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PLACE: A visit to Autohalle Andelfingen
Recently i see places for car lovers pop up every here and there in switzerland and europe generally. They’re mostly focussing on either the wealthy, or oldtimer loving or focussing on a special theme. A few months ago the Autohalle in Andelfingen opened. It is a completely bespoke build not far away from where i live, and directly located at my daily route from and to work. So everytime i thought i should give it a visit. Well, luckily a friend suggested the same when we decided for a men’s night out. So we jumped into the car and headed to the industrial area outside of Andelfingen, located just next…
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RACE: Rendezvous am kleinen Klausen (10.10.2021)
Yesterday i spent my day at the “Rendez vous am kleinen Klausen” historic car hillclimb, which was more or less a celebration of an annual race that was famous with both spectactors and racing drivers in switzerland (and across the border) in the past and used to happen the last time 71 years ago. Actually it was planned to do a 70 years memorial event last year, but it was delayed by one year due to covid. Honestly i didn’t have any big expectations. One of the organizers is my former schoolmates dad, who also happens to have this collection, so i thought it would be more or less a…
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EVENT: The “Rendevouz am kleinen Klausen” classic car hillclimb & Rallye
I usually don’t promote other stuff, but i thought this one is rather special and deserves a bit of promotion: On the weekend of the 9. / 10. October a cool event is held close to my home. The “Kleiner Klausen” Hillclimb and rallye. It is a revival of a historic hillclimb event that used to happen on this road in Opfertshofen. Named “kleiner Klausen” (Small Klausen) after the famous Klausenpass in the mountains, because it had so many similar windings. It used to be a pretty spectacular race with around 4’000 visitors at it’s peak times and a drivers favourite in the race calendar. Since many years, this is…
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PLACE: A visit to the incredible Bettelbrünneli Documents Collection
The great thing about car community is, there is always a guy more crazy than you are. And from time to time, you just run into these people. This is the story on how i ended up in what is probably switzerlands biggest archive of Automotive related documents. Or as Marcel, the owner, says, “for everything with 3 or more wheels”. Welcome to the “Bettelbrünneli Collection“, which is named after a spring found next to it’s former location. But since then it has outgrown that place and moved to a new location. I didn’t expect too much when i walked towards a nondescript industrial building basically out in the nowhere,…
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OTHER: Greetings from the Julierpass
The last days we spent skiing with some friends in St.Moritz which was all great itself. But the real fun was the way there and back. Ok the way there was late at night in the dark so i took driving easy. But the way back was absolutely glorious! We initially planned to drive back over the Flüelen or Albula pass but both of them where closed because of snow / Winter-time. The other Route via davos would include loading the car on a train for a part of the trip, which i wanted to avoid, so this is basically the only route left (except a long detour via the…
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TRIP: Grand Tour of Switzerland pt. 4/4 – Montreux – Gruyere – Estavayer le lac- Neuchâtel – Schaffhausen
Before i return back to normal operation with more car related blog posts, i’d like to share the fourth and last installment of our Roadtrip. We start where the last post ended (in beautiful Montreux) and slowly move back homewards, with a few stopovers in between. Our first stop was where we actually wanted to stop at Day 1 of our tour, but then changed plans (See last post). Gruyere: Gruyere is a beautiful little village on top of a hill with an attached historic castle, surrounded by beautiful mountain scenery… The world famous castle is extremely well preserved and definitely worth a visit: Look at the incredible size of…
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TRIP: Grand Tour of Switzerland pt. 3/4 – Schaffhausen – Jaunpass – Col du pillon – Montreux
This is the third installment of our tour through switzerland will show you a different area of switzerland. Rather than continueing through the mountain passes. we decided to go to the “Lake area” of the french speaking part of switzerland which i’ve never really explored before.. Well that was the plan at least. We decided to take the more comfortable wifey’s Mazda 3 (Aka Axela) this time. We took the Autobahn directly to the area of Gruyere, where we wanted to visit the Caillier chocolate factory. Due to COVID-19 only the guestshop was open and the factory tours limited, so we decided to check out some other tourist attractions instead.…
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TRIP: Grand Tour of Switzerland pt. 2/4 (Zermatt – Grimsel – Brünig – Schaffhausen)
So for Part two of our journey we decided to take a slightly different route home and visit some nice places along the way. After taking the train back from Zermatt to Täsch we re-united with the EK9 and started to drive back through the Valleys direction Furkapass. After meeting these cool moped guys making a similar roadtrip on their Puch’s and Piaggo’s at a local Cheese-shop (I recommend buying some local cheese, which there are shops sprinkled and advertised along the roads) We decided to fuel up before heading back into the Mountain tops… But rather continuing back over the Furka-pass again. We took Another direction halfway up. This…
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TRIP: Grand Tour of Switzerland Pt1/4 (Schaffhausen – Furka – Zermatt)
Since our original vacation plans in norway got cancelled, we had to re-organize ourselves. Me and my wife decided to visit some places in switzerland that were on our bucket-list, and i conviced her to take the EK9 for the first part and include some mountain-passes which were on the way. She happily agreed. We divided our tour into two parts. the first one was more mountain oriented, the second one more lake-oriented. But the plans for part two changed (read that in a later post). Because of the many pictures i took, i decided to break the story into 4 parts. Welcome to Part one. Schaffhausen to Zermatt. We…
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EVENT: Herbst Japaner Old- & Youngtimertreffen
With wedding, house-building and other stuff, i wasn’t able to attend a lot of events throughout the last two years, so i was really looking forward to catch up this year and visit all the important meetings. Well and then the Coronavirus came and everything was cancelled. At least it seems that the one event that is late in the calender can still be held. So if you want to go to one japanese classic car meeting in switzerland this year, this one is it: Check out the pictures from 2018 here: https://www.jdmjunkies.ch/wordpress/2018-09-09/meet-japanese-young-oldtimer-meeting-rothrist-2018/ Thanks @ Kurt for the Pictures.
