October 6th
October 6th, 2006 at 1:27pm
| Started off the day with the lovely ‘buffet ‘breakfast at the Botel, we still haven’t stoped arguing whether the chicken loaf were cheese or cheese slices were chicken. loaf. It looked like chicken but tasted like cheese… who knows but the juice was good probably contained 2% juice and 98% water and probably straight out of the river. The Botel wasn’t all that bad, it had a slight lean to the port side (left) so all your blood flowed to your head in the night and with the lovely pillows, blankets and bed base and… noise from the corridor we would have got a good hours sleep. But for 60 euro and for the novelty value it was worth it…but I still reckon the chicken loaf was cheese. Gary thinks we may catch Scurvy from the Botel and he thinks our medical expenses will work out a little more than if we had have stayed in the Prague Hilton, which looked very nice. |
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| The Botel’s bathroom was an interesting feature, unfortunately we couldn’t get the camera lens to take enough of it to publish, it was about 4 foot square and contained toilet, (with a pump action plunger) a shower and basin. It was an challenging job not getting your towel or clothes wet, although with the amount of water which came out of the shower piece there was no hope. The biggest concern was keeping the mouldy vinyl shower curtain away from your body. Gary was sure the bathroom smelt better after he used the toilet.. I didn’t want to go in and prove him wrong but I think he was probably right. |
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| We left Prague on our way back to Germany the road wasn’t quite as bad as it was coming in there was a bit of a highway although bumpy and narrow. We got to the border a little earlier than we had expected we had about 1200 Krowns (Czech dollars) which was about 70 Australian dollars left over which we planned to spend on petrol. We will have to cash them in Germany for probably 50 Australian, but there the break. The border was a bit of a wait all the Czech cars and German cars were sent straight through because we were in a French registered car and Australian we had about a 15 minute wait for the stamp in our passport and the ok to continue. |
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| The first stop was Zickau which was the home of the August Horch Museum which was responsible for the Auto Union cars which became Audi and was taken over and turned into Trabant after World War II. The centre was pretty much like our Ford Discover Centre and was even staffed by ex employees and volunteers. They had some interesting vehicles including the last model Trabant which never got released. For those of you who don’t know the Trabant, it we featured it on our 94.7 Pulse FM Motor Show as weird car of the week and was the little German Car which was made with a cotton based fibre glass called duraplast panels.. You might also remember them in the U2 videos and Concerts for the Zoo TV tour. |
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| Another hour and a half drive and we headed into Dresden, which was a pretty easy drive along the Autobahn. The speed limit is 130 but you can sit on 140 and cars pass you doing 50 or more kilometre an hour more. The trucks on the right hand lane are speed limited to 100 so its a pretty dynamic mix of traffic. |
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| Our main stop in Dresden was the VW Glas Manufactre plant which would have to be the most unique car manufacturing plant in the world. The building itself is located in Dresden’s botanic gardens and looks like a normal modern office building. With striking architecture at first glance you may mistake the building for just one of Volkswagen’s head offices, but on closer inspection behind the huge glass windows you will find a car assemble line.
Only final assemble is completed here for the VW premium level car the Phaeton. All the dirty work of welding the body together and painting is done up the road at towards Zickau and shipped to Dresden. To minimise impact to the city all the parts including the polished up bodies are delivered on specially built trams appropriately called car-go-trams on the cities tram network.
Inside the building there is a bar, a restaurant with grand piano, offices, a viewing area and of coarse the plant assembly line.
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| Completed shells are delivered by tram and stored along the outside glass wall awaiting assemble from here a complex array of robots that navigate themselves about on the Canadian parquetry wood floors. The assembly staff wear white dust coats and white gloves and look more like surgeons than car assemblers. There are a series of robots which rotate the vehicle and driverless trolleys and glass lifts bring the jewel like vehicle parts to the assembler. The line makes about 150 Phaetom and Bentley vehicles a day. The cars are either distributed to dealers or stored in a 15 storey high automated silo for anyone who wants to pick their vehicle up at the centre.
We finished off the night with a buffet, a few beers and bed at the “Fun Hotel”, where we were staying about 10 minutes out of Dresden, |
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