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A road trip across Germany in an Audi A4
I was a bit nervous the first time I slid behind the wheel of the Audi A4 that was parked in the basement of the Hilton Hotel near the Munich International Airport. I had driven in Germany before, but other people were in the car with me then. This time I was on my own.
The soft leather car seat felt comfortable and so did the car’s controls and dashboard, which were easy enough to figure out.
The first thing I did was input my destination in the car’s navigation system. The screen lifts out of the dashboard, a nifty trick that never got old, and is controlled by a dial in the center knob.
Drivers can either input their destination via the knob or a touchscreen pad that rolls through the digital letters of the alphabet. I thought that was pretty cool.
The A4 was a quick study. Driving slowly out of the parking spot, I easily negotiated the damp roads (it drizzled right after the plane landed) while following the voice commands of the Nav system. Soon I was driving along Germany’s famed autobahn.
I was back in Europe to meet a friend based in Italy. We agreed to meet each other in Leipzig, Germany to watch the concert of an artist we both like: Damien Rice, whose show I saw earlier this year in Singapore. PGA Cars, the local distributor of Audi (as well as other luxury brands like Bentley, Lamborghini and Porsche) suggested I take the new A4 out for a spin, and there’s no better place to drive it than the land of its birth.
“It was already a bestseller cars, so what else could we do?” said Jens Dietrich Kotnik, the global product manager of the A4. I met him a few days later in Ingolstadt, the global headquarters of Audi. “The first step is you have to improve the design. We’ve created an entirely new design language for the car.”
The ninth generation of the A4 now has a flatter, and wider grille in front, with a very sharp tornado line in the side. There’s also a sophisticated and highly finished line in the bonnet, which Kotnik says is very hard to produce.
After I met my friend in Leipzig, we planned to visit a few cities in Germany’s Romantische Strasse, or Romantic Road.
Covering 400 kilometers from the town of Würzburg all the way to Füssen in the south near the Austrian border, the Romantic Road is a series of small towns that have managed to retain a uniquely German charm. Of course we couldn’t go to all of them as that would take several weeks, but I made sure to go to the best, most picturesque ones.
The A4, with its turbocharged four-cylinder gas engine, was our carrier during the epic road trip. We started in Würzburg, which is also the traditional starting point of most travelers making their their way across the Romantic Road. From Leipzig, we zipped past Nuremberg along the autobahn, where I clocked a top speed of 190kph. There is no speed limit in some portions of the autobahn, but I chose to err on the conservative side, even though the A4 tops out at around 250 kilometers per hour.
Besides the old churches and the Marienberg Fortress, the highlight of Würzburg was the Old Main Bridge or Alte Marienbrücke, which dates back to the 16th century. Stone statues line the bridge, similar to Charles Bridge in Prague, Czech Republic. Locals and tourists milled about the bridge, some with a pint of beer in hand, chatting or simply enjoying the view.
Thanks to the A4 acting as a wi-fi hotspot (there is a SIM card built into the car), I had internet throughout the drive. It was easy to surf the net to find out more about the places we were going to (while parked, of course!) The virtual cockpit, located in the driver’s side behind the steering wheel, mirrors the digital display from the main screen, making it easier to see the map, settings and other vehicle information.
After Würzburg, we made our way to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, which guidebooks say is the most perfectly preserved medieval walled town in Germany. In the Marktplatz or town square, it wasn’t hard to imagine what life must have been like in the town that has remained virtually unchanged for over 500 years.
My friend and I then headed to Plönlein, which translates to little square. It’s supposedly one of the most photographed spots in the entire country, so of course we took turn taking snapshots of ourselves. The town was the equivalent of an ice cream sundae that you just wanted to scoop up and enjoy down to the last spoonful; even the souvenir shops were quaint.
On the way to the last town, I tested the A4’s Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), which when engaged, allows the car to drive itself. It can sense when the car ahead is stopped and will automatically hit the brake. There is also a lane assist feature that senses the lines on the road and will keep the car within these boundaries. An alert will sound when the driver needs to take over; drivers can manually override the ACC system anytime.
The last stop in our Romantic Road tour was a town called Dinkelsbühl. While Rothenburg ob der Tauber was slightly damaged by bombings during World War 2, Dinkelsbühl remained completely intact. There were rows of colorful houses adjacent to St George’s Minster, the tallest building in town. Perhaps because it’s lesser known, Dinkelsbühl was much quieter and less busy than Rothenburg ob der Tauber, so it was quite an exhilarating experience just walking through its streets just as the sun was hanging low on the horizon and a chilly breeze began to sweep across the town.
It was already dark by the time I was ready to jump back in the car and leave. I realized then that all the nervouseness about driving the A4 had vanished and it was as if I was driving it for years. That made it that much harder to say goodbye when it came time to drop it off at the same hotel at the beginning of the trip. Still, whether you’re going on a road trip across Germany or you just need a solid, dependable automobile for your everyday commute, the Audi A4 will do the job. — BM, GMA News
Paul John Caña is a magazine writer and live music geek. Check out his blog manontheotherside.blogspot.com. Email him at pjcana@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter and Instagram @pauljohncana.
