Long Way Home

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More, I want more and I want it NOW! If I have to live vicariously then this is the place to do it.  :drif:
 
W...

Awesome report so far, looking forward to the rest.  :biggrin:
Love your writing style too, can tell you were screwed over once or twice before  :biggrin: :patch:

Thanks for the cool pics of the old bikes and cars, i can never get enough of the oldies.
When i visited Munich in 2000, i also made the effort to go to the musuems too, definitely worth while as you say.

Have a safe trip down and  we look forward to sharing some whiskey with you when you get home  :ricky:
 
early bark busters or breaks or inverted levers?
 

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CARLOS said:
early bark busters or breaks or inverted levers?

Main lever on reverse is the Brakes, the one on top is the throttle control, similar to the quad of today levers  :biggrin:
 
A few more old bikes at Hockenheim.
An old BMW, forget the model, but want one  :biggrin:


An old NSU racebike. several of these had huge tanks, hand-hammered out of aluminium plate. This specific one remided me of Burt Monroe of NZ "The World's Fastest Indian".


NSU triple, looks like they afro-engineered another cylinder onto a twin for more power:


Two beautiful old Motoguzzis


For the second time that day I had to tear myself away from a racetrack. Another of my fantasy rides is going from track to track watching various races in summer, F1 GP's at Monza and Monaco, MotoGP at Assen, the Le Mans 24 hour, the Goodwood Festival of Speed......

I headed east on the autobahn from Mannheim and Heidelberg towards Nurnberg, with the intention of getting off it halfway and turn south towards Munich. About 40 k's from Hockenheim I saw this strange sight right next to the road, at a town called Sinsheim. I couldn't believe my eyes - I've been on this childish quest to "collect"Concordes, as an old toppie at the Duxford museum in the UK had put it, and I thought I knew where they all were. There are 15 of them left after one crashed in France in 2002. If this one was real, it would be number 5 for me. Turns out it was not only real, but the Russian Tupolev 144 or "Concordski"as they called it, was real too. Absolutely friggin'amazing display, at the "Sinsheim Technik Museum".



I took the next offramp and backtracked to the museum, just before I got to it this interesting stone carving in the centre of a roundabout caught my eye.


It was very original and interesting, but I didn't think about it any more till I saw this at the museum:


With hindsight I wish I had gone through that museum, I wonder what kinds of fascinating things they had in there. But I was on a bit of a schedule, wanted to spend the night in GAILDORF. I excited the autobahn at a place called Schwabisch Hall and started heading southeast.This was typical Bavarian landscape, rolling hills and forests with many small villages, one more scenic than the next.


One thing that struck me was how well-engineered the mealies are: in perfect rows, all the same height, almost like a platoons of good Waffen SS soldaten on parade  :laughing4:


Finally made it to Gaildorf at 7 pm, got a nice room in a B+B by poking my head in the open kitchen door, everything else was shut. View from my "zimmer" on the 4th floor. I did NOT ask the landlady "....does your dueg bite....".


Gaildorf had caught my attention while I was planning my route that morning, couldn't remember why, but it eventually came to me. It's where the the German MX GP takes place. it's a very old place too, with some nice old buildings:


After a nice dinner of bratwurst, sauerkrat and beer  :biggrin:  and a continental breakfast the next morning I wandered about the countryside for a while but soon found the track:



The track is only used for major races and it looked like a golf course. Gave me a stiffie I couldn't do anything about so had to leave.
The scenery became more and more "Bavarian" and I lost count of how many villages I rode through. Forgot to mention, it drizzled on and off all through Germany, just enough to make me appreciate the Belstaff rain gear I bought 3 years ago but never used till now. 


The medieval town of Nordlingen is very typical of the old towns with walls and moats around them. Even Munich and Nurnberg are built like that. Nordliongen is extremely well preserved.


The little town of DONAUWORTH, I crossed over the Donau river here, could hear Strauss whistling on the wind.


After getting back on the autobahn at Augsburg and about 60 k's of roadworks I took the DACHAU offramp and bought a map of Munich. I saw signs for the DACHAU KZ or concentration camp, but didn't need that much of a buzzkill on a nice day so stopped at a glider port instead. It was a beautiful day, warm and windy, and they were launching gliders with a winch and cable from downfield.  very hairy looking  :drif:  They'd bring the end of the cable to the glider with a golfcart, slowly take up the slack and then wind it in. The glider goes almost straight up, at about a 60 degree angle to the top of the arc, drops the cable and away they go. I worked at a gliderport years ago where Piper Cubs and cropdusters were used to tow gliders into the sky and I never saw anything this wild :drif: I suppose this is the typical "green" European way of doing it, not to mention the Germans practically invented gliding, so they have it down to a science.


Nice little airstrip, a relaxing place to spend a Saturday afternoon of kakpraat.


After riding all the way around Munich on the ring road to the south side, I navigated my way to my stop for the next 5 days: my friend Teresa from San Diego's family's place. She is actually Austrian but grew up in Munich, and I had a very nice, FREE  :biggrin: place to stay for a while.




