Euro Trip 2010 | Part 3

Ok so here is my final blog from my European trip. Firstly a quick video of the road from the hotel which we stayed at in Austria, this road was awesome, if only I had more time to practice on it for a little while and film a full throttle run along it.

Austrian Roads | Semriach from Richard Raw on Vimeo.

After watching and loving the Austrian Hillclimb event we were headed for the would famous Nürburgring via the also famous German Autobahn roads with unlimited speed sections along the way. This was the first time I had been able to not worry about the speed limit and just concentrate on people pulling out into my path whilst travelling at 113mph (Japanese limiter was still installed). Here is a quick video to give you an idea of the speed, it looks as though the cars in the slow lane are travelling at 50mph, when in reality they are travelling around 80-90mph.

German Autobahn from Richard Raw on Vimeo.

About halfway to Nürburgring we stopped in a town called Koblenz which is only about 50km away from the actual circuit. After being away from home for about 4 days I was actually in the mood for a good old curry. So I had a quick search using the TomTom and I found a curry house right in the centre which sounded good, so it was time for a spicy Jalfreizi and Lamb Tikka for starters, yum. Here is a quick shot of the town square, very nice architecture throughout Europe in the city centre's.



Nürburgring





A quick video of one of the test cars that day. I think it is an E92 M3 GTR.

Nurburgring Test Day from Richard Raw on Vimeo.

Now for a kool story, whilst preparing myself to drive on the Nürburgring an EG3 Civic turned up from Belgium no less, I got talking to the owner and checked out what he had done to his car then vice versa. He asked for me to take him for a ride round the ring and vice versa, this was great fun as he was more experienced on the ring than myself so I got to see what speed to take the corners and which lines work the best for FF layout cars. So I'd like to say many thanks to Niels, and here is his Civic.





Ok so that was all the footage and photograph's we had time to capture at the Nürburgring, from there we headed for one of the larger cities in Germany, Cologne aka Köln in the local language. This was an awesome city, much like the others we had visited with its classic architecture and large city squares. This place had a huge main street with all the bars, restaurants and clubs along, it was a very buzzing place with some random graffiti.




Overall the trip was amazing and although we were quite pushed for time we managed to make the most of it I think. I've learnt that the next time I go it should be for much longer so we can absorb and explore more of the cities and countryside as most of this trip was driving, we roughly covered 2,500 miles in 5 days. The little Civic didn't miss a beat at all, I drove it hard on the Alpine roads, I thrashed it around the Nürburgring, smashed it along the Autobahn and it made it home in one piece. It is a testament to how well a 15 year old Japanese car can handle that kind of abuse day in day out.