dcn@ihuxl.UUCP (Dave Newkirk) (06/04/85)
I have just returned from a two week tour of Europe in a new Saab Turbo, and I wanted to give you my impressions of the trip. There is also a posting in net.auto describing the car in more detail. I traveled with two friends to reduce living expenses and to share gas costs. We left on May 10 from Chicago on a Scandinavian Airlines flight to Copenhagen. Flight time is eight hours, plus the seven hour time difference. It took us about three days to adjust to local time. We walked around Copenhagen on Saturday, visiting the Stroget shopping streets and taking a bus and boat tour where we almost fell asleep. The city is very nice to tour on foot, and window shopping is great. That night we went to the Tivoli amuesment park and stayed for the fireworks. Sunday morning we slept late and got train tickets to Gothenburg, where we would pick up the car. The train was comfortable once we found the right section (we got in the first class compartment by mistake). A small ferry carried the train across to Sweden at Helsingborn. That night in Gothenburg we noticed it didn't get very dark - the sky was stuck in a twilight setting until dawn. On Monday morning we picked up the car and drove down the coast along the train tracks. We made a small detour along a penninsula to Bastad (host of a tennis match) and Molle, where we met some Texans visiting relatives. That night we took a large ferry (the Peter Pan!) overnight to Travemunde, West Germany, where we made our way to the East German border. We got on the transit road with only a short delay at the border crossing. The East German country side here was mostly farm land and small towns. We drove straight to Berlin, and found a room at a small pension on Kurfurstendamm. The Berlin subway is fast and easy to use, but it took us a day of running around on foot to convince us that it was a good investment. On Wednesday we visited East Berlin, and tried to spend the 25 marks before we left. I ended up carrying out half of it, but it makes a good memento. The area along the border between the two Berlins is old and dingy, but the centers of the two Berlins are much better. West Berlin has rebuilt over the old buildings, and looks almost American in some sections, with tall glass-covered structures. East Berlin has retained many of its older buildings, some of which have been restored. We left the day after, crossing East Germany again over a very rough highway toward Nurnburg. We stayed in a fancy castle hotel in Regensburg that night. We looked around Regensburg on Thursday morning, walking across the Danube on Germany's oldest bridge. Later we drove toward Munich, visiting Dachau on the way. We stayed in a small hotel on the west side of town near a trolley station. The Munich streets are like a maze, and we had difficulty getting around by car. We ate at the Hofbrauhaus that night (sausages, sauerkraut and potatoes). Friday I took the car to a local Saab dealer for its 1000 mile service, and we visited the Deutsches Museum and the eastern part of the city that day. We left on Saturday for Salzburg, stopping at Werfen first to tour the Ice Caverns. It rained that night, but we managed to see part of the city. We left Salzburg by the German Alpine Road on Sunday morning, heading for Garmisch and the Zugspitze, Germany's tallest mountain. The road was in good shape, but there are steep sections that are still cobbled (better traction?) We took the cable car to the top of the Zugspitze, where people were still skiing. We continued west to the pair of castles: Neuschwanstein and Hochschwangau, where we caught the last tour of the day. We stayed just across the border in Austria that night, and headed for Switzerland on Monday. We went through the Arlberg Tunnel and bypassed Zurich to see Luzern. We went through Interlaken to Bern, and stopped in Neuchatel near the French border for the night. The Swiss Alps are fantastic, and I want to return someday to see more of them. Now we were in French-speaking territory. One of my friends knew enough French to help us with menus and road signs, and we got on an auto route (toll road) headed for Paris. The French country side is a little boring (endless farms and villages), but we soon got to Paris and had a quick look around before dinner. We spent Wednesday morning in the Louvre trying to stay out of the rain. Paris seems to get a lot of rain, and I didn't bring an umbrella. Except for the special structures (Arch, Tower, etc), Paris is a sea of almost identical off-white buildings with slate or metal roofs, extending to the horizon in every direction. The Seine was muddy, but the view from the Eiffel Tower is great otherwise. We even saw a rainbow over Paris. We started north that afternoon, ending up just north of Dunkirk. We couldn't see across the Channel due to thick haze/fog. We stopped in Brugge on Thursday morning to buy some lace, and stayed near the Ardennes along the Meuse River that night. Friday was our last day with the car, and we went to Amsterdam to find the export agent. After I dropped off the car, we found a hotel on the Muntplein, an open square by the flower market. We took another bus/boat tour the next day that stopped at the Anne Frank House, an Art and Craft center and a diamond factory (a blatant sales attempt). The canal boat tour went right by our hotel, informing us that the restaraunt we made reservations with earlier that day was one of the most exclusive in Amsterdam, and implied that the prices were high. When we got there, it turned out to be a very good French restaraunt with resonable prices (at least to us). Food was usually cheap all over Europe, due to the high exchange rate of the US dollar. Even hotels were inexpensive - a two room suite in Paris cost $55. The only item that was more expensive was gasoline, varying between $2 and $2.50 a gallon. We left on Sunday after picking up a few more gifts at the duty free shops in the airport. We traveled 2700 miles in 12 days, plus four days without the car (two in Copenhagen and two in Amsterdam). We could have used a couple of extra days along the way, but our schedule was fixed at each end. If anyone has specific questions about our trip, reply by mail. -- Dave Newkirk, ihnp4!ihuxl!dcn