Mercedes Collection - Day 2

I woke up early - and excited. Breakfast was downed promptly and we took a quick walk around the town before heading back to meet our Taxi. By 10:00 we were in the collection centre - they seemed surprised/pleased to have an Englishman present. Turns out they serve 250 collections a day here and it is most unusual for there to be anyone other than elderly Germans. I filled in the insurance forms and was thanked for being so young! We then had a factory tour - where J and I got lost. Finally we saw my car in the delivery hall. It was there for 5 mins with two people pointing and phoning before it was driven away again! 15 mins later it returned sporting the headlight deflectors allowing me to drive in Germany at night.

We had a charming lady hand the car over - she was nervous of speaking English but mostly of having to drive a car with the wheel on the wrong side :) Luckily she successfully managed even the auto-parking demo. We set off for Hockenheim - our first stop. En-route we hit autobahns - and 112mph (NICE!).

There was nothing happening at Hockenheim so we set off to our next stop - the Nurburgring. Here we put in a tourist-lap and got the sticker to prove it. It would appear that all the Porches in the world were visiting. We then hung out by the track watching before heading to our hotel for the night.

The hotel is famous - you can see it in all the console games - and it was deserted when we turned up. Finally we found someone to let us in and settled into our room. For dinner we found an Italian restaurant just down the road - who only took cash. Whilst there we were sat next to an elderly chap - who pointed and shouted "Tommy. you Tommy yes!". When we politely pretended to not understand he gesticulated at himself shouting "Hitler, military, Tommy - yes!". We agreed and tried to get on with our beer - someone should have told *him* to mot mention the war - I had all sorts of Fawlty Towers jokes running around my head :) We got back to the hotel (still dead), drank our emergency beers (stashed from the lounge in T5) and watched Star Wars - on telly - in German...