Jun 19 2013

Luzern, Switzerland

The unexpected wave of heat made our night in Stuttgart fairly uncomfortable. When we went out for dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant at 9 p.m., it was an opportunity to notice that air conditioning is not something you can take for granted even in nice hotels and restaurants. (We didn’t really want Asian food again after having had it recently in Mainz, but we often find the only choice is Asian, Italian, and German plus a few of the American chains. Eleanor says that eating Thai is the only way she can get vegetables with her meal around here.)

As I mentioned earlier, our hotel lacked air conditioning too, so we slept atop the sheets. The temperatures barely cooled overnight, but it wouldn’t have helped anyway because we had to keep the windows closed against the street noise. We’ve had better nights of sleep.

As with all the hotels we’ve encountered so far, our room had two twin beds, which Eleanor hates, but on this night I think we were better off being a few feet apart. The forecast was for more of the same on Tuesday and we didn’t relish the idea of another hot night, but fortunately I was able to cancel our second night without penalty. We got breakfast in the hotel’s elegant little restaurant (with views of the koi pond) and checked out.

I mentioned in the previous blog that the only reason for us to go to Stuttgart was to visit the Mercedes Benz museum. I have lots of pictures from there and will post them on a Flickr album later. In short, it was excellent and exciting. We took about 2.5 hours to tour the museum’s 7 floors, descending in a spiral from level to level, and then caught the 11:45 tour of the adjacent Unterturkheim factory, where MB makes engines, transmissions, and forged parts. The tour’s main feature was a walk through the plant where they are currently making the OM651 4-cylinder Diesel engine and some M271 gas engines.

The heat had struck again so at this point we were glad to get back to the car. The museum is air conditioned but the walking tour is definitely not, even inside the engine assembly building. We had a quick picnic lunch in the parking garage and then headed out to the Autobahn.

I’ve got the hang of the Autobahn now and I have to say it’s actually more tiring to drive than the US Interstates. Most of the time there are two lanes. The left one is too fast, filled with people who think they are Michael Schumacher zooming along at 150 kph+, while the right one is too slow, occupied by trucks that sometime creep along at about 80 kph. After the frequent slow-downs, the Citroen is rather casual about coming back up to speed (it is happiest about 120-30 kph, given some time to get there) so I had to change lanes frequently and it ended up being a lot more work than I would have expected.

On the other hand, it was a very pretty drive down to Switzerland. Once we got free of Stuttgart the scenes were pastoral and seemingly endless. The border crossing was a non-event, since most of the Western European nations have abolished the need to show passports for EU and US citizens, and we were just waved through without a second glance. There wasn’t even a sign saying “Welcome to Switzerland,” and since the signs in that part of the country are all in German it was hard to discern any difference. It was slightly disappointing to not have a bit of fanfare about entering Switzerland, but on the other hand I couldn’t help thinking that it would be nice if the border between the US and Canada were as straightforward. If they can do it among 14 nations in Europe, why can’t we do it with our friendly neighbor to the north?

There was one painful reminder to us that we were in another country. Switzerland requires tourists to have a “vignette” (a window sticker) that shows we’ve paid the road tax for use of the highways. (In the USA this tax is built into fuel prices.) We stopped at a convenience store and bought one: it costs 40 Swiss francs, which is about $45. We’ll need it for three days.

At one point we were considering stopping in Zurich, so we skipped the route that would have brought us around the city and ended up getting caught in a massive traffic jam. This cost us the better part of an hour, and all for nothing since we realized we’d rather continue on to Luzern instead.

Luzern is a nice place, located on the shore of a lake and with nice views of the snow-covered Alps in the distance, but very expensive. Hotels in town start at CHF200 and rise rapidly from there (we splurged on a nice one so ours is more like CHF290, double what we’ll spend in Italy) and the restaurant prices are unbelievable. After a short walk around the downtown we hit a local grocery and made a smorgasbord for dinner and breakfast that cost CHF31. That’s what the hotel would have charged us just for one breakfast for one person. The prices here tell me that we’d be much better off traveling this region by Airstream, and I suspect that’s what we’ll do someday.

