Kaiserkrainer is so good! Nothing like nasty cheese sausages in the US. This is at the Munich Hauptbanhof (main train station).
Oktoberfest!
Quick video showing how they pack in the beer drinkers:
Meat and beer! And very strange yellow mushy thing. I've been told it's probably a kanoodle.
Lobby at the Kempinski Hotel that Audi comps. This is normally $650 a night. It's nice, but not worth that much.
Got picked up in an A8, very nice. The guy smashed on the way there, 140mp or so.
Audi factory at Ingolstadt.
Picking up my car at the Audi Forum! The guy talking me through all the car's featured knew hardly anything. He was confused why the back up camera didn't work and wasn't really knowledgable at all. Oh well. After pick up we did a tour of the factory. It was really neat and worth the time, but it takes about 2 hours. After abour 45 minutes you've seen all the robots and such, and the rest is less interesting. It is also a very long walk, ~2 miles total.
The US dealer, Barrier Audi in Bellevue, WA, told me it would have piano black trim because I was getting the titanium package. I wasn't happy when it came with aluminum. 4 months later Barrier gave me a $1500 check for the mistake. This was very nice of them, and I'm happy I get what I wanted in the end. The trim cost ~$1500 from Europrice. The dealer wanted too much for installation, so I'll install it myself. I also bought the MMI trim and driver's vent piano black trim from the RS5 for ~$800.
RS5 sitting around.
I'm trying to drive, silly Austrians! Get your cows off the road! :p This is some yearly celebration where they move the cows to lower pastures.
On the way to the Eagle's Nest.
Couple short driving videos, nothing too special to see.
Tunnel into the mountain, then an elevator to the top.
Very pretty up here. That is lake Konigsee in the back.
King of the world!
Restaurant has a nice view. Typical German food isn't that interesting though. I wouldn't have believed it either, but fried meats can get old.
Nice ass! At the hotel in Berchtesgaden.
Some nice Austrian's sat by us during lunch. This guy offered me some Austrian snuff, but I declined.
We went to lake Konigsee. It was sort of boring and not a whole lot to see. Here's what the trumpet echo is like:
Salzburg is very nice. View from the fortress.
On the way to crossing the Alps into Austria via Grossglockner.
This is Edelweissspitz, a small detour up a tiny road. It is the highest point along the High Alpine Road.
This video shows the road and view:
Stayed overnight in Lienz, then through Italy to Vienna. Up until this drive, the roads were congested. This was the first time I really got some wide open and winding roads to have some fun on.
After some great twisties, it flattened out.
Bridge to Venice.
Venice kinda sucks. Don't get me wrong, it is very pretty and worth seeing, but it is super, super touristy. None of the food is good, yet it's all expensive. The canals are beautiful, but get old fast. You can see the whole place in a day, don't make the mistake of staying too long. It isn't a good place to go when it is hot, there are tons of mosquitoes.
Boat trip from parking to the main square:
Filling up the tank hurts soooo much! That's about $130 USD.
Cutting across Italy, on the way to Lake Como.
Lake Como. It is pretty, but there is really nothing to do here at all.
We hiked up the hill to a monastery which was fun and had a great view.
This video shows the view and the bells ringing:
This piece of road is where you get off the highway instead of going through the tunnel.
Make sure you have lots of gas before crossing the mountains!
It's not easy to tell from the pic, but this is almost straight down a loooong way.
I like this one because it's like a video game! It's hard to get a sense of speed from it, but I was going reasonbly fast.
My friend had a sinus infection and started bitching incessantly at any sort of altitude. Unfortunately I had to detour from my awesome Alp crossing plan and cross using bigger roads. :(
The plan was to stop in Interlaken and see Jungfraujoch, but my friend's sinus problem killed that plan. :( There was nothing else to do at Interlaken (and it wasn't particularily picturesque either) so we headed to Lucerne. There was also nothing to do in Lucerne. :p That's how it goes, seeing so many towns. It's neat to check them out and see how stuff is, but that doesn't take long to do. Then you eat. Then what? We walked until we were lost in almost every city we stopped in.
From Lucerne it was into the Black Forest. I didn't get many pics, as it is mostly just rolling green hills, but this was the best driving of the trip! There are some big roads, such as B500. However, B500 is very wide and has tons of other cars, especially tour buses. You never get any amount of open road to push it. Also, the speed limit is very low for such a road. To have any fun on B500 you'd need to be going 120 mph, that is how big the road is and how sweeping the turns are, and driving at those speeds on unfamiliar roads when the posted speed limit is ~40 mph is not a good idea. Instead, just take any other road through the forest. There are TONS of highways all over the place, and they are all very clean and all sharp turns are well marked and there is little other traffic. You can push your limits on these roads at speeds from 50 to 70 mph. This was super fun!
This video shows what is probably a typical road, though many of the roads are a bit narrower and have better visibility when there is grass instead of trees.
Corners where you need to slow down at least a little are always marked, which makes driving these roads very nice.
Burg Eltz. Too bad it was under construction.
Cochem.
Sweet!
We did a lap in an M3 ring taxi. It was totally worth it, very fun. I wouldn't bring my new S5 on there, not just because it is very dangerous but the roads are rough and have lots of rocks.
Saw some interesting cars.
Top speed on the trip was in the Netherlands on the way to Amsterdam at 166mph. Interestingly, on an ED trip you basically can't get a ticket. There are tons of cameras and checkpoints where they time you from A to B and average your speed, but none of that matters. With the German ED plates, no tickets are given. I sped through the whole trip, not giving a shit about the cameras, nothing happened and it has been 5 months. An Austrian friend of mine says that German plates means you won't get camera tickets in other countries, something about German laws being different. Sweet!
Got to Amsterdam too late to drop the car, so had to park it in the city. Amsterdam suuuuuucks if you are driving. Do NOT bring a car in there! Seriously. I paid something like 50 euros to park overnight. Then I parked in a poorly marked zone that would have resulted in a boot on my car and huge fines. Some nice people pointed out the zone rules, and I found a spot along the canals after about an hour of driving in circles. All parking spots (and every thing else in Amsterdam) are surrounded by bikes.
Amsterdam is a lot like Venice. Tons and tons of tourists and very commercial. You can see it all in a day. We stayed 3 nights and were super bored!
Coffee shop. :)
Saw Mr Bean!
Coming back the next day to take the car to drop off, some assholes let their bikes hit my car! Luckly the bike handle was rubber enough not to leave a mark on the trunk. Note the stoners.
1500 miles of dead bugs.
I found this place to wash my car right next to Zentrum Audi in Amsterdam. I didn't want to ship the car with it so nasty.
Inspection at the drop off. You will not find the drop off point. When GPS failed to find it, I had a Dutch friend with me and he called them for directions. They hardly knew where they were and it took ~30 minutes of wandering around before we finally got there. Doing that in English would have been even worse. Drop off is at some unmarked, very industrial looking place. Even once we were there, there was no indication we were in the right place. Uhg!
1555 miles total!
Goodbye S5! See you in a few months!
