Greetings from San Clemente << Test First Name >>,
First, a financial note. The financial markets plummeted on the last day of my FY, October 11, 2022. The S&P 500 decline in less than two months (August 16, 2022) was more than 16%. Then, in the next two weeks AFTER I had reported my FY results the market (S&P 500) shot up nearly 9%…too late to be included in my results. I caught all of the downside and none of the current upside. Well…maybe that will be a good start for my results ending in 2023!
I’m sorry. What I told some folks isn’t true. I did tell some people that when we returned from the Czech Republic (that’s what we’re talking about in this message) my 2022 trackchasing season would be over. Not correct. I found an opportunity for one more weekend of trackchasing…in Germany, and I leave tomorrow. This is the classic tale of someone changing their story because of an addiction. I am addicted to travel. At least I know that…I just can’t do anything about it.
Videos? Of course, I have videos! Don’t miss the outtakes video!! It’s the outtakes video. This video has nothing to do with racing. You won’t want to miss it.
And now let’s travel in our mind’s eye to the Czech Republic.
Wednesday, October 12, 2022.
Next stop? Prague, Czech Republic. When we wrapped up our impromptu visit to Dresden, Germany, our next stop was going to be Prague, Czech Republic. Prague was just two hours down the road from Dresden. We were headed to CZ to tour and see racing at two Czech Republic locations.
Carol is Czech. Carol’s ancestors come from former Czechoslovakia. With that being the case, I was able to sell her on this trip to Europe, even though we had traveled to Europe just last month. Otherwise, I don’t think she would be wanting to travel that far on trips so close together. You should know I’m always looking for an angle to convince her to travel the world! I have to be crafty.
European travel is easy in today’s world. It’s really easy nowadays to move from one European country to the next. It’s not really any different than driving from Illinois across the state line into Indiana. As a matter of fact, you have to look closely to even see the sign of a new country when you leave one and get go into another. Communication means information and information means a lot more fun. I was using the AT&T international day pass, which lets me use my phone in a foreign country just like I would use it back home in the states. As soon as I cross into a new country, I get a text message telling me that I can now use my phone in that country. I didn’t exactly notice it at the time, but I didn’t get that message when we entered the Czech Republic.
This was the only time during the entire trip that I panicked. When I did notice I hadn’t gotten that AT&T message panic set in! Without a phone, we were pretty much dead in the water. I couldn’t Google for more information. I couldn’t use my phone as a GSP system. I couldn’t call any local hotels. I couldn’t do nothin’. Fortunately, we still had the car’s GPS. That was important and I’ll tell you why in a moment. Lots of services. One of the things I really like about traveling in this part of Europe is that every five or maybe ten miles they have an exit ramp will all kinds of services. These stops do not take you away from the highway into a town. They are pretty much the same as stopping at an interstate highway rest area in the states. These stops always offer a gas station, restaurant, and convenience store, all right beside the highway.
Paying for toilets? Please! Most convenience stores charge travelers for using their public restrooms. Commonly the charge is €70 cents. When you pay, a machine spits out a €50 cent coupon. You can use the coupon to buy something inside the store. Net you’re only paying €20 cents to use the bathroom because you’re probably gonna buy something in the convenience store anyway. This is just one of the literally hundreds of things that we observe as we travel that aren’t exactly the way they are “back home”. We travel to see and experience new things. Of course, I don’t WANT things in Europe to be like they are back home. I wouldn’t want to fly 14 hours and have a nine-hour time zone change just to experience what I could experience back in San Clemente, California. That makes sense, doesn’t it? We would be staying at a Courtyard by Marriott hotel for the next four nights in Prague City about a mile outside of the old town section of Prague. I plugged in the Courtyard by Marriott point of interest name into the car’s GPS and off we went.
Right time, wrong place! Soon we are pulling up to a Courtyard by Marriott just across the street from the Václav Havel Airport Prague (PRG). This didn’t seem right. It wasn’t! We were at the WRONG Courtyard by Marriott! When I typed the name of the hotel into the GPS system, I couldn’t see the full description. That’s why the car’s GPS correctly took us to the wrong hotel! I hate it when that happens. This is when I discovered that my phone’s AT&T International Day Plan had not been activated when we entered the Czech Republic. With no phone, I could not call the correct hotel, Google any additional information, or use my phone as a GPS. We would have to rely solely on the car’s GPS. A few hours later my phone miraculously “became activated with AT&T”. I had never had that happen before. It was now nearly 10 p.m. and we had been on the road all way. I sent Carol to the front desk of the airport hotel while I double parked. She was going to confirm if we had a reservation at the airport hotel or not. Of course, we didn’t. However, the hotel clerk called ahead to the correct Courtyard by Marriott, letting them know we were on the way. After a 30-minute drive, we did find the right hotel in Prague City. The front desk clerk had already checked us in based on the information he got from the hotel clerk at the airport Marriott.
One of the most important moments of the trip. I hold a titanium elite status in the frequent stay program called Bonvoy at Marriott. One of the features they have is that I can check into my hotel room using just my phone. That is the LAST thing I would want to do. Why do I say that? When I walk up to the front desk of a Marriott hotel to check in, I have my full coat of persuasive arms and negotiating skills at the ready. This is always a highlight of the trip for me. I have memorized my nine-digit Bonvoy number. I always like to recite my number from memory in a vain attempt to convince the desk clerk that anyone who knows their frequent stay number by heart should get some special treatment. I am always looking for an edge. Sometime during the check-in conversation process, I am going to ask the front desk clerk for an upgrade, try to get complimentary breakfast for Carol and me, as well as free parking. Then I’ll ask what kinds of other amenities such as food and drink vouchers they might have for us. I didn’t spend hours upon hours studying negotiating tactics to let them rust in old age. Inexpensive bordering on cheap. We have found that prices for most things, except fuel, were very reasonable during our trip. The Czech Republic is even less expensive than Germany. For our four-night stay at the Courtyard by Marriott, we were only paying $110 a night.
When we checked in, I got the desk clerk to throw in free parking which was normally $25 a day. He also easily agreed to provide Carol and me with a complimentary buffet breakfast at the hotel each morning. The free breakfast was a $40 savings for the two of us. Now we were paying $110 a night and they had just given us $65 a day in free stuff. In some ways, I feel like I should be staying in a “local” hotel, but the prices and the perks and service at the American-branded hotels where I have status, like the Marriott, are so strong that I have a hard time passing them up.
Thursday, October 13, 2022
Carol is beautiful. I am lucky. When Carol wakes up in the morning, she is a beautiful woman. After she spends a few minutes “Getting it together” her beauty is stunning. Yes, I am a disciple of Eddie Haskell from Leave it to Beaver (You look lovely today, Mrs. Cleaver). There’s nothing wrong with giving someone a sincere compliment, is there?
I look forward to my morning walks. Each morning while Carol was getting ready for the day, I went out walking to see what I can see and get a little bit of aerobic benefit. Every morning I walked in a different direction. There really is so much to see on these walks. I’ve always got my point-and-shoot camera with me which if you can believe this has a phone inside the camera! I’m laid back. I don’t spend hours researching these trips back home. I hadn’t done a lot of advanced research on what we would be doing and seeing in Prague. That’s not how we travel. I simply relied on a “Things to do in Prague” Google search when we arrived. We came up with some pretty good touring ideas.
The #1 attraction in all of Prague. Today we would spend a major part of our time touring Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral church. We bought the guided tour with a tour guide who spoke English well and knew his stuff. These Gothic-style churches are huge, old, and amazingly well-preserved considering they are hundreds of years old. Please don’t miss the photos from today’s visit. I think you’ll like them.
If I can find her a post office I am Carol’s friend for life. Carol loves to send postcards to our friends and relatives from these trips. Buying postcards is easy. Finding stamps to mail the cards back to the United States is much more difficult and oftentimes expensive. Conveniently, they had a Czech post office next door to the castle. I can tell you this. If I offered Carol a room in the presidential suite at the Ritz-Carlton or access to a foreign post office that sold stamps…she would choose the post office. This was an unexpected delight. When we were finished touring the castle and the church, we walked down toward the old town section of Prague. Along the trail, I saw a sign with an arrow pointing toward an “auto museum”. In point of fact, this turned out to be a pedal car museum called Pedal Planet. We walked in and met a young lady who was operating the entire museum at the time. I came to find out that the admission tickets were $10 each. For whatever reason, I told her that I thought that was just a little bit more than we wanted to pay for this particular museum and started to walk out. This led to a negotiation where she ended up charging us five dollars in total to visit the museum. Afterward, I felt a little sheepish that I had negotiated the price down so aggressively but then I thought on a more positive note, “She needs to get her training somewhere, right”?
The pedal car museum was a real sleeper. They advertise themselves as having the largest pedal car museum in central Europe, whatever that means. I even got the young lady to do a little bit of an interview that I included in my racing video on the pedal car displays. Then I gave her my trackchasing business card. She pulled up my website on the museum computer. We were both surprised to see that all of the text from my website was being displayed in Russian! Tipping in Europe? It was lunchtime. We had a nice lunch and rocked the scene just a little bit with some cherry liqueur. When our meal was finished our server was quick to remind me that tips were not included on the bill and that “most people tip 10%”. I was reminded that “If you don’t ask for the order, you might not get the order”. Good on her.
We forget as much about our past trips as we remember. From there we walked across the famous Charles Bridge. This was my third visit to CZ and Carol’s second. For the life of us, we couldn’t remember walking across this bridge on previous visits. We did remember going to some sort of theatrical production that was done exclusively in Czech. During the trip, we rented a huge Cadillac. The hotel told us their driver would have to park the car away from the hotel overnight. Our memory tells us the car had about 100 miles more on the odometer the next morning than the night before. What we don’t know can’t make us worry, right? This was a Thursday night in the old town section of Prague. The place was jampacked with people. We saw several marijuana stores. Considering this was the middle of October we found that pretty surprising. No…not so much the marijuana stores but the large crowds on a weeknight in October.
How do we pay for things in the Czech Republic? The official currency of the Czech Republic is the koruna. Right now, one U.S. dollar can buy you about 24.6 Czech korunas. However, we never exchanged any U.S. dollars for korunas despite being in the country for five days! How did we get by? First, we used credit cards. Well, not exactly credit cards in the traditional sense. In the past, we have run into problems with credit cards because Europe often requires a “pin” code and we don’t have one. I discovered a workaround for that. I simply used ApplePay on my AppleWatch with the SAME credit card linked and everything worked just fine. We also used euros at times. I doubt we were getting the primo exchange rate but those purchases were small. A couple of times when we used euros we got our change back, usually less than a dollar, in korunas. We might be rich. I just don’t know where the money is. Over the years we have dealt with a large number of local currencies. When we finish a trip Carol takes our unused foreign money and stores the money…someplace. I have no idea where. Then when we decide to visit that country again the foreign currency “resurfaces”. That strategy has come back to bite us three times just this year.
No good deed goes unpunished. During my trip to Sweden this year when I tried to use our “old” currency I was told my Swedish krona had been replaced. We had to send our old money back to the Swedish central bank, which took six months, to get our own money back. Then while I was in Scotland by myself also this year, I found out that some of their paper money had been replaced by “plastic” money. Oh my. Luckily our own U.S. bank bailed us out on that one. On this trip, we tried to “pass” a 50 koruna paper bill. Busted! That paper bill, worth about $2 U.S., has now been replaced by a 50 koruna COIN! Oh my, again. No good deed goes unpunished.
We definitely do stuff on the fly. In old town Prague we ran across some folks who were hawking tickets to an opera program being performed in a large church. Soon we were buying tickets and enjoying a soprano and her accompanying musicians playing primarily the bass and violin. It was all good. How often do you get a chance to hear opera for about twenty euros?
The tourist hits just kept coming. As most tourists might do we also stopped at the Orloj clock. This is what Google has to say about this attraction. “In Prague’s historic Old Town Square, you will find an intricate 600-year-old piece of machinery called the Orloj. The colorful medieval clock is one of the most famous sights in Prague, adorning every tourist guide and attracting large crowds who gather to watch it work.”
I’m a sweets guy but got shut out on this gem. One of the things that I really wanted to get, but never found the right timing for was a “chimney cake”. Everywhere you go in the Old Town Square, you will find these large, cinnamon roll-type pastries being roasted over a spit like a pig on a barbecue. When the pastries are removed, they are stuffed with various types of ice cream. I was particularly bummed that I never got one.
We had already had a pretty full day of touring. We stopped and had a nice dinner. Yelp helped us find the place. They were featuring live music with a piano player and a trumpeter. That seemed like a minorly odd combination. The highlight of the meal was a tie between the calamari and the apple pie (streudel). Uber rocks in these parts. Remember when your mother told you never to get in a car with a stranger? Now, with ride-share companies, we do that routinely. My Uber customer score is 4.83. I’m embarrassed by that result. I feel it should be a full five! I must have pissed off somebody somewhere. Our rental car was parked back at the hotel. On this trip whenever we were going to be moving about inside the city, we used Uber exclusively. Every Uber driver we met was friendly, had a decent car, and arrived promptly. A 20-minute Uber ride from our hotel into the old town section of Prague only cost about five dollars U.S. There was absolutely no way I would have wanted to drive my car into the city and then pay to park it and try to navigate some pretty difficult traffic.
This is the photo album from the first two days of touring in Prague. It covers a lot but then there is a lot to see.
Friday, October 14, 2022
Almost like back home. This morning’s walk took me through a local farmer’s market. The market was nearly identical to what you might see in the states. I just found it interesting to see folks doing this on a Friday morning in a local urban neighborhood. We had a full touring day planned. We were going to drive down to a small town called Česky Krumlov. My travel research, done exclusively after we got to the Czech Republic, rated Česky Krumlov as one of the most interesting places to visit on any trip to Prague and the Czech Republic. This was going to be a two-hour drive out of the city but sounded like it would be well worth the trip based on the reviews I read. By the way, I am a big believer in “user reviews”. Yes, I recognize that some of these reviews could be fabricated. On the other hand, I know that the travel sites/Amazon, etc. getting these reviews go out of their way to authenticate them. I love reviews!
Český Krumlov was a winner! Český Krumlov truly was a beautiful and interesting place to see. If you only look at one of my photo albums, this would be the one to check out. I’m suspecting that Disneyland got a lot of its European scenic ideas from a place like Český Krumlov.
We took about an hour to tour the Český Krumlov castle. Wikipedia had this to say about the castle, “Český Krumlov Castle is a castle in Český Krumlov in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It dates back to 1240. Currently, the castle is listed as a national heritage site and thus serves as a major tourist attraction. It is the second most visited castle in the Czech Republic, after Prague Castle”. Just the views from the castle were worth the price of admission!
No photos allowed? C’mon man. Surprisingly to me, there was a “no photographs” policy in the castle. I like to take pictures. When I am told no photographs are allowed that motivates me that much more to take photographs. I guess that would be on me. I snuck in a few photos.
A fairytale day capped off by a fairytale dinner. Carol and I had a great lunch and an even better dinner in Český Krumlov. I used Yelp to find the Retro Café for our evening meal. We had two entrées, two nonalcoholic drinks, a glass of wine, and two desserts. The bill was about $35 U.S. The pricing, quality, and service in the Czech Republic have been outstanding.
One of the most beautiful places we’ve ever seen. Don’t miss the photos from our day in Český Krumlov.
Saturday, October 15, 2022. Time to see some racing in the Czech Republic. Previously, I mentioned that our standard European trip calls for a weekend of racing, then five days of touring, and a weekend of trackchasing again with travel on either end of the trip. This was now the weekend. The main item on the agenda was to drive down to Humpolec, Czech Republic for some autocross racing.
Just a note to those who think they don’t want to read about racing. I commonly sneak in some travel/touring stuff into this section. Yes, I am sneaky about that.
The local promoter had given me the GPS directions so the track was easy to find. I was a little surprised that admission for each of us was €18. For this kind of event that’s expensive. The fall colors were out in full force. That was an unexpected benefit to coming to the Czech Republic on this trip. What’s the #1 objective? Our mission when we come to one of these races is to simply explore every part of the facility. We try to experience as much of it as we possibly can. We try to meet new people. Some readers might think a visit like this would be more about racing. Nope. I’ve seen racing at more than 2,800 tracks. The racing is more similar from one place to the next. It is the ambiance that varies so much at each new track we visit.
Trying to buy a donut was fake currency! Today, like most days, our inspection included checking out the food and drink concessions. The track concessionaries were selling chimney cakes at the races but without the ice cream. Of course, I had to have one of those. It was a lot like eating a very, very large, sugar donut. This was when we first learned that the paper fifty Czech koruna bill is no longer accepted. When you try to pass a bill that is no longer legal tender it is quite embarrassing. This currency has been replaced with the 50 koruna coin. Lunch was different. At lunchtime, after we had scouted out all of the concessions, we decided to have some sausage, hot peppers, and Rye bread with healthy servings of horseradish and mustard. This turned out to be a cultural experience.
Fake it until you make it. There was virtually no English spoken over the PA system or written on any signs. To make up for our lack of understanding we pretty much just looked at what other people were doing. Then we tried to mimic their behavior. Fake it until you make it, right?
As we waited in line to get our food, I watched what everybody else was doing. By the time I got to the head of the line, I could point and grunt with the best of them. With this approach, I received the same service that my fellow Czech Republic brothers and sisters were getting.
Buggies. The racing was taking place on a dirt road course with multiple elevations. The AMK Humpolec facility was an interesting and fast track. The primary class of racers at the track were buggies. In the U.S. we might call them “dune buggies”. I was able to get video and photos from every part of the racetrack. As you can see I caught one driver in the midst of a violent flip. He turned out to be shaken but just fine. The highlight of the day! Carol and I had a special surprise in store for the two of us. When I am planning these racing trips, I spend quite a bit of time online, searching for local contacts. I have a very unusual way of doing that in one particular regard. A unique way to search for help. If I cannot find the level of help that I think I need, I will try to find a listing of the points standings of the drivers who race in that area. Then I will search out their names on Facebook and send them a message asking for help. That worked really well on this particular day. The championship leader in the buggy autocross racing championship standings got back to me. He spoke English well. His name was Vojtêch Vaculík.
Toward the end of our day at the track, we introduced ourselves to Vojtêch. He was a young 21-year-old driver. Vojtêch had been expecting us to show up in his pit sometime today. We spent several minutes learning that he’s going to be following the entire European autocross championship schedule next season. That race series spans several different countries all over Europe. There’s a good chance I will get to see Vojtêch race at one of those locations in 2023.
We met Vojtêch’s dad and the rest of his racing team. They were nice enough to give both Carol and me their team racing hats. We wore them proudly for the rest of the trip. Virtual friendships. I commonly say that you don’t really have a friend unless you have shared a meal with them or played a round of golf together. That’s probably a way too narrow way to think about that subject. I really enjoy meeting people that I have first “met” on the Internet and then later on at the race track. I have several friends from countries all over the world that I’ve joined up with this way. No doubt about it, I will remember my meeting with them long after I have forgotten what happened on the race track.
I’m married to the World’s #3 Trackchaser! Today Carol had seen racing in her 51st different country all around the world. That gives her the world’s #3 ranking. She is only one country behind a fellow from Belgium who has seen racing in 52 countries. Did Carol know all about these stats? No…she didn’t. I keep track of her trackchasing stats. She had a good time in the homeland of her ancestors!
Getting to trackchase in the Czech Republic is a real treat. My photo album takes you behind the scenes of this autocross racing.
The racing this afternoon was just the beginning of a very memorable day. I mentioned in the past that we probably spend on average three hours at the race tracks we visit. Today’s afternoon racing gave us plenty of time for a really entertaining and exclusive touring stop this evening.
Mozart! Yes! Mozart! I am not really an opera fan. I am certainly not an opera expert. Nevertheless, we have seen the opera performed in the famous Sydney Opera House and at several locations all over Europe. I like the “pomp and circumstance”. For this trip, I came across an advertisement for a program called “Mozart Dinner”. The Mozart Dinner would be performed in the Boccaccio Ballroom in the Grand Hotel Bohemia in the old town section of Prague. We arrived early to soak up the ambiance…and because I misread the starting time.
I’m sorry. I can’t resist telling this story. As a seventh and eighth grader, we had a social group that held parties, normally in the basement of the party-giver’s home for a group of 15-20 people. These were all of the college-bound kids. I was admitted to the group because I was a basketball player!
We were too poor to host a party at our house. When it came to be my turn we had the party in a city park. Yes, times have changed a bit.
On the night one of my former girlfriends was hosting the party I showed up on her doorstep. She answered the door in “curlers”. My younger readers may need to Google that reference. There was a surprised look on her face. I was quickly ushered to the basement. I had shown up an hour early! Carol never stops giggling when she hears me tell this story…and she has heard it hundreds of times! My motto is “If you’re not early you’re late (thanks Gerry O’Reilly) and don’t be at the airport when your ship comes in!” Forgive me. I have digressed.
Carol and I would be entertained for the next three hours in one of the most elegant performance halls that I’ve ever seen. We were served a three-course dinner. The food was gourmet. In between each course, there would be a 20-minute opera performance. I know I told you the photo album from Český Krumlov visit was the one and only photo album to focus on. I’m going to have to amend that. You really need to see what the Boccaccio Ballroom performance was all about. Opulent!
Nothing but the best for Carol. Looking to get brownie points with your spouse/significant other? This should do it. I had purchased upgraded tickets. The choices were to be part of an eight-person table or a table for two. The tables for two were closest to the performers. Our table gave us a primo seating location within 10 feet of the opera singers themselves. During the course of the evening, one of the songs being performed had the male singer wailing (my words), about a long-lost love for which he had a rose to give. He ended up getting down on one knee, singing to Carol, and giving her that rose. This left an impression. The rose made it all the back to San Clemente! I might also mention that I wear shorts 99.54% of the time in my life. The Boccaccio Ballroom was not a place for shorts. Even I, a product of a lower-middle-class upbringing, recognized that. I wore a pair of dark khakis (the only long pants I brought on the trip) but was strongly outclassed by some in tuxedos. You can take a guy out of the cornfields but you can’t take the cornfields out of the guy.
I might also mention that our Uber driver taking us from the Mozart Dinner back to the hotel was a Ukrainian mother. She and her two children had been forced to leave her home country when the Russian invasion occurred. It was most heart-breaking to hear her story. She was doing her best to keep things together. After she dropped us off I hope she had a smile when she received the largest tip I have ever given an Uber driver, by a wide margin.
If you come to Prague you would likely love this outing. My photo album will show you one of the most beautiful small entertainment venues anywhere.
Sunday, October 16, 2022.
One more Prague City morning walk. This is going to be our last morning in Prague. As I had done every other morning, I went off for my morning walk while Carol got ready for the day. I used to play a lot of golf. I realize that you can see a lot more on the golf course when you walk compared to when you ride in a golf cart. I simply see so many beautiful sites, unusual signs and different behaviors that these walks have become a highlight of my touring day. They are also good for my aerobic health.
Our last track visit of the trip was at a very famous racing circuit. Today we would be trackchasing at a famous facility, called Autodrom Most in Most, Czech Republic. The track opened in 1983. Today they were racing for the “Carbonia Cup”. This was the end of the season race where the spectators were admitted for free.
Overall, I am not a big fan of road course racing. The Autodrom Most track is an asphalt road course about 2.7 miles in length. As a racing fan, the drawback to a large track like this is that you can see very little of the racing action at any one particular point. I equate this situation to trying to watch a basketball game where you can only see about 20% of the basketball court. When the players come into your line of sight it’s entertaining. For 80% of the time when they are out of your view, it’s not very entertaining. I would say that was the case with the racing at Autodrom Most.
The biggest benefit of visiting a road course? However, a huge plus to one of these large road courses is that they commonly attract a lot of racing competitors. Spectators are normally allowed to roam around in the paddock area. Fans can stand right next to the cars and drivers and take as many photos as they like. We did that today.
Toward the end of the day, we sat in the main grandstands to watch the racing. Let’s think about this. The main grandstand is where some huge race crowds have been accommodated for nearly 40 years. Today there probably weren’t 25 people in the entire grandstand. That’s just the way it works for these local races held in big-time facilities.
We are always looking to meet new friends. Despite being one of the only people in the entire grandstand, we did meet up with a German couple. The man, Frieder Rudolph spent some time showing us photos of the races he had attended. We talked with Frieder the best we could considering each of us had very little understanding of the other person’s home language. It is “conversations” like this that remind me we are all very similar even though we might not always understand each other!
We wrapped up the trackchasing portion of this trip and the Czech Republic’s most famous road racing track. This photo album takes you EVERYWHERE. Don’t miss it.
Lots of things impressed me on this trip. When this race was finished, it was time to head back for our last night in Prague. We have done a lot and seen a lot on this trip. I was impressed with the quality of the highways in Germany and the Czech Republic. I am always impressed with European drivers. They don’t park in the fast lane and they don’t make crazy moves. On the German autobahn, I sometimes drove as fast as 100 M.P.H. I am not exaggerating one bit when I tell you this. Even though I might have been going one hundred miles an hour, there is no speed limit. Some people passed me going 150 M.P.H. No joke! Trackchasing mission accomplished. We were able to see each of the four race tracks that I had planned to visit. We have done some rather extensive touring of Berlin and Dresden, Germany, as well as Prague, Czech Republic. Everything just worked. As always, the food and service were fantastic. Prices were reasonable. The logistics of getting around had gone smoothly by using both GPS and Uber. Traveling in Europe in 2022 has never been easier.
We toured all kinds of castles. The Arise show that we saw in Berlin might have been the trip touring highlight. That was followed closely by the Mozart Dinner opera performance. Of course, our visit to Český Krumlov was outstanding. Heck, there were a lot of highlights! We met a number of interesting people. In a nutshell, it was a near-perfect trip. Monday, October 17, 2022. Which is better? Flying east to west or west to east? The only good thing about having to return home from Europe to California is it is quite a bit easier to fly west on these long trips than it is to fly east. When you fly east whether it’s from Los Angeles to New York or Los Angeles to Frankfurt, Germany, the time of day at your arrival city is going to be much earlier than the time in California. In Germany, no one wants to go to bed at 11 p.m. German time when it’s 2 o’clock in the afternoon back in California. On the other hand, when you travel to the west and it’s 10 o’clock at night in California, it’s 1 a.m. in New York or 7 a.m. in Germany. You’re going to be tired when everyone else in California is ready to go to bed. I have traveled this west-to-east and east-to-west route literally thousands of times. I know from which I speak. Today’s flight plan would take us from Frankfurt, Germany to Dallas, Texas over to Los Angeles. We used the Admirals Club in both Frankfurt and Dallas.
We were happy to be back in our homeland, California. We were In N Out happy. After we landed in Los Angeles, got our bags, and drove our car out of the airport parking garage we immediately headed to In-N-Out burgers. That was our reward for a trip that worked out very well. Hey everyone, thanks! In closing, I want to thank everyone who takes the time to read about our journeys and other experiences. I hope no one thinks of it as being asked over to the neighbors to watch their “vacation slides”. There continue to be a lot of unique logistical, financial, touring, and experiential happenings on these trips. If you’ve done any of this kind of travel, you already know that. If you’re still looking forward to doing some international travel maybe something will resonate that you might want to incorporate on one of your trips. Whichever way it might work out for you and your family, I hope that you get the chance to take that “big trip” and that it works out as well for you, as it always does for us.
