tour reports » Visiting the cradle

With a group of 20 BMW riders (mostly RT and GS) we visited Eastern Germany last week. The main purpose was a tour of the BMW plant in Berlin, where since 1969 all R, S, F and GS bikes are built. It was cool to see the production process up close and learn about the engineering they put into it, much more than meets the eye!

We also did some nice tours through the Harz, Erz, Thuringer Wald and Sauerland (see map). Riding the lower middle German mountains was great, very little traffic, mostly good roads and also a generous 100 kph speed limit on these small roads!
The Berlin Wall memorials were of course very impressive and chilling, as well as the Iron Curtain museum at Point Alpha at the former east-west border near Fulda, were the US Army looked out over East Germany, at a spot they knew the Soviet armies would come through (the “Fulda Gap”) in case WWIII should start…

One other RS was in the group, a nicely red wrapped twin of my bike. In total I did around 2500 km this week and on the way back I passed the 20.000 km mark; not bad after 6 months of riding it (and a 4 month winter stop), so I guess I like the bike...