Driving To Munich - Sept. 26th

Okay, here comes our vacation. Some names have been omitted or changed to protect the guilty.

We left Amsterdam around 1:15pm headed for Munich. The TomTom and Yahoo Maps indicated a 7-hour drive, but that’s not accounting for stops, construction, or speeds slower than 180kph. I see NO WAY to make that drive legally and safely in 7 hours under the best of conditions. One of R’s colleagues called her on the cell phone to warn us that he heard on the news that there were long backups out of Amsterdam, but by then we were already in Germany, so whatever was happening back there, we fortunately missed it! But Germany was saving their worst for us, as it seemed every 20 kilometers there was construction or some sort of delay. The worst was 70-100 kilometers north of Frankfort, where the traffic flow was at a stand still. In Frankfort the traffic slowed to a crawl. There were many other smaller spots, and the speed limits were jumping all over the place like jackrabbits! 120, 90, 70, 100, 90, 120, unlimited, 90, unlimited, 120 - - and that was within a 90 second stretch of highway!! Where’s that highly touted German engineering we hear so much about? I say engineer better construction zones so traffic isn’t delayed 90 minutes because you squeeze 4 lanes into 3 and those 3 lanes are so narrow you can scratch the itch on the passengers nose in the car next to you as you pass!

We made Munich in slightly less than 10 hours arriving at 11pm to our Pension. We were shown to our room and decided to recharge and attack the festivities tomorrow. R’s friend from work and husband had flown to Munich, arriving by mid-afternoon and called us when they got back to the same pension we were staying at. We were already in bed reading some material picked up from the front desk when they knocked on our door. Apparently I hadn’t shut or locked it because it swung open a few inches, so after peeking inside they came in. The quasi-hammered female visitor jumped on our bed between R and me (luckily I had pj's on), while the not-so-drunk male plopped into a chair. We heard about their fun day, about a group of 4 guys who said they were in the US Army and how their so-called leader was trashed and tried to pick fights with people and then said R’s friend from work was “hot”, a remark that was overheard by the drunk American soldier’s girlfriend, who proceeded to open a can of whoop ass on him! So, we all can rest easy that all of our foreign representatives in the military are doing us proud, especially since they have had trouble meeting their quotas and have reduced standards for entry into service! The drunks left, we crashed, getting rest for tomorrows chaos.