Downtown Luzern seems to be mobbed with tourists, and more Americans than we’ve encountered anywhere else. Perhaps that explains the Burger King, McDonald’s, and Starbucks all on the same corner.

At this point I am thinking we’ve done a little too much driving. Every day we are driving 4-5 hours, arriving in town around 5-7 p.m., and then spending the evening getting settled into the hotel and taking care of business (I still have to do some work while I’m “vacationing”). Dinner ends up being at 9 or even 10 p.m. and then we talk about what we are going to do the next day, and we don’t get to bed until 12:30 a.m. Today will be similar but to break the cycle we have booked two nights at Lake Maggiore (Italy) and will likely extend it to three days. We plan to use the Lake Maggiore hotel as a base camp for day excursions.

Today’s plan is to make our final southward drive through the Gotthard Pass and down to Italy’s lake region. It should be the most spectacular drive of the entire trip, and shorter than the past few drives, so we’re looking forward to it.

If you’re wondering about fuel cost, it’s about $8 per US gallon. We’ve put two tanks of gas in the car, which cost about 60 Euros each ($80). That’s expensive for a small car but really still not a bad deal, since we could spend nearly that much on breakfast here in Luzern. We can economize in other ways, which we do mostly by eating out only once a day.

Off to Italy …

Jun 17 2013

Steaming in Stuttgart

The Airstream rally is over, and we are moving again. This morning we awoke to find only a handful of the Airstreams still on site, and everyone was packing up to go.

Part of the reason this rally was the biggest one in Europe since the Wally Byam caravans of the 1950s was the fairly central location. Since it was in Germany, the Dutch and the Germans could come for the weekend, even those who have day jobs. Only the British really had a long drive (400-600 miles depending on where they came from) and they seemed to relish the excuse to cross the Channel and explore the continent. So except for the Brits, nearly everyone bugged out on Sunday or very early Monday to get back to work or other obligations.

We tidied up the Airstream and emptied the tanks again, reluctantly packed up and said goodbye to our friends who were still on-site, and VERY reluctantly handed the keys to the new Airstream 684 back to Armin. When I say “new” I mean really new: we were the first people to sleep in it. I’d buy it if we afford to have a third Airstream permanently located in Europe, but alas we are not quite in that bracket just yet. Still, we already are certain we’ll be back one way or another.

I have to give special thanks to Armin Heun of Airstream Germany and his team, who really did an excellent job at putting together this event. We feel privileged to have been invited to come, and to stay in an Airstream while we were here. I hope Armin and/or some of the guys from Airstream Germany come to America and allow us to somehow try to repay the favor.

Today’s drive was down to Stuttgart, but since we were so close to Limburg, and everyone raved about it, we took a short detour to explore the downtown. It does look like a neat place. Our parking ticket downtown was good for only 2 hours and we needed to get going on our drive to Stuttgart, so the visit was short but enjoyable.

Once again we were fahren fahren fahren on der Autobahn, which is trickier than you might think. Despite the myth that “it has no speed limit” it often does have speed limits, varying from 80 kph in construction zones up to 100 kpb in moderately congested areas, and 130 kph in less congested areas. Only a few spots along our three hour drive today were truly free of speed limits, and even then we had to be constantly on the lookout for sudden changes in speed. We could be zipping along at about 140 kph (about 86 MPH) and then in a flash traffic would slow to 90 kph and I’d be stomping the brakes as other drivers quickly weaved from the slow lanes to the fast ones.

The Citroen made the drive more challenging, because that little tin box really wasn’t very steady above 120 kph. At 140 with a little breeze crossing the road, I had to wrestle with it, constantly making course corrections as it bobbed and wandered in the lane. I rarely dared enter the leftmost lane, which was the exclusive domain of German-made automobiles such as Mercedes, BMW, Volkswagen, and Audi. Those cars are Autobahn-ready, whereas I think Citroen built this C3 for toodling around city streets.

