Berlin to Hof, Germany - Large cities are to overland expeditions what salt to a slug is, a long painful death. Berlin proved to be a time warp. 

It started off well enough. Everyone was up and ready downstairs eating breakfast by 8am. It was a schedule I was determined to keep. We had CNN coming to interview us at 10am giving us enough time for last minute preparations. We would pack while they were around and leave directly afterwards. That at least was the plan.

CNN showed up late, packing was delayed by interviews, leaving was delayed by the mandatory group shots, then by set up shots of leaving Berlin, followed by mass chaos trying to leave the city. Wrong autobahn, wrong exit, wrong side of town. In the three hours in which it took us to leave the city we ended up getting closer to Stockholm than Cape Town. I took a solace in that it wasn't the nearly eight hour debacle we had on Trabant Trek trying to flee Istanbul.

It had taken a lot of driving but the decision was narrowed down to three groups of three cars. Safety inspection certificate along with other random German bureaucratic measures (too boring to mention) had limited our choices.

I turned the decision over to Tony with the simple advice that I had prior experience with the Renault and wanted no part of that piece of shit on the trip. I did not doubt Tony's judgement, but also knew he had little experience with European models and makes.