Rothenfelde

Overnight our boat travelled via the Mittelland Kanal to Wolfsburg, known for many years as the site of Volkswagen’s main factory. Since the EXPO2000 in nearby Hanover, it has also hosted a car museum, a 5-star hotel, and pavilions for each of VW’s brands, including Porche, Skoda, Audi, plus a brand I’ve never heard of SEAT, and what used to be the English icon Bentley (now “Premium Clubhouse”).

Altogether the complex is known as “Autostadt”, or car town. We visited Autostadt this morning.

Some stats:
- VW employs 60,000 (!) people in its Wolfsburg factory, plus another 1,000 people in the museum, brand pavilions, hotel & visitor centre.
- Autostadt is larger than 30 soccer fields.
- The factory itself extends for 1 km along the river bank.
- Two car towers (see photo) with 400 new cars in each are connected by an underground tunnel to the customer centre. Car buyers come to Autostadt to pick up their vehicle, and the deal includes a night in the hotel!

As you can see, this is a big deal, and we had only a 2-hour timeframe before our boat sailed!

We went first to the Porche pavilion - an amazing building including an amphitheatre with a huge concrete roof shaped like the back of a Porsche car - and I fell in love with a midnight blue convertible. I really need to win the Lotto!

Then we went to the car museum. On the top floor we found the first ever car, the 1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen, a three-wheeler with an internal combustion engine.

There were so many amazing cars, Cadillacs, Renaults, Oldsmobiles, the 1,000,000th Mini from 1965. And then Des found the car of her dreams, a very rare 1938 Bugatti Atlantic. No other cars had any interest. (Actually, we had run out of time - we both agreed we would have needed two whole days to do this properly, including the factory tour.)

I also need to mention the playground which has a spiral slide that must be 50 feet high (complete with carpet toboggans!), rope trees, a wooden climbing gym, and a dodgem track!

And now for something completely different …

Our boat has an amazing chef who I’ve been wanting to tell you about - as an example, here is the lunch & dinner menu today:

Lunch:
- Devilled eggs
- Rabbit with gratin dauphinois
- Raspberry slice (I’ve included a photo of this to show the quality of presentation)
- Espresso coffee

Dinner:
- Alsatian salad
- Hake with butter sauce, accompanied by cuttlefish ink taglioni
- Ice nougat

Bottomless red & white wine at both meals.

Des & I have never eaten like this! A pity it has to end - we’ll diet at home!Read more