 
Riding through Bavaria I got a bright idea for a new business in SA. Weeell...... copying the Germans truth be told, but I still think it could be the next big thing  :biggrin: It's never been tried in SA.
I saw several flower farms with neat rows of all kinds of colourful  flowers. Now here's the brilliant part, where I plan on making a killing in SA. They are SELF-SERVE, you walk around, cut what you want yourself, then go to the mounted pox in the corner of the field and put the money in. There's a price list on the box, so it's easy to figure out how much you owe. 
Waddya think, all you business boffins? I'm looking for a partner.  It's revolutionary, I'm sure I'll make a million  :evil6: 

I'll keep my day job until it really catches on though.

My plan  in Munich this time was: go to a beer garden, eat some bratwurst and sauerkraut with giant pretzels, go to the Deutsches Museum's vehicle and aviation sections to see the excellent displays and the 1937 Auto Union specifically,  go to BMW Welt, go to a beer garden,  get a leg over, and go to a beer garden   ;D

Day of arrival - unpack, shower, off to the beer garden - CHECK
My friend's place is close to the Isar river which runs through Munich from north to south. On sunny days it's a popular spot for sunbathers and brave swimmers, as the water is cold.  And most of the sunbathers are  nude. We cossed it on a high bridge, walking to the beer garden:


Munich is an excellent place to be in summer, there are bicycle trails all over the place, you can ride all day and never set a wheel on a busy street. You can see some of these along the Isar above.

In the beer garden. One of my favourite places in the world   :biggrin:


And this is why:


Marienplatz is the central square in the old part of the city. It's a very beautiful and fun area. with lots of excellent restaurants and things to see.

We climbed something like 22 storeys to the top of the St. Peter's church up a narrow, winding staircase.  Not the place to be if you're claustrophobic. It was a stunning day, a cold front had just blown through and cleared the air. You could see all of Munich laid out below like a 3D map, and 80 k's to the south, the Alps.


While we were oohing and aahing at the view, the bells right below us started ringing.  I've been close to big old bells like that several times when they ring, and the sound makes me twitch and  my hair stand up. Must be the tuning fork in my head. Your whole body vibrates and a shiver runs through you like an electric current. It makes you FEEL a different dimension. One not of this world. 
My friend said that the tower was swaying from the heavy bells swinging back and forth a few metres below us, but mister know-it-all here just knew it was the gusty wind. Until she told me to stand with my back against the wall   :eek:
The 1000 year or so old tower WAS swaying. Oh well. I figured it had done that for centuries, and if it fell over that day with my arse on top of it,  my number was up and there's sweet fanny fuckall I could do about it.
All in all, a very moving experience.

A few days later I was there when it rained, accompanied by a lovely young fraulein. Once again my new little Nikon amazed me with the incrdeible low-light photos it takes:


Old Munich is a beautiful city:
 

But I like the newer part even better  :biggrin:


What a city.

On another sunny day I went to the English Garden. It's a huge park in the middle of the city, like Central Park in New York or Hyde Park in London. Maybe even Joubert Park in Joeys. Except this one has several beer gardens, and people swim and sunbathe in various states of undress.  A nice little stream runs through it,  in some spots you can surely white water raft on it and I saw several people floating by so fast that I almost ran for higher ground.



But you have to be careful when taking dear old mum-in-law on a family outing, in some parts you see   :eek: :eek: naked people.  Now I'm not a prude or easily rattled.  Au contraire.  I was very appreciative of some of the more  genetically gifted young ladies working on their tans. But some skinny, wrinkled oke wandering by talking on a cell phone and waving his wedding tackle around wasn't high on my list of things to see in Munich.  I wondered what the many muslim tourists, specifically many women in headscarves, made of it.


I had to go to the beer garden at the Chinese Tower to stabilise my pulse rate, hadn't had a skrik like that in a while.


CHECK

There I saw a sight that kept my pulse at about 190, but for the right reason this time  :biggrin:


While I'm on the subject, allow me to say a few words about female beauty in Munich. I have been to many weird and wonderful places in my life. Obviously Munich, London, New York, Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, Brakpan, Cape Town, Reykjavik, Mogadishu, New Orleans, Benoni,  Dubai, Chicago, Telluride and Arnhem.
And Solitaire, too.
But I've NEVER  seen so many stunning women in one place anywhere else than in Munich. I didn't know that  blonde and brunette beauty came in so many different shapes and sizes.   Well I DID, but I'd forgotten cause I hadn't been there in four years. And I don't mean the painted ladies that count as beautiful in some other places I won't mention. Just healthy-looking, fit women with stunning features and no make up.   I could only stare.   :eek: :eek:

OK, where was I?

