Last night we relaxed a bit back at the house. We went for pizza at Jimmy’s Pizzaria – a place I remember from 12 years ago. I was free to order Funghi – mushrooms. Delicious!

We also had quite the storm overnight. It made for very little sleep, unfortunately – but the thunder was quite impressive. This morning it is just raining lightly. We’re on our way down to Stephan’s house in Carbon, about an hours drive from Alten Kirchen where we are staying. This afternoon we will head down to the Auto u. Tecnik Museum in Stuttgart, where we’ll spend most of the day. One of the big attractions there is one of the French Concordes, and a Russian version of the Concorde.

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We spent the day at the museum. There are way too many pictures (over 100) to post here. And, many of our pictures didn't turn out quite right as we've been having terrible problems with the camera. But it was an amazing museum. There were many Kubels, and in one shot we were able to take 3 Schwimmers all in the same frame! Of course there were many Mercedes, Ferarris, and more.

We got to tour the Concorde SST and the Russian version - the Topalov. They are mounted on an angle at the top of one of the museum buildings, so you would climb stairs to get to the plane, then UP the body of the plane to 100 stories to the cockpit/nose of the plane. In the Topalov, Vladamir (Stephan's nephew) started to jump up and down, shaking the plane - I had to make a quick exit.

Guten morgen!

Today we woke up early. It’s a little strange here for my body. The clock on my computer says 2:30AM, and we’ve been up for a couple of hours already. Yet, we had a full night of sleep, and it is obviously well into the morning.

This morning we’re going to take the high speed train to Cologne. It’s raining this morning. Not too hard, but it greatly reduces visibility, and of course everything is wet. Stephan is going to meet us up there, so in effect he is going to race the train. He likes to drive fast – we’re often the fastest thing on the road here well over 200KPM. (120MPH+) But even he can’t outrun the train!

The trip will take us about a half hour in the train, but almost 90 minutes for the Audi.

Just stopped at the bank. I got 400 Euro burning a hole in my pocket now for the popout windows I brought. That is our money for the week though – so no spending spree.


We’re on the way back now. We rode the ICE from Montabaur to Cologne. The train only hit about 295KPM (180MPH), slightly slower than it is capable of, probably due to the light rain. We saw Stephan racing down the Autobahn to meet us – and he was flying! Quite amazingly, he made it to Koln only about 15 minutes after we arrived.

In Cologne, we saw the Dom (Cathedral), and walked part of the city. We took a little time out and toured the Chocolate museum. Swiss chocolatier Lindt bought Stollwerk a few years back, a high quality chocolate made in Cologne. The former owners family decided to “give back” and built a $30M museum to all things chocolate.

Chocolate Museum Video (on Google)

We’re in that mode right now where we’re staying awake so that we’ll sleep tonight. Now that we’ve been on the ground a few hours, we’ve had a chance to say hello to a few friends, and begin planning out the week.

We found that the 34hp motor had the wrong generator stand. We’re trying to figure out if they came with a split generator stand, and if the rest of the motor (pistons and cylinders) is still correct, since we have a good block to rebuild back home. So, tonight we’re going to start taking the motor apart and see what we come up with. We’re all a little disappointed that things were a little different from “expected.”

Tomorrow we’re going to take the high speed train one way up to Cologne. Should be lots of fun – and a fast trip! I know we’ll see the Cathedral there, and probably the Laurelay am Rein as well on the car ride home. We’re having a bit of a disagreement with Stevie’s father as to how much we can actually do in one day.

We’re staying at Stevie’s parents’ house, since there is a bit more room here, and it is closer to Bad Camberg. Parked next to Stephan’s blue 67 bug is his brother’s 53 Isetta. Very cool. But the car has been sitting for 10 years, and is unfortunately deteriorating from lack of care. But his nephew, Fredo, may end up fixing it up?

At night we walked around Braunfels. It was a nice time in the town, and we got to stop for ice cream sundays and to have a coffee.

Taking off...

For the next 10 days, Don and I are traveling to Bad Camberg, near Frankfurt, for a vintage VW show. We haven’t even left the airport yet, and our trip is off to a rather interesting start. After hot and dry weather for a couple weeks, a cold front just blew through. And with that front came a storm. With that storm comes delays. So, here we sit at O’Hare waiting for our 6:30 departure, which has now been bumped back to 7:45.

We got a bit of a kick out of the “engine change kit” that drove up at one point.

Keeping me company as I waited was a family from Colorado. They had two little boys, 6 and 4, named David and Danny. They were very interested in what I was working on here, and found great enjoyment in telling me all kinds of things about going fishing and more.

Hopefully, we’ll be taking off here soon – and I’ll crash for the night as we’ll get in early in the morning for a full day.