Sunday, October 4, 2015

Germany - Part 2 - IAA Car Show

The flight back to Accra from Germany goes through Frankfurt... an airport hub so large that it makes DFW look like Champaign airport. We got a hotel room for one night in Frankfurt so that we wouldn't have to worry about the train running late or stressing about possibly missing our flight. Given the current migrant situation in Germany, that was our intelligent plan.

After booking everything, Dan was researching things to do that one day in Frankfurt to decide how long we should stay in Munich before heading up to Frankfurt. He found out that one of the largest car show's in Europe, IAA, was taking place literally next door to our hotel and asked if we could go. Sure why not?

Now to be fair, I've been to one, count it, one, car show in my days (that I'm old enough to recall) and it was in San Francisco. I found it interesting and it was cool to get to sit in the cars and compare different brands in the same room. Yeah... Frankfurt's was HUGE. It was at a convention center with 11 different exhibit halls, not including two massive structures in the middle of the center: one housing Mercedes-Benz and the other housing Audi. (Side Note: BMW had all of Hall 11 which wasn't small either but didn't get the front row treatment that the other two garnered).

Certainly the focus was on the German cars but there were other European cars for sure. Also, a small selection of Japanese cars and one section for Ford (haha, snub the US...). They had plenty of food stands and lots of Beck's draft tents, because, Germany. We roamed all the halls and sat in a few vehicles. We marveled at the crazy concept cars by Porsche and the beautiful McLaren and Honda NSX.


Mercedes had a screen the size of an entire wall that opened into panels. They drove out the cars through the panels to show everyone the fleet. They also had two models of their Formula 1 car driven by Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton available for viewing. Audi had cars mounted on the walls and showed the progression of the car models over the years. Out behind the convention center was the off-roading course with the big hills, crazy inclines, etc.

Ferrari/Mercedes Formula 1 Vehicle

Porsche Concept Car/Showroom inside Audi Building

It started to drizzle so we went back to the hotel, had a nap and went down to the hotel bar/restaurant for dinner and some soccer. We got some sleep and then awoke to head to the airport to make our way back to Ghana after another great vacation.

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