Baumblog EST 1968 - A blog for the Baumbachs who originated in Syracuse, NY

Sign showing that the castle was built around 1300 AD by/for Ludwig von Baumbach, "The Severe Knight."

A typical church in a small town in Germany. It was neat that as I drove through the countryside, the first thing you would see in a town were the spires of the church in the town. Typically, there was nothing even close to the same height as the church spires in each town. And yes, even the very small towns had quite attractive churches in them.

A collection of castles along the Rhine river. The photo's aren't great, as it was raining when I took most of the pictures. I was amazed by how many castles there really are in Germany.

My trusty steed for the trip, albeit a fair bit dirty after driving through the rain all day Thursday. It was a 2007 Audi A4 Avant 2.0L turbo diesel 6 speed manual with the "S Line" package, which is their sport package.

Here's a watch tower from East Germany, as well as the second longest section of the Berlin Wall still standing, the longest section within Berlin city limits. There is a brick line that outlines where the wall formerly stood. It's kinda strange though, as the line runs right through buildings and such (buildings that have been built since the fall of the wall). The rebuilding in Eat Berlin has been incredible since the wall fell back in 1989. If not for the brick line, it would be very difficult to discern where West Berlin ended and East Berlin began.

The TV Tower in Berlin behind a Church Steeple (sorry, it's my lame attempt at trying to take a cool picture or two)

Some interesting things at the Auto & Technik Museum in Sinsheim, Germany. The first two planes are a Concorde, and a Russian plane built to compete with the Concorde. I still remember Dad taking me to go see an actual Concorde fly into Hancock airport in Syracuse, which probably helped feed my interest in planes.

And finally, my favorite part of the trip, pictures from the Nurburgring Nordschleife. Oh what a memorable time I had here. I drove there Monday, and had so much fun, I altered my trip plans to run there again on Tuesday. The people there were all quite friendly. I met a few Americans there, including a couple (Jeff and Cindy) from Cortland, NY, whom I went to dinner with after our time on the track there. Jeff is a retired Math teacher, and Cindy teaches both French and German in a high school in Courtland. They both graduated from the University of Michigan. Small world, huh? Aside from the motorcycle picture, the other pictures were done by someone else, but they are so good at depicting the track, I had to share them. For those like GJ that have "driven" this track in Forza Motorsport (it's also on Gran Turismo 4), the computer games do not even come close to doing this track justice. The elevation changes, blind corners, and sheer speed are incredible. It was awesome. I had a lot of fun there. The first day, I passed a late model 911 Carrera 4, and kept up with another late model 911. Yup, while driving an Audi diesel station wagon!! Hehehe. That said, I did get blown away by a fair number of cars, and I even got passed by some little Opel van thing that was chasing down another Porsche.

Marc said 21 minutes later

That's awesome Steve, I want to get over to Europe one of these days. I like the picture of the Baumbach sign, and those two artist pictures you took look great. I especially like the one with the TV Tower behind the church.

So what was your top speed on Nurburgring? :)
Steve said about 1 hour later

Top speed on the Nordschleife was probably only about 170 kph, or 106 mph. To be honest, at the really fast section, I wasn't looking down, was too busy trying to keep the car on the track. It might have been up to 190 kph, not sure. Needless to say, I went faster on the Autobahn than on the track. However, many corners were taken at/near the limit at speeds around 120-170 kph, in a street car on street tires, which was awesome. Oh, I also got to go for a couple of laps with the only English speaking driving instructor there. He offers private instruction to people on how to drive the 'Ring. He was doing a lead/follow program with another guy, and offered to let me ride with him for a couple of laps. He's driven the track a lot - logged over 1500 laps on it last year. Keep in mind, each lap is anywhere between 8 to 14 minutes, depending how fast you drive. So that's a lot of track time. He said the track gets really interesting when you get into a really fast car. He'd driven all of the super exotics there, which he says is ok, but probably the scariest car he had driven was a Porsche 962, which is a closed cockpit prototype racecar, a relative to the Audi open cockpit racecars you might have seen recently.
GJ said 1 day later

I have to echo Marc--that's awesome, Steve!
Geoff said 1 day later

Nice shots Steve! Are you still shooting these with your Olympus digital camera? The quality is quite good. You should consider selling this stuff as stock photography, you could make a few bucks!
Steve said 2 days later

Yup, same old "cheap" digital camera. Olympus C750 UZ. Was expensive, now it's pretty pathetic compared to what's out there today (granted, for 2-3 times the price). Though you might be referring to the shots of the race track, which all but the first shot with the motorcycles were actually shot by someone else.
Steve said 2 days later

A while back you suggested a site I could post pictures that could be used for stock photography, can you remind me what the site address is?
Marc said 2 days later

Geoff may be able to suggest more sites, but one I use frequently is http://www.istockphoto.com
Geoff said 2 days later

Yes iStock is a great place to start. You could also try picturequest.com, or a big one like gettyimages.com
Steve said 2 days later

Thanks guys. I applied for iStockphoto.com, we'll see if they accept my application. They say it takes a few weeks. They require 3 pictures to start, and boy, it was tough trying to find 3 good pictures in all of the photo's I've shot since getting my digital camera. Of the pictures of the TV Tower in Berlin, there are already 5 pages of pictures with it, some with the Church, but none with the Church directly in front of the Tower, like in my first picture. I only wish I could go back and retake the picture on a sunny day, and get the top of the tower included too. That would make for an awesome picture. Oh well.
Kristen said 2 days later

Hey Steve--how come the audi didn't have the driver's side on the right? I think it would be fun to try to drive a manual a$$backwards and on the "wrong" side of the road!
GJ said 2 days later

Only the UK and its former colonies drive backwards, if I recall correctly.
Steve said 3 days later

GJ's correct. The UK, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan are the major countries that are right hand drive. Mainland Europe is all left hand drive, like the USA.

I spent two weeks last year driving right hand drive cars in England. It's not too hard to get used to it. The toughest part is when you are on backroads, and you turn onto another road. You often turn into the wrong lane. You quickly realize it though when oncoming traffic appears....

Even harder was driving a left hand drive (US car) in England. That was really tricky, as you really wanted to drive in the right lane, not the left lane. A couple of times after turning onto another road, my British ride engineer would start laughing after I had driven about 1/4 mile down the wrong side of the road before I noticed it. Doh!
Kristen said 3 days later

Huh, I thought they drove on the left hand side throughout Africa too--actually I thought the US was the weird one.
Steve said 4 days later

Africa maybe, as most of Africa was part of the old British Empire.
Steve said 4 days later

For "civilized" coutries, left hand drive is the norm. Mainland Europe, Mainland Asia, and North and South America all use left hand drive cars. It's just Africa (maybe), and those islands (UK, Ireland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand) that haven't figured it out.

Finland? used to be right hand drive, switched to left hand drive a couple of decades ago. One night at some stupid hour in the morning, they changed which side of the road to drive on. Could you imagine trying to coordinate that today in the US, with as much traffic and highways there are? You could probably do it in India today with no problem, as they don't really seem to have any specific side of the road to drive on, any open space is game for them....