At even MORE beauty, this time man-made :biggrin:

       



While we're on the subject of not-so-nice visuals, I almost gave up drinking beer when I saw this in an otherwise excellent beer garden:


(Stare at the back of the chair for twenty seconds)

Come to think of it, the waitress who looked like a real-life Snow White rolled here eyes at me a time or two, maybe it wasn't such a good beer garden after all  :laughing4:

OK now for beauty again  :biggrin:
 
The German Museum, on an island in the Isar river, is one of the best I have seen. The last time I went there I had my Dutch ex-girlfriend in tow, and she had a knot in her knickers that day over something I did wrong.  Again.  :laughing4:
So I didn't get to see the original 1937 Auto Union, the granddaddy of today's Audi's, that dominated the world championship from 1934 to 1938  driven by Bernd Rosemeyer and tazio Nuvolari. As much as I hate using the word, they were truly awesome machines, with V16 and later v12 engines that produced 550 hp.  Check this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Union
This time, it was priority ONE. After the beer garden, of course.
In summary, I went to the museum in the city, the new aviation wing at Ober Schleissheim airport, and the Verkehrszentrum, or vehicle musuem on three different days.
Ober Schleissheim is the oldest airport still in use in Germany, since 1912 to be exact. It has seen much history. There I saw this CASA, a licensed Spanish copy of the WW2  Heinkel 111 bomber.  This specific one was actually flown during production of  "The Battle of Britain." It was being refurbished, ironically the CASA versions have Rolls Royce Merlin engines just like Spitfires and Hurricanes.
 

Many more interesting things but not about bikes so I won't show them :biggrin:

Back at the city museum, I noticed something very interesting about the WW2 aircraft on display. I have seen these same planes in museums in the UK, the US and  SA. The Messerschmitt 109 and the Me 262 jet fighter, with one small difference.. Notice anything unusual about these ones in Munich, ie Germany?

(The blue one is an Me108, a four seat version of the 109 fighter)


OK I give up.
They don't have swastika's painted on the tails. I was told that swastika's are officially banned in Germany, even in a historical context like this.

Next time you piss and moan about how SAA's service to Durban sucks, look at these.  :laughing4:
A First World War Fokker D7. Granted not a passenger plane but stil.....
And they didn't even have duct tape in those days.


This WAS a passenger plane,. A Junkers 20, typical of the kind of aeroplanes the Germans used to establish air service in south America in the 20's and 30's.  Notice the lasck of front windows   :eek:


I still had not seen that bloody Auto Union.  It, and all the other vehicles, had been moved to a new facility, the "Verkehrszentrum" some distance away. The next day I jumped on the magic public transportation system early.  I was glad later, because I spent hours in the vehicle museum just staring like a retard.
Superlatives tend to get overused and lose their impact, but this was one of the best museums I have ever seen. If you're ever in Munich with a few hours to waste, GO SEE IT!
It's a magnificent collection of all kinds of land vehicles: trains, buses, cars, bikes, trucks, even bicycles and some horse stuff which I didn't pay much attention to.
The very first motor car, a Benz from 1894 I believe. Not a reproduction either, this is THE original.  :eek:


the first mass-produced motorcycle, a Hildebrand + Wolfmuller from 1894. It weighed 42 kg and its 1488cc engine put out 2,5 hp or 1,8 kw. The GSXR of its day, with a top speed of 45 km/h.


Even 110 years ago, some okes couldn't stay up on two wheels, so in 1899 the Heinie + Wegelin ATC hit the showrooms. Another rocketship, with a 1600cc engine. It did 40 km/h   :ricky:


And, just like a century later, some wankers couldn't even keep THAT on it's wheels, so in 1900,  De Dion produced.........a QUAD  :imaposer:
A French quad. No wonder they fucking revolted and chopped peoples' heads off.  :evil6:


In keeping with the aviation theme, this strange machine is a MeGoLa. Three okes designed and built it, so they took the first syllables of each name and cobbled together a name for their "bike"  Just like a First World War  Camel or the Red  Baron's Fokker Triplane, it has a rotary engine. The crank is stationary and the cylinders actually spin around it. In the aeroplanes, that was. These okes made it spin around the front axle, and so drove the front wheel.
With the gyroscopic effect of all that spinning mass  I wonder how they made it turn.  Bet it was s straight-line bitch.  Just like a Hardly Ableson  :laughing4: 
But I've never seen a Hardly with a fucking engine in the front wheel, so I wonder what THEIR excuse is  :imaposer:
The MeGoLa weighed 123 kilos. It put out 10 kw and reached 109 km/h.
Just like a Hardly, too. :imaposer: :imaposer: :imaposer:





 
Great Stuff, keep it coming man, I am enjoying your story.
 
Amazing trip, wish I could see all those interesting places. :thumleft:
 
awesome read.  Not one bit boring.  loving it
 
Stop the lorry. Huston we have a beeeeg problem. I can't see any of the photos on this page.
 
Awesome dude! Keep it coming!



Where are you at the moment? Or shouldn't I ask, Mr Whetefakwe?  :biggrin:
 

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