kirktastic

So I went down to the Marienplatz last night on a mission to get contact lens solution and a case, a charger for my phone, something to eat and something to wear before the shops closed. I didn’t find anything I liked clothwise and made the command decision that I’d shop tody if my suitcase didn’t arrive. That wasn’t very smart since no stores are open on Sundays. I knew but it didn’t register. Something about no sleep for 27 hours made some of my brain shut down, I guess.

So morning arrives but I missed it, I slept through it. Those curtains in hotels that completely block out the light are awesome. I woke up at noon just in time to check out. No luggage.

I still had the car so I decided to make my earlier planned drive up to Ingolstadt to see the Audi Forum.

On the drive up to Ingolstadt, the weather was good but then started raining. The Autobahns became pretty clear so I could see what I could get the BMW up to. There’s a sticker on the speedometer saying to keep it unter 210 km/h. I couldn’t get it to 190 giving it everything it had. When there was no speed limit I kept it at a nice 160 km/h. As you get closer to cities it gets down to 120 km/h and 100 km/h. There were areas of dense traffic and the signs would get down to 60 km/h.

If you don’t know, Audi’s headquarters is in Ingolstadt. Seeing people on the street made me wonder if they were involved making my car. I know, very geeky. The Audi Forum is a large complex that houses a museum and restaurants. There’s a customer area which is a showroom without salespeople and some of their better cars not sold in the US. The Audi S8 is something I’ve always wanted. So the one they had there had 124,000 €. Very nice car and it gave me a boner. You can get nearly 5 of my A4s for the price. However, the one they had on display was the same color as mine.

I realized on the drive back to Munich that I was happier with my Audis than with the rental BMW. It is amazing what those guys in Ingolstadt has done with the turbo. The BMW was just gutless. Thank god I had a six-speed manual transmission or I would have been roadkill from some of those high-end cars in the left lane. I also didn’t like the built-in GPS system that much. Example: We’re taking the car back to the car hire company and I wanted to fill up the tank. I found I could find a list of petrol stations but in alphabetical order, not distance base. So the random Esso station I picked was 40km away! Fortunately just as I was about to turn into the Sixt depot, I saw a Shell sign. It was 1.39 € / liter. In American that translates to really fucking expensive. Made even worse by the fact my dollar has lost 4% since I was here in December.

Took the S-bahn from a station about 2km from Sixt to about 3km from the hotel. Naturally it was raining the whole time. And of course I didn’t have a coat or umbrella.

But the good news was when I got to the room and my bag had been delivered. So now I can take my contacts out. Now I can take my medication. Now I wear clean clothes. I had talked to my manager about if the bag was going to be delayed since I really needed to get fresh contacts and if something happened to them, I’d be 6,000 miles from home blind. Plus the stinky clothes and the medicine. If I wasn’t to hear from the airlines by tomorrow, I’d cancel Russia and go home Tuesday morning. All for nothing though. My bag is here. And now I have my iPod charger [my POS work PC cannot charge devices in its USB port]. So things are looking good. Wearing clean clothes and not having my contacts is great. Although I’ve been staying in 4-star hotels this trip, it sort of feels like I was camping without fresh underwear. The best part was the “luggage” I had checking out of the Hilton this morning was their laundry bag filled with my dirty t-shirt [I was wearing the free Lufthansa shirt today] and the toiletries I bought last night. Felt pretty good checking out at the executive lounge.

Tomorrow a full day of work. Same with Tuesday. Wednesday I’m off to Moscow. More work Thursday and Friday. Play day Saturday. Come home Sunday.