Eleanor offered that we might go to Europcar and ask for something a bit more capable of handling the Autobahn, but I didn’t want to go to the trouble. Soon enough we’ll be in Switzerland and Italy and we won’t be going all that fast anyway. Although I am wondering how it will do at Gotthard Pass …

We have only one reason for visiting Stuttgart, and that is because I insisted on seeing the Mercedes-Benz Museum. This town also hosts the Porsche Museum, which we drove by today, but we may not go into that one, depending on whether we are burned out on car stuff after MB.

Unfortunately, I made a strategic error when planning this stop. I booked two nights and didn’t notice that the hotel lacks air conditioning. This is not uncommon. This wasn’t a problem a few days ago when the forecast said Stuttgart would be nice and cool, but in reality it was 91 degrees today and it will be the same tomorrow. At 11 p.m. as I write this we are in our hotel room with windows wide open and it is still close to 90 degrees. Plus there’s a lot of street noise, which doesn’t bode well for sleeping tonight.

I am going to see if we can cancel our second night and head off to Switzerland tomorrow after visiting the Museum instead. Hopefully the hotel will be accommodating about this. This is just the sort of thing that reminds me why I hate making reservations, even when camping.

Since our hotel was chosen for convenience to the museums and not for walking access to the city, we had to use the car to get to dinner this evening. Navigating and parking were an adventure, as they always are in European cities, and that was expected, but once again I forgot that air conditioning is not to be expected 100% of the time as it would be at home. We ended up in a very nice Vietnamese restaurant sweating bullets as we ate our dinner. The mountains of Switzerland are looking better and better all the time.

Once we leave Germany we will no longer have Internet on the phone, or any phone for that matter. The SIM card I bought will roam to other countries but the cost of calls becomes prohibitive and the Internet functionality simply stops. So from here on in we are going to rely on public and hotel wifi, and Skype to call home occasionally. If I really get crazy about connectivity I might pick up an Italian SIM card, but maybe I’ll forget about the real world while we are in Italy instead.

Jun 16 2013

Driving the Mosel Valley

One of the things that made us look forward to attending the EU Airstreamers’ gathering was that we would be able to be regular old attendees, instead of running the thing. It has been while since we had the opportunity to do that, and it has been a nice change. Nobody is asking me for my opinion on anything, and I got the impression that everyone is happy I’m not here to sell something. This is a laid-back group.

Since nobody was going to notice or care if we disappeared for the day, we made plans to drive west to the Mosel River valley for a leisurely tour of that scenic area. The road winds along the Mosel, and the hillsides are lined with grape vines, and every once in a while there’s a castle and a quaint village. There are even quite a few nice riverside campgrounds.

But before we could go do that, it was our day to try the European equivalent of dumping the holding tanks and filling up with fresh water. They have a much better system for that than we do. Since many campgrounds lack hookups, campers bring along a plastic barrel called an Aqua-Roll. The Airstream sucks water from this barrel to fill its own internal tank automatically, and when you need more water you just disconnect the Aqua-Roll, attach a sort of giant fork/handle, and roll it over to the water source. It’s dead easy.

We have been scrupulous about our water usage so our supply was still mostly full, but we did take a couple of showers and so there was some water in the external gray tank, which is called a Wastemaster. This is basically the same as our American “blue boy” tanks, but with more drainage points and a special shape that allows it to be slid almost entirely underneath the Airstream, to get it out of sight. The EU Airstreams ride lower than the US ones, so this is a neat trick.

We also decided to try our hand at emptying the cassette toilet, with considerable trepidation. It turns out we shouldn’t have worried; it’s a much nicer and cleaner system than the famous “stinky slinky” that we use in America. The cassette removes from the outside of the Airstream through a special door, and it’s virtually fool-proof. You just open the door, release a catch, and slide it out. It’s clean on the outside so there’s no “ick” factor like there is with the sewer hose.

Also, you can’t spill it unless you really try hard, it doesn’t smell, and it has wheels and a handle like your airplane luggage so it’s simple to roll it over to the designated spot and dump it out. We gave it a quick rinse, added fresh chemical, and popped it back in the compartment. Job done in just a few minutes. No drips, no errors.

Being Sunday, a few people have had to leave the rally to head back to work, but most of us are staying until Monday. We said goodbye to some new and old friends, exchanged email addresses, and promised to get together again in two years when this gathering will be held in the UK. Michael Hold will be organizing it, and he says he’s going to beat this record attendance of 54 Airstreams. We plan to be there to take a careful count in person.

We have a Michelin map of Germany, but some nice folks from the UK lent us their book of German maps, and it has much better detail. With that in hand and a picnic lunch in the car, we finally headed out to find the Mosel river valley at about 11 a.m., two hours after I had thought we might leave.

We didn’t even get 1/10 of a mile before running in to a tiny car show. It was irresistible, so we pulled over and took a few pictures of the Mercedes, Volkswagen, Porsche, Peugeot, and MG cars there. I could see we weren’t going to get very far today. (Note that the Mercedes to the right has a tow bar.)

Still, just about everywhere we’ve driven in Germany has been scenic and interesting. We eventually stopped at a famous castle called Burg Eltz for a tour. Between our picnic lunch at the car, the treasure room, and the castle tour, we killed a couple of hours there, but it was worth it.

If you go, seriously consider paying 2 Euros for the shuttle ride back to your car, otherwise you will be facing a long steep hike. But walking down pays off in more than monetary ways; you will have the opportunity to take some fantastic pictures of the castle from the road.

We continued along the Mosel for another hour of driving, and I can’t begin to describe how fantastic it was. The weather has been ideal all week, and today was the best yet, so we wound our way down the smooth road with all four windows down and all four eyes wide open to take in the scenery.

Eventually we stopped in the town of Cochem and began walking through the old part of town without any expectations. We discovered a vibrant shopping and restaurant district hidden behind the gray stone walls of the buildings that face the road, which completely sucked us in for the next 90 minutes. At 6 p.m. we headed for what the locals would call an early dinner (we were the only people in the restaurant for a while; everyone else was sitting at a pub somewhere), and once again got a surprisingly excellent meal. (Ignore the French Fries, they seem to come with everything. Under that crisply breaded veal is a bed of wild chantrelles in a delicious cream sauce.) I’ve grown cynical about restaurants in tourist areas, but our luck has been fantastic while we’ve been here. Is it just Germany?

We followed the Mosel west for another 30 km or so, and then broke off to head back to the Autobahn for our trip back to base. Just as we were leaving we spotted a sign that said Nurburgring was only 23 km away. That’s a giant raceway that you can pay a fee to drive with your own car. It’s another car fantasy of mine to drive that track with something suitable, and Eleanor was encouraging me to do so, but once again that fantasy did not involve me racing in a Citroen four-banger. So we headed home, doing battle on the back roads with the VWs driven by 20-somethings who obviously (from their driving style) wished they were on the Nurburgring as well.

We missed a turn or two on the way back, and ended up pulling in at about 10:30. There was just enough light left for us to see the rest of the group clustered around an open fire, playing guitar and accordion. Obviously they had a nice day too.

Tomorrow we will all have to leave, so we’ll say goodbye in the morning and head off to Stuttgart.

Jun 15 2013

An American newbie in Europe

I feel like I’ve swallowed something huge, and it’s not just the great German food. It’s going to take me a while to digest this experience of being with the European Airstreamers. So much is happening, and I’m learning so much that I can’t fathom it all at the end of each day.

Today was again tremendously fun. We rolled out of bed at 8:30 rather sluggishly (at least me) since we went to bed far too late last night. Armin popped by with a tray of warm rolls and excellent coffee for Eleanor, which we added to the Muesli that I was eating, and some strawberries, and some cream cheese.

After breakfast I found Armin outside preparing his quadracopter for another aerial flight over the campground. The light wasn’t ideal, but he got some video anyway and no doubt he will try again. These videos will probably make it to YouTube in a few weeks.

There was no program for the morning, which was ideal for casual conversation. The Europeans seem to enjoy taking breakfast outside, so just by walking down the row of Airstreams I was able to find several people to talk to. I dropped in on Ben and Denise, who were camping with their friend Marcus, and picked Ben’s brain about Switzerland. I left with a full page of suggestions and helpful advice, which I think will make that part of our trip very easy.

Michael Hold dropped by for a chat, and then he grabbed my camera and got a rare shot of Eleanor and me together, which I think will become a cherished momento of this trip.

Then we hopped in the Citroen for a quick drive over to Airstream Germany’s showroom in nearby Merenburg. It’s out on an industrial estate off the main road, really in a fairly rural location that you wouldn’t expect to find an Airstream dealer, but they have a beautiful showroom and seem to do a good business in both Airstreams and custom mobile catering trailers.

Eleanor took to one of the custom catering Airstreams that Airstream Germany (Roka-Werk AG) makes and began explaining exactly how it worked to Pete and Tracey. I think she’d like one for Christmas, but I can’t figure out how to get it in my checked baggage allowance at Lufthansa.

The workshop was equally impressive. I particularly liked the fact that they can lift an Airstream up in the air like a car and work on the underside. Since EU Airstreams don’t have full belly pans filled with insulation like the US ones, there’s easy access to the wires, gas plumbing, and chassis. (They aren’t cold at the floor though, because the floor itself is multi-layered with insulation.)

We met up with our friends Koos and Stefan, from Holland, and went up to the Weilburg altenstadt (old town) to have lunch and tour the Schloss (castle). We had a remarkable private tour since nobody else was there at 3 p.m., and then got back to the encampment to find the total number of Airstreams had swelled just a little bit more. That’s when I wandered around to take these two photos of Buicks that towed in Airstreams for the event. These are posted on the blog in response to a request from a blog reader.

At 6 p.m. the mayor of Weilburg came by to offer a little speech, but it was entirely in German, alas, so we didn’t understand it. Everything else at this event has been conducted in English, thanks to the bi-linguality of most Europeans, for which I am grateful. We are trying to use a little German here and there but we’ve been indebted to our friends who have helped out in translating things.

After the barbecue I was supposed to speak at 9 p.m., but we’re quite a bit further north than I’m used to and we are getting close to Summer Solstice. So it was far too bright for the projector to be seen. We postponed my talk until about 9:40 (and it was still light out). When I finished talking about America’s National Parks at 10:15, the sun had finally set but it was still light enough to see clearly.

I think the most invigorating aspect of the day has been all that I have learned about European camping, EU Airstreams, and the people. I feel like a newbie here. All of my preconceptions rooted in American experience are being challenged and expanded. It’s fun. They have a lot of good ideas here and I plan to bring a few back with me, along with the contact information of the new friends we have made.

It’s a bit chilly out again tonight so the hydronic heat is on, and I have to say I love it. I’d seriously consider retrofitting this to the next Airstream I’m working on, but it does require a “clean slate” of flooring and room for the radiators in order to fit. Still, it’s just wonderful: silent, even, efficient.

Well, that was all we could do for one day. We called Emma to say goodnight and now are back in our comfy Airstream looking forward to hitting the sack. Tomorrow we have a long scenic drive planned, so we’ll try to get an early start. I can only hope that tomorrow is as wonderful as today has been.

Jun 14 2013

EU Airstream rally, Weilburg Germany

It’s already a great trip to Europe. We started off the day right with a breakfast of chocolate chip cookies with nuts and some more of the fresh strawberries, in our hotel room while the fresh air wafted in from the open doors on the balcony. Right there you’ve got the makings of a good day.

We walked back into the shopping district of Weilburg to get a top-up card for the cell phone, and with a little finagling and punching lots of numbers on the phone, I now have the miracle of Internet on my phone. EU9.90 bought me 500 megabytes of data, which should be more than I need for the days we are in Germany. We detoured a bit, stopping in at the Hopfbahnstrasse (train station) for a coffee for Eleanor and then returned to the hotel to pack up our gear.

The car rental people have assigned us a Citroen C3, which turns out to be a rather boxy compact car with not much of the get-up-and-go you’d want for Autobahn driving. Where we were driving the Autobahn was far from being a vast open highway where you can mash the pedal and zoom to your heart’s content. It’s a fairly crowded two or three- lane road filled with trucks and plenty of sudden traffic to cause rapid deceleration with little warning. We managed to reach 140 kph at one point but the rest of the time we were driving at typical American Interstate speeds and often far slower. This has tainted one of my long-time driving fantasies, but to be fair I never fantasized about driving the Autobahn in a Citroen.

50 miles later we were in the charming town of Weilburg. The encampment is just below the old city, which perches atop a hill surrounded by the Lahn river. At the very top is exactly what you’d expect, a castle. Down below is exactly what most people would not expect: 54 Airstreams.

I love the odd (by American standards) collection of tow vehicles that arrived with the Airstreams today. There’s everything from a 1950s Buick to a late-model Mercedes G-wagen. Two Ford F-250s are here, which thrills some of the Europeans because they are so American and weird. My favorite is the BMW X6, which I’ve never seen before and looks drastically cool in black. Other tow vehicles include a VW Westfalia camper van, a Buick Roadmaster station wagon, various Mercedes, and many Land Rovers.

Armin Heun, our host, handed us a chocolate and then introduced us to a new (European) Airstream model 684, which is somewhat similar to an American 23-footer but with many clever enhancements. We knew it would be different from the US models but were frankly staggered by the improvements the Brits (who build all the EU spec trailers) had worked into it.

There are almost too many things of note to list, but among our favorite features are the hydronic heat, electric entry step, the functional kitchen counter, the foot-level blue LED lights, the great roof vent/skylights with double shades (which are also found in the Airstream Westfalias), the clear bi-fold door in the shower, and the awesome electronic control panels that run virtually every system. This trailer also comes with electric power movers to help push it around the tight European campsites, satellite TV, hidden stabilizer jacks, a parking brake … the list goes on. Some of this stuff needs to come to America.

We spent the afternoon wandering the old town and getting lunch at a restaurant across from the castle (Schloss). Lunch turned out to be a two-hour affair but worth every minute. I usually rate cooking in terms of how well it compares to what Eleanor could have done at home, and the restaurant scored an unusual rating of “This is as good as yours!”

Part of the cultural experience of being in a foreign country, for us, is to shop with the locals. We pointed the GPS at a local REVE (grocery story chain) and picked up a few necessities for the Airstream, plus some light food for us. After returning from this errand with plenty of breakfast food, Armin dropped by to leave a full grocery bag of breakfast foods for us. So we have at least double what we need. I may have breakfast twice tomorrow.

I got a quick tour of the Airstream systems, partly from Armin and partly from Michael Hold of Airstream Europe. These trailers have very little onboard holding tank capacity, so gray water goes into an external tank much like the “blue boys” we use in America. Fresh water comes from an external tank called an Aqua-Roll. You roll it over the fresh water spigot, fill it, and then roll it back to the Airstream. The toilet is a cassette style, so later I’ll get the experience of dealing with that, but it should be no big deal.

We also met up with Pete and Tracey Bull, UK full-timers who have organized many Airstream rallies there. Pete is the UK distributor of Airstream Life, but until today we have never met or even spoken on the phone, so it was a distinct pleasure to chat with them in our 684 for a while.

After dinner with Armin, his wife Sandra and his daughter Emma (12 years old), Michael, and a few other guests, we met up with Ben and his party, from Switzerland. Upon hearing that we intended to drive through Switzerland, Ben immediately offered to suggest routes for us. We’ll meet up tomorrow to go over the maps together. Everyone has been like that, offering help, food, and tours. (And nearly everyone speaks English excellently.)

The agenda for this rally is typically light. Tonight’s only official activity was a huge campfire and music until 11 a.m. I have a feeling it would have gone much later if the local ordinances allowed it. Airstream Germany brought over a “bar” Airstream and offered open bar to all (courtesy of Airstream Europe). We headed back to our Airstream after 10 p.m. to call Emma and finish setting up inside, but even now at 11:30 p.m. I can hear people talking and laughing outside by the fire.

Tomorrow looks like it will be another full day. Can’t wait.