// JSpot //

By the powers invested in some higher authority, we woke up Sunday morning, not hung over. Though I may not have been hung over, I was not on stable ground. I had completely expected the morning to be painful, but it was not. The world was still spinning a bit when I looked far into the distance, but that was little price to pay for the evening we’d just brought to a close not six hours before. And soon we would be headed for Bad Kreuznach and I could sleep in the car.

In Karlsplatz we picked up what was supposed to be a Ford Mondeo or Volkswagon Jetta. Sixt, however, had given them all away and offered us instead a BMW 320i instead.

Thrilled, we made for the Autobahn. Once on the road, I setup my camera on the dash and we did a little Top Gear style review of the car. Brian seems pleased, but perhaps that was because he had the pleasure of driving. From the passenger seat, I quickly began to despise the car.

The seat was obnoxious. You could only raise the seat by getting out of it - hardly practical at 120 km/h. It was awkwardly angled as well, so I couldn’t get my bum comfortably positioned. And there was nowhere to put my arms.

Besides that, the ride was incredibly stiff. Every little bump in the road made my guts jolt about like James May in his high speed boat ride. My bottom was sore by the time we’d reached out destination. Thankfully, I’d been too tired to care and simply slept most of the journey.

Road Trip from München to Bad Kreuznach in a rented BMW 320i

There were, however, a few parts for which I was awake. Wide awake.

Being the Autobahn, there is no speed limit in certain sections. So when the opportunity presented itself, Brian gave it the beans, so to speak. I took some proper video of us dashing along at ~220 km/h (~128 mph). Not surprisingly, those bouts of high speed were pretty exciting.

Secondly, our route (shown on my slick GPS map!) took us through the Black Forest, which was presently not black at all. In fact quite the opposite - all white and gray. Everything was glazed in snow, and the deeper we went, the denser the fog became. Soon, we were unable to see off the road at all, and in front of us, we could only see about 100m. Or less. The fog was in some patches so thick, it had became dark, like a thunderstorm cloud. Fog so thick the sun cannot shine through it. But it eventually gave way and we left the forest. And I returned to my dazing and drifting to and from sleep.

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Brian and I found a little fun place called BMW Welt

Sheiße! We seem to have overslept. Or perhaps we subconsciously changed our minds. We had a Barcelona moment, but since we hadn’t purchased our tickets to Austria, it was no loss to us. Except the Augustiner Brewery!

When we did finally wake up, we decided that rather that trying to race to Austria, we should look for something “touristy” to do in Munich.

And we found it: BMW Welt.

An enormous tribute to Munich’s biggest auto-maker… or a multi-million dollar advertisement for BMW. You can even pick up your new car here at the factory and they make a weekend of the experience for you. Wow. The exhibits they had were mildly biased, but they spared no expense on the presentation. Entire three-story walls were made into fluid animations with rear-projection screens guided your way. 100-foot long touch-sensitive tables with interactive overhead projection laid out the history of BMW. Enormous picture books with visual recognition queued a recorded voice over, filling in the details the picture couldn’t convey. So much technology!

And of course, the cars. Every make and model that has ever bared the BMW emblem was here. The Bond cars, the first BMW production car, even the original aircraft engine that got the company started.

After spending most of the day there, we stopped on our way home again at Marien Platz for a snack and then… the Hofbrauhaus! That famous touristy trap that no touristy day would be complete without! Interestingly, though, the Haus was filled to the gills with Germans! Rick Steves must have got it wrong. It took over 10 minutes to find a bench to plop down on, but when we did, the consumption of large quantities of beer began, served, of course, in the traditional one-liter mas!