Thursday, October 4th, 2023: This morning I had to get up at an ungodly hour of 5:00 am to catch my flight to Stuttgart. I arrived at the Graf Zeppelin Hotel to be greeted by some of the folks who arrived already. We started the trip with a delicious lunch of the famous local specialty, the Maultaschen. We then went to a private conference room where I conducted our mandatory Drivers’ Briefing about how to drive safely in Europe, and understand the very different rules of the road and demonstrated the use of our longer-range walkie talkies. We also had everyone sign the PCA, Porsche and Fast Lane Releases. After some shopping we either dressed casually or donned our Lederhosen and Dirndls. We boarded our motor coach and headed to the renowned but raucous Cannstatter Volksfest, the amazing local beer festival that puts Munich to shame. Of course, we had four reserved tables for 10 each, upstairs in the special reserved area of the Empore, with its amazing view of the entire festival below and private rest rooms!! Johny, our local logistics executive, made sure that our tables were already set with the necessary Vesperplatten. As we arrived, we were handed these huge mugs of beer and red and white wine was already on the table. You haven’t lived until you’ve danced on the benches, with 10,000 drunk Germans singing “take me home country roads.”