Strange weather today. Yesterday mid 60s, and did not cool much in the night -- 5AM was 57F. But by 7Am it had dropped all of a sudden to 50F and by 9am it was 42F. Currently 44F at 12noon. Sunny earlier, then overcast, now a bit sunny again. Supposed to get "frozen mix" today maybe. Then cold tomorrow, highs in the upper 30s, then slowly warming again. I think we are all getting a cold front.
Chad - Those wrecks on the autobahn can be bad depending on the speeds in the area of the accident. My last duty station was on the USS Little Rock, flag ship for the 6th fleet home ported in Gaeta, Italy. From there I traveled quite extensively. Did a lot by train until my BMW was ready. I had a cousin who worked for BMW and ordered a Bavaria. This was in 1970. The car was ordered to American specs and my cousin drove it until I could get up to Munich to pick it up. Managed to get enough miles on it so when I brought it back to the states I only paid duty on a used car. Not many people knew what BMWs were back then. They were not yuppymobiles back then.
Thanks Chet for the comments. That would have been fun. I saw a few Bavarias around when I was younger. BMW did not have its current reputation when I was a kid, though we knew what they were -- funny looking esoteric German cars.
The autobahn accident was scary. Luckily no one died. It was the A94 on the north side of Landshut, and I had just gotten on the exit prior near Essenbach. It was foggy, and being end of Feb, was cold. I had pulled over to the side and stopped after getting on the autobahn to wipe the frost off my outside driver side mirror. I then accelerated quickly back on so that some dumb-@ss whipping through the fog fast would not rear end me. Up ahead I saw a bunch of flashing blinkers. In Germany, people put their blinkers on when going slow as a warning and that is what I though it was. I probably got up to around 50mph in my acceleration onto the autobahn, so as to avoid being rear ended as I got going, and started to slow down to the 30mph (50 kmh legal speed limit in fog) when I saw the lights. I thought at first it was slow traffic and started to slow down even more and then I realized they were stopped (remember it was foggy). I braked and came to a stop, slightly sliding to the left so I was in between the two lanes (two lane freeway). I very lightly hit the car in front of me, R Front corner to L rear corner. The kind that breaks the light and puts a small dent in, as I was practically stopped. Being in between lanes I pulled into the fast lane and drove up behind the person stopped there (and about even with the car I had brushed up against) and got out of my car. A bunch of people were milling about (probably in mild shock). Totally stupid as more cars came up fast behind us and ran hard into me (or one parked behind me and that one got hit hard and pushed into me). We who were milling about could easily have been hit in the follow on as we wandered around. Anyway, my car was hit from behind and pushed into a car that got pushed into a small trailer. My car had basically dents and damage to every piece of sheet metal but was still drivable. The point I was at was actually in between the off ramp and the on ramp of the exit one down from where I had gotten on.
The accident started when a large tractor trailer truck or large truck of some sort entered at the on-ramp and someone came up fast behind it and drove underneath the trailer up to the windshield. That person was hurt badly but no deaths. Other cars stopped or tried to stop and then were hit from behind. So of the 64 cars, they were in a bunch of groupings behind the original accident. It was not one big pile of 64 cars, but 3 or 4 piles of cars (one group then those who stopped safely behind them would get rear ended, etc).
As I was in the fast lane when the cops came (and they flew over the accident site after the fog lifted and took aerial photos) and I was charged with driving to endanger and driving to fast for the conditions. However, I had a lot of witnesses who had seen me parked on the side of the autobahn as I wiped my mirrors, that I was not in the fast lane while driving, and who also had seen that I had safely parked (and no longer in my car) behind the car I was alleged to have run into (not the first one I brushed in the right lane but the one in the fast lane I had parked behind). I had "lawyer insurance" (everyone in Germany does) and the deductible was more than the fine but we went to court, which was an interesting experience, and there were 2 or 3 other people also charged in the same case. We all told similar stories about some idiot businessmen in big cars who had run into us from behind and pushed us into others , and the police officer admitted they had no idea what really happened and had just tried to work it out from the aerial photos. My witnesses did not even get called. The judge dismissed the charges and said everyone should pay their own costs. So while I paid a bit more than the fine would have been I had no record and no points on my German license. The same lawyer also worked to get me paid for the damage to my car and worked out deals with the two insurance companies who handled the two drivers behind me, each paying half. But it took more than a year -- closer to two years -- to get my money back as I had no collision coverage on my car.
Interesting aside is that in Germany, the insurance company does not send an adjuster to figure out value etc. You call an independent aduster who inspects and makes a report and sends you a bill, which you send to the insurance company. The idea is to remove conflicts of interest. Also, the default is that you keep the wreck and so they subtract a nominal amount from the total value and that is your settlement. You can then sell the wreck or rebuild it or whatever. (This is for a total loss situation -- obviously not when it is less than a total loss, in which case they pay the costs determined by the adjuster). I had a friend there who owned his own body shop and he asked me how much I wanted for the wreck. I told him a value (which was probably 500 DM more than the nominal value) and he said ok, he would sell it for me, give me that much, and then we would split the rest. I think the nominal value was like 3000 DM and I told him 3500 DM and he sold it for 6000 DM. He got 1250 DM out of it and I got 4750 DM out of it. I couldn't complain.
Sorry for the long missive. It brought back memories from the experience, which was a scary experience in the actual accident and a learning experience thereafter.
Then again let 'em wait. 
