By Natalia Ahrens
As the interterm began and students began completing homework for their classes, this was not the case in Hess 54 for the International Travel Study in History: Cars and Castles class. These students began researching their travel destinations for the next 12 days, in Europe. The Cars & Castles interterm trip, made possible by professor Ken Yohn, took a group of around 50 students and chaperones to five different countries in Europe. To begin the trip, we flew into Amsterdam, where we spent two days exploring the city. One of the very unique things about this trip was the amount of free time we had to spend in each of these cities and explore what we wanted to. Some of us simply walked up and down the streets and took in the old architecture and brick streets, some of us visited record stores, and some of us taste-tested foreign beer and alcohol. The first car museum that was visited, the Louwman Museum, was a short bus ride away from Amsterdam in The Hague, Netherlands. The Louwman Museum features over 275 historic vehicles from all eras in history, starting from the creation of the first automobile through modern day. The thing I appreciated about this museum was the chronological order, and the feeling you were walking through time and experiencing the evolution of cars through time. The next stop on the tour was Brussels, Belgium. The AutoWorld museum of Brussels was another large collection, having over 250 cars. Similar to the Louwman, I also appreciated the chronological order of this museum, but this museum was unique because it featured a lot more modern super vehicles, which I enjoyed. After Brussels, we traveled to Nürburg, Germany, to visit the historic Nürburgring racetrack. This racetrack has been home to many different types of racing, like Formula 1, but is now currently only racing Formula 4. While in Nürburg, we also visited the first castle on our trip, Nürburg Castle. From Nürburg we continued to Koblenz, where we took a Rhine River cruise and got to tour the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress. From the top of the fortress, there was an amazing view of the Deutsches Eck, meaning German corner, where the Rhine and Moselle rivers meet. Our last castle of the trip was seen in Heidelberg, Germany, the Schloss Heidelberg. This castle contained an old wine barrel that holds 58,573 gallons of wine! Continuing on to Stuttgart, Germany, our first stop was the most exclusive on the trip, an exclusive tour of the Porsche Classic restoration center. In this warehouse on the outskirts of Stuttgart, people send their Porsches to be restored and redone by the Porsche experts. They do everything in house, from repainting to upholstery. Want to get your Porsche redone? You’ll have to wait eight years! The next day, we went to the Porsche and Mercedes-Benz museums. These museums were full of history and evolution of their vehicles, and it was a very amazing experience at both of these museums. The most unique thing to me on this day was at Mercedes-Benz, they didn’t just show off their traditional cars, but their old utility vehicles, such as buses, trucks, and cargo vans. There was also an exhibit with celebrity’s Mercedes! Our last car museum of the trip was the Musée National de l’Automobile – Collection Schlumpf, in Mulhouse, France, which is home to over 450 vehicles. We spent the afternoon there looking at rows upon rows of cars, mostly Bugattis. The story behind this collection is very unique, as the two Schlumpf brothers were some of the first people to begin collecting cars in the 1960s. We then ended our trip with some time in Zürich, Switzerland. Many of us took a lake cruise on Lake Zürich, and prepared for our long trip home the day following. This once in a lifetime trip and experience was more than what I ever expected, and I am very lucky and grateful I got to experience these things. Another huge thank you to Professor Ken Yohn, who organized and made this trip happen.
