour due to "bad storms in the area" and Schiphol airport was shut down to one runway with landings getting priority. Once we were allowed to board they promptly announced that it would be three hours more before departure! Landing in LA was uneventful, albeit 3-1/2 hours late.

Oh, the car. It was a dream. See my posting in the C63/C63s sub-forum for a picture and details.

rroberts

In retrospect, I am sorry if my post above seemed negative. We had a great time in Europe with only minor inconveniences. I used to work in Africa and real inconveniences are waiting 10 days for the next train or having the local cops through you in jail just for laughs (get your revenge, teach them how to play poker).

ted_jane

WOW, what a story, 130 mile taxi ride. Glad my ED was May of 2017, but I am ready to do it again. Sounds like you had a great trip though.

Note, the MB EDP forum is not as active as the BMW forum for some reason. I picked up an X3 in Munich in 2005 when there was a lots of people posting their ED trip reports in the BMW forums.