CROSSING BORDERS

An early morning ferry to Dover enabled me to swiftly enter Belgium and cross to the intersection of the German, Dutch and Belgian borders for a comfortable night near Aachen. The town's impressive Rathaus and Dom formed part of a lively centre with musicians and a market adding to the relaxed atmosphere.
The huge Hermann monument further east was of a remarkable scale - no wonder it was the sculptor's lifetime work.
In Hildesheim more remarkable civic buildings were best observed from the heights of the St Michael church spire before I continued east with a lengthy delay on the autobahn caused by a very nasty single vehicle accident that had wiped out an entire family.
On a quiet Sunday evening I pulled in to the stehlplatz adjacent to the Autostadt museum which in turn sits alongside the home of Volkswagen at Wolfsburg. This was the factory that after the war was allowed to begin production of the Beetle and is overshadowed by four haunting chimney stacks of the plant's power station. After a thorough exploration of the Autostadt's excellent displays I joined the factory tour where although photos were not permitted we were given a fascinating insight in to a cutting edge car production line. 4000 Golfs a day are produced and we were transfixed by robots and machines that created vehicles before our eyes - it takes just 30 seconds to install a complete pre assembled drive train and magical arms swept in to affix entire dashboards, windscreens, the wheels and even the space saver in the boot.
A further few hours exploring the rest of the Autostadt included a priceless chrome Bugatti Veyron, makes from days of old including a Ford Capri and many insights in to the future of the industry.
After another quiet night in the stehlplatz I am about to visit the Classic VW museum before heading north with the intention of reaching Sweden by the weekend.
Piccies here and locations here - a rather brief post as there is very little wifi in Germany and you can only stand so much of McDonalds!