Day 1 - The start, 274km, 9 hours, and completing tasks!

What a day, it all started this morning with assembling 110 cars on a parking lot in Hamm. Muenden. The Rally team set up the scene bright and early in the morning. Cars varied from fire trucks to 'Trabies' to 'Porsche' to ... we couldn't have imagined it

After walking around to see the cars, a motivational speech by the rally team and the mayor of Hamm. Muenden, we got on the road around 11am. A lovely day - 20 degree Celsius, sun and clouds, we drove off highways up north with the goal to reach Hamburg at daylight. We were given 3 checkpoints where we had to take a picture to proof we drove by and finding a Muenchhausen document where we kneel down to worship our car. We also followed the recommendation to go to the Steinhuder Meer, a biggest lake in Northern Germany where we took a break with afternoon coffee and cake. Getting familiar with the rally spirit in driving, navigating, splitting tasks amongst us, we enjoyed day 1 a lot and also got to know each other better. To our surprise we only saw once in a while another rally car.. driving off highways means that you can take a lot of different small roads to get to the defined finish line. Today also was the 30th anniversary of the German reunion, an important bank holiday!

It took as a bit longer than expected to reach Hamburg, completing the last task of the day to cross a 53m high Suederelbe bridge and reaching our hotel, a quick stretch and changing cloths to go for a nice dinner. We drove 274kms off highways today - it felt very good, but it also felt like driving 1000 miles!