Day Twelve

All the way to Germany to see...Integras?

We are up and underway fairly early, and the Bimmer's sport seats feel a whole lot better than the bed did as we head into town, collect pastries from a baker, and manage to mime our way through purchasing film at a tabac. The local tourist office is staffed with cheerful young women - I pick up a couple maps and head off to the wars.

The Verdun battlefield area is a park, a stunningly beautiful one, and it's often damned hard to see it as a battlefield. Forts Douaumont and Vaux, the Ossuaire, and the Fleury museum are the big attractions - the museum is decent and reasonably interesting, if somewhat dated in some of its presentation. Of the major forts, from the outside Vaux is the more impressive. Still, some of the greatest impressions of warfare come from the peripheral positions, the smaller forts and trench lines, that are more intact and where the ground still looks like death.

If you care, this area would best be done as a series of half-day hikes - it's a big area and trying to cover everything in one day will wear you severely. If you don't care that much, then just hitting some of the high points should suffice. I would have liked to spend much longer, but this time 'round we had a schedule to stick to.

So we're back on the autoroute at 12:30, headed for the 'Ring and Cologne. Except for the tollbooths, French freeway driving is like any other - the French being generally good at lane discipline but not much bothering with turn signals for lane changes and so forth. I'm still keeping my speed down to 90mph or so, not having figured out French enforcement practices, and we're still the slowest 5-series on the freeway, being dusted off by squadrons of 525tds.

Speaking of which, diesels may be out of favor in the US but turbodiesels are absolutely dominant for long-distance driving in Europe. Diesel fuel is cheaper by 30%, and diesel engines generally manage better mileage as well. Virtually the only 7-series cars seen on the roads are 725tds.

Hotel im Wasserturm, and the view of the Dom

Views along the Rhine

Once we get off the A4 and onto the toll-free A31 I pick up the pace a little, keeping pace with the rest of the fast-lane traffic into Luxembourg (and its universally-ignored 110kph speed limit), out of Luxembourg and north into Germany. Once on the Autobahn the speedometer moves up to the 130mph region and stays there for a nice long time. Up to now Eva's snoozing in the passenger seat, but she wakes up grumbling about missing lunch, so I pull into a roadside Tank-Rast to chow down.

The Eifels are beautiful country but the weather is drippy, edging toward real rain, as we pull into the parking lot of the new Nürburgring circuit. Some sort of track-club is on the GP circuit - road cars with tape-on numbers, drivers in helmets - feels like home, though it feels a little odd going all the way to Germany to watch Integras lapping.

The woman at the information desk directs us 2km up the road - follow the Zufahrt Nordschleife signs. We ask about the Ring Taxi - she replies that it's not available until Sunday. By the time we get to the North Loop gates they're closed with a sign saying in essence "try again later". That's not entirely a bad thing - we're both seriously tired by this point - so we continue on Cologne. We take the wrong exit but end up on the right road and cruise into downtown from the west. We're headed for the Hotel im Wasserturm; we eventually get close enough to see it, but then go round in circles a few times looking for the right streets to get there.

Distinctive isn't the word. This place defines the term atmosphere. As the name implies, it was built (not too long ago) inside an old brick watertower. It's not a large place by modern standards, and the shape and size of the building have constrained the size of the public spaces somewhat, but it's quite an achievement nonetheless. We end up on the ninth floor, with a spectacular view of the cathedral downtown. At this point, though, nothing much matters for us but going face-down into a pillow for a while.

Eventually we come back to life and decide to go for a walk. Cologne was treated to a whole lot of Eighth Air Force attention back in the '40s, and the reconstruction after this bit of urban renewal created a hodgepodge of architectural styles that really don't work too well together. The bombing did, at least, encourage (so to speak) construction of several very attractive bridges across the Rhine.