Day 3 Monday- Delivery- Munich to Strassen
Morning of the delivery, we had a 9:50a appointment. Got there without issues. Ate breakfast in the BMW lounge, which is quite nice. Our BMW delivery agent was also quite nice, as was the carpeting and the seats we sat on. He was a bit business-like, and it seems they delivery Individual BMWs as often as they deliver weisswurst. Which is fine, because I was on a strict timeline to get on the road. While in the lounge, I had checked the webcams on the Grossglockner alpenstrasse, and it was glorious! Sunshine, above freezing temps, max visibility. We had lucked out: the weather was perfect the one day I had scheduled to drive GG. The couple days prior, and the next couple days, all had snow in the forecast. Anyway, after he showed me where the cup holders were, where the clutch is, and how to open the trunk, I did my victory lap and we headed out. Oh! I will add, he did show me one thing I didn't know: How to open the exhaust flaps. He had me rev it with flaps open inside the Welt... well that sure drew a crowd, hah. I must admit, after all the semi-bashing I have done regarding the exhaust sound, it actually sounds quite good in person ! (Not quite like my V8 RS4 did, but still good)
Take a good look.. This is the last time she would be this clean and shiny. (The car, not my wife...) After the coating of dirt and ?salt we got in Davos, she would be a dull grey the rest of the trip.
I really, really like the contrast stitching. It’s exactly what I had hoped for. The interior pictures were difficult for me to take, given my limited photography experience and my older camera body with relatively low ISOs relative to todays cameras. Here are my best attempts:
We took some pictures outside, then went into the BMW Welt garage where I proceeded to prep the car: Optiseal the front (I should have also optiseal'ed the lower sides and rear bumper in retrospect as they picked up a lot of dirt by the end). Followed by a quick Traktape job, helped by my cousin. Since we were already 30 mins behind schedule, we did this fast and 'dirty'. But this was my only opportunity to tape the front, so I at least had to make an attempt.
I took this opportunity to fulfill a promise to you all on Bimmerpost, by playing the marvelous ballad
“Beammer, Benz or Bentley” by Lloyd Banks as my first song in the new car. Oh how my wife was pleased ! Little did she know how enamored she would become with me this day. We drove to a MediaMart, where we were supposed to quickly pick up some walkie talkie’s. I proceeded to annoy the local Germans, by holding up parking garage exit traffic when I didn't validate their silly "plastic coin ticket system" (even though our parking was free due to the short time). I was stuck in my car because I had pulled up so close to the ticket machine, with the gate in front, and a line of angry Germans behind me. So my annoyed wife had to bail me out by getting out the passenger side and running up two parking garage levels to the machine to validate the coin thingy. Not happy with me, she was.. not.. at.. all.. However, with walkie talkies in hand (comms between our two cars), russian truckers blaring over the speakers, we drove to Grossglockner.
May I just add that the Austrians do not believe that tourists produce urine. Either that, or they enjoy torturing them. Because even the gas stations "had no toilet". We ended up finding a hotel which thankfully had some pity.
On to Grossglockner - it was a beautiful day. Arrived later than I had hoped, but we made it. Beautiful and highly recommended. We ran across an i8, and couple porsche turbos tearing down the back side of the pass.
We also drove down to the glacier, which you should definitely do. Since we were off season, and the only nice day in a week otherwise filled with snow, we had a 4 story massive parking garage all to ourselves, which made for some nice pictures.
The following day’s destination was the Sella Ronda so we stayed in a small town at Strasserwirt Herrenansitz zu Tirol; reportedly nice hotel and good restaurant. Wow! Lots of character, beautifully done, fantastic! food (dinner and breakfast) and not expensive at all. Another highly recommended.
