At last, time to head for foreign climes. I’d put together a little trip to Eastern Germany to coincide with the ‘Emmenrausch’, an event organised by the MZ factory in Hohndorf, Germany. With the factory being in the far eastern part of Germany, not too far from the Czech border the plan was to take two days to get there and back with the weekend spent at the actual event. There were a fair number of MZ Riders Club members who had expressed an interest in coming along and a club member in Germany had kindly helped with this by finding us a youth hostel about half way there and arranging for the local social club to provide us with an evening meal on the way out. Everything was booked and all that was needed was to give the Skorpion (Traveller) a quick once over and pack the camping gear.

 The morning of the trip opened with grey skies and drizzle. Having been keeping my eye on the news reports the previous week it was apparent that much of eastern Germany was suffering from severe flooding. I was more than a little worried about what I was about to get myself into. This might be a complete disaster.

 However, having a ferry operate virtually on your doorstep makes any continental holiday a whole lot easier. In no time at all I was at the ferry terminal at Rosyth, where I met up with fellow section member Stuart Wade (FJ1200) and John Shaw from N. Ireland (ETZ251). We all booked in, went through customs (“Would you mind opening your luggage sir?”) and boarded the ferry.

 There’s not much that I can say about the actual crossing. It’s a big boat, there’s not much to do but eat and drink, you go to bed and when you wake up you’re in Zeebrugge. The miracles of modern travel.

 

Waiting for the ferry at Rosyth

 The following morning dawned bright and warm, much to our surprise. So, off we toddled in the blazing sunshine and quite ferocious heat, riding in sunglasses and with our jackets open to catch some welcome breeze. A pleasant change from the doom and gloom predicted on the TV news bulletins we’d caught on the trip over. Hooray! Proper holiday weather.

 From Zeebrugge to Hohndorf and the MZ factory you follow Euro-Route 40, regardless of what the road is called locally. Euro-Routes cross all national boundaries. That makes planning the trip much easier as I’d never ridden on the Continent before so was a bit unsure of what to expect.

 Service stations and eateries saw a whole lot of pointing, something which was to feature heavily in my dealings with the locals. I am crap at languages I have to admit. I try, but having a memory like a sieve at the best of times doesn’t help. The folks on the motorway must be used to this sort of thing as we got served without too much trouble. Stupidest moment of the whole trip, however, was stopping at a petrol station, filling up, getting the right money ready and then working out that I didn’t know the German for pump 13. I had only thought to learn 1 to 10. I had no idea how to say 13. Aaargh! It was a pleasant, if slightly longer than planned first day; about 270 miles & 8 hours. We arrived quite late at the youth hostel where we would spend the night having been caught up in a massive tailback on the autobahn caused, we learