Herzlich Wilkommen in Deutschland

The adrenalin of the arrival kept us going right away. To us, the Munich airport seemed very, very small. Apparently the international arrival gate just shows you the corner of the airport. At one point, we could see our plane, the baggage claim carousel and the person who was picking us up all from one spot (all separated by thick sheets of glass). So, the trip through the airport was very quick. We were able to get money out of the ATM right away. It was very wonderful to see our friend Burkhard Scholz. He quickly led us to the car and we were on the road and away from the airport in a few minutes.

We hit the autobahn on Saturday morning early, with no traffic. Burkhard had obviously made this trip many different times. The car seemed to know the way too. The Munich Airport is northeast of the city. We were going southwest of the city – about 90 minutes total. Burkhard said that a nice bypass had been recently completed that goes around the western side of Munich. He used to drive through Munich to get home, but now it was all smooth, new pavement.



Penny could tell that we were driving fast through some stretches, so she asked how fast we were going…..120mph, which didn’t really seem that fast because there was really no other traffic (except a BMW that passed us like we were standing still) and because the Mercedes wagon we were riding in was silky smooth. My Toyota would be vibrating like crazy around 85mph. So, Burkhard slowed down to 100mph (or so) for Penny’s sake.

The road led through Landsberg, which was a very old town. We went through the middle of town complete with cobble stone roads, and a beautiful river – our first real view of the Lech (Leck) River.