The photographer quickly snapped a
few more photos before the man grew tired of posing for him. He got into the
car carefully, making sure his shoes tracked in no dirt. He turned the key and
it sprang to life. He put the car into gear and slowly lifted off the clutch,
feeling the car pull forward. Coasting out of the lot toward the main road, he
became more and more anxious to drive.
As
he pulled out onto the street, he realized that he had no idea where he was
going, where north was, or what any of the signs said. In the rush and
excitement to get to Stuttgart to pick the car up, he had neglected to study
road maps or learn a few basic words in German. After a brief moment of panic,
he decided to embrace the feeling of being lost and just wander. Through the
streets, cities, towns, farms, neighborhoods. He let the German countryside and
quaint fairytale towns set the background to his journey.
Shifting
gears had never felt quite the same. Apart from the obvious differences of his
previous car (a Ford station wagon), this new vehicle somehow moved with the
road. Every change in terrain, every corner, every hill, no matter how small,
immediately prompted the car to change with it. It felt alive. The man was
enthralled by this phenomenon, so foreign and inexplicable to him. Countless
towns passed, going unnoticed at first, but became detected as the shock of
driving such an exotic machine slowly wore.
Now,
coupled with the experience of the car, the picturesque churches, shops,
houses, and cobblestone streets seemed like a dream playing out in the man’s
head. Had anything changed since the 17 or 1800’s? Anything at all? Each stone
in each building looked like it had been there since the beginning of time,
completely at home, and in its rightful and natural place.
A
quick glace at the dashboard clock read 3:30 in the afternoon. Seven hours ago
the man had just barely laid eyes on the car for the very first time. Three
hundred and fifteen kilometers on the odometer. He could have easily added
another couple hundred to that without stopping, but he decided that this was
as good a place as any to take a rest and explore this small town on foot,
refuel the car, and refuel himself. Coincidentally, the town he happened to be
in was home to one of the most well known racetracks in Europe. He was
unbeknownst to this until he was perusing aging photographs and news clippings
on a pub’s wall, telling stories of victories and records set at the track.
Through
a brief conversation with the pub’s owner in broken English and sloppy German,
he learned that the track was open to everyone with a driver’s license and safe
car for a few days of the week. It happened to be one of those days, so the man
quickly ate and got directions from the owner.
At the track, he
paid a small fee and had brief inspection of the car performed. Never had he
expected to find himself in the German countryside, in his own car, just
moments away from experiencing the car in its natural habitat. Without
thinking, he was off, wrapping around the turns, sweeping into straightaways,
and braking into hairpins, just like the race drivers he had admired as a boy.
The five laps were over all too soon, but he happily went on his way, a
souvenir beer mug in hand printed with the track’s logo and the date.
It was now 5:30.
After an exhilarating day full of unfamiliar places and experiences, he decided
to do one last thing: drive the autobahn. He found the closest on-ramp and got
up to speed. He lingered in the right lane for a bit to get his bearings and
grow accustomed to the rules and etiquette of the road. Then flicked the left
turn signal and moved over. The car did not hesitate to deliver power to the
wheels, accelerating, past 90, past 100, past 150, to nearly 200 kilometers per
hour. He gently let off the throttle and let the car slow itself, moving over
to the right. He coasted off the empty autobahn into another small town that
looked like it had jumped from the pages of a fantastical storybook.
