Tuesday, June 24, 2008

A Volkswagen Day

It was a Volkswagen day today. We boarded a train to Wolfsburg early and then had (too much!) time to walk around the city before our guided tour of the main Volkswagen plant. We had an excellent guided tour of the factory while riding in a customized Volkswagen Golf with several customized trailers. We rode in this nice comfortable vehicle while our guide drove us and talked to us about the automobile making process. It was a great tour, however we couldn’t photograph anything, so no pictures of the new Volkswagens rolling off of the assembly line. I do have a picture of the factory below though. This plant is the largest sized automobile plant in the world.
We then had lunch in the city and after that we went to Autostadt (Automobile City) which is right next to the automobile factory. This huge complex is Volkswagen’s delivery point for their cars (you can pick up your customized car here to much fanfare), a car history museum, a driving and education training ground for kids and adults, and a showroom for Volkswagen brands like Lamborghini and Bentley among several others. You can see a Lamborghini Diablo GT below that is #1 of only 80 produced.
Also, here are the two large storage columns that have the cars ready for pickup by its owner. They are constantly loading these up and unloading them automatically using robotics.
After our car day we were able to move up our departure time on the train back to Hannover so we can have an early dinner and then pack-up to leave for our next stop after a day of visiting an elementary school tomorrow. We head to Frankfurt tomorrow evening.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bring one of those Trabants home--should get good gas mileage. The Reds won 2 out of 3 from the Yankees. Your trip sounds very interesting--hope you have time to show us pictures when you get home. See you SOON!
Grandma & Grandpa

Anonymous said...

What is a tapa?
Is anybody else on the trip blogging? Just wondering.........

Unknown said...

How much longer is your trip? Sounds like you are having a blast. You sure are getting to do lots of interesting things! Can't wait to hear more about it once you get back to Fishers. What ever happened with the Saudi Arabia trip? Did you get it?

Keep those posts coming. It does sound like you'll have some great things to share if you ever play "Two Truths and a Lie".

Mark Heiden said...

The Trabant doesn't actually get very good mileage....it burns a lot of oil!

I think tapas are just small dishes that you share with people. I don't know for sure, I didn't order them, I just ate.

I don't know yet about Saudi Arabia...should know in late August. And, yes, I do have some great stories!

Anonymous said...

Saudi Arabia?