Munich-Regensburg-Bavaria (ish)
We left Cambridge on a typically rainy, cool morning at the painful hour of 5:30am. As per usual Engineering for Sustainable Development (ESD) style, we bumped into a classmate at the airport (good morning Rami). With the four of us checked in for our flight to Munich, the adventure officially began. Our plan extended no further than our flight to Munich and a rental car for two weeks- with loose intentions of heading eastward in a big loop, returning us back to Munich.
Having made our way to the rental car desk, our lack of German skills became a stumbling block surprisingly quickly- Paul repeated to the agent at least three times, in his indescribably British accent,
"Right, so, you have the driving licences for Mike and Bonita, but if ANY of us want to drive, we can?"
"Yes," replies the agent, looking at Paul as if he's an idiot.
"Ok, so we can all drive, so long as one of those two are in the car?" Paul, asks, gesturing dramatically to Mike and I.
"Yes," nods the agent, now looking at Paul as if he's crazy.
Whether or not this was a language misunderstanding or lax German car hire policies, we excitedly made our way to the parking garage- albeit skeptical, but going along with the fact that she only needed to see the licenses for two of the four drivers.
With similar language confusion regarding the insurance, a kind gentleman next to us intervened and translated on our behalf. As we passed by him and said our thanks on our way out, he asked where we were headed,
Our four voices chime in all at once:
"Oh, all over." "Germany, Czech, Austria, Slovakia..." "Yup, Germany, Czech Republic..."
"Ah, okay. Well be sure to go to Regensburg. You must."
"Right, okay. We will," we say smiling as we pass by.
"It's a brewery town," he said as we turned to leave.
After 20minutes of hmm-ing and haw-ing about whether we needed a bigger car- down to test sitting sessions and various packing arrangements, we figured the Peugeot 5008 would do the trick. It's a space-mobile, fitted with open moon-roof, table tops for back seat passengers, numerous DC outlets, and a pretty schnazzy dash. What a 'people mover'. Paul LOVES its gadgety features. Once settled in, we pulled out of the car park.... but with no where to go.
"Why not that place the man recommended.... Roshenthen?" suggests Paul.
Why not. I loaded the city of Regensbuurg into the Tomtom and off we go, headed 60miles northeast into Bavaria.
With row upon row of hops plants lining the motorway, the boys excitedly check out the gagets and features of our wheels- talking about cars and beer, mostly.
"Does anyone have a game?" one of them asks.
"How about quiet?" I suggest, still struggling from a mere three hour sleep the night before. This should be interesting.
As countryside flies by, Costas, our Cypriot adventurer excitedly says, "Let's go to that castle! Is that a castle??"
"Costas, that's a church."
Later, Paul announces "Bonita, this is now your first experience in an unrestricted speed limit zone!" says Paul, as I had earlier pointed out that I'd never been to Germany.
'Yeah?" I replied, "Okay, GO!" I cheered to Mike, our American representative and the first driver of the trip.
"I'm going!....but only if you all agree that we read that sign right!"
As hopeful graduates of the ESD program, we couldn't help but get excited by the number of solar panels splattering the landscape- with the odd wind turbine for good measure. And then commenting on the concrete motorway over asphalt- and the sustainability implications of decisions made long ago. And then chat about how many "megs" of internet use they can use, how many gears there are in the car, and how many outlets we can use simultaneously.
Traveling with boys. Engineering boys.
But then Costas says, "Guys, all we need now is a park and some beers."
So it won't be so bad.
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