alert 27

For our road trip to Frankfurt this weekend, I decided to make the trip via car with our video guys. That meant my first introduction to the Autobahn.

For those unfamiliar, the Autobahn is the German highway system built by Adolf Hitler to mobilize his war machine. The interstate system in the USA is patterned after the German Autobahn.

Now, the big difference between the Autobahn and an American interstate lies in speed. On the Autobahn, there is no speed limit outside the city. That meant we routinely cruised along at 200 km/h. That translates to about 120 or 125 mph.

Though I was firmly nestled into the back seat amongst luggage and video equipment, the speed with which we were moving was readily evident. The driving time chart in our map of Germany listed the Berlin-to-Frankfurt trip as taking 6 hours and 15 minutes.

Our time: four hours, 15 minutes—including a 20-minute lunch stop.

I’m not quite sure of the actual distance we covered in that time, but it was certainly much more than I’ve ever traveled in that time. That includes my Indianapolis-to-Grand Rapids drive in 3 hours and 45 minutes freshman year.

After we arrived safely, our video guys and I went out to the Rhein River and partook in some truly tourist activity. We ponied up our €15 each for a 2-hour boat ride down a portion of the river. It was easily worth it. The river wound about in a valley, with vineyards and castles decorating the hillside in either direction.

When we reached our destination, we had to turn around and take the train back to our car. Luckily, the train needed repairing and we were forced to wait a full hour, rather than the 10 minutes suggested by the schedule. (Did I say “luckily”? Silly me.)

After that, I went out to dinner back in Frankfurt with most of our German front-office staff. We went to the Hemingway Lounge, a lounge with—you guessed it—an Ernest Hemingway theme. It was tasty, both the food and the beer.

Saturday was game day, a.k.a. sleep-in day. The crowd, at nearly 27,000, was easily the largest we have had/will have this season. One of the distinguished guests at the game was the US Army Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez.

It was a bit of a mixed feeling. Being away from home makes me feel somewhat more patriotic (whatever that means) than I do when I’m actually there, so I got a little swell of national pride to meet a high-ranking officer. Of course, that was rather tempered knowing that he essentially commands all US ground forces in Iraq, an operation I’m nowhere near fully supporting. He seemed like a nice man, though.

We lost the game to the Frankfurt Galaxy 18-17 on a last-second field goal. The loss drops us to 2-3-1 and throws a major wrench into postseason hopes, so everyone was pretty glum after the game.

Our trip back to Berlin involved a 4½-hour train ride on the Deutsche Bahn ICE (German Train Inter City Express). The trip was a foreshadowing of my ever-nearing vacation, which will take place via the high-speed trains. Of course, when it’s on my dime I won’t be traveling first class like we did today. Still, it was an enjoyable method of travel, and it mad me wish we had high-speed trains back home. It would sure save lots of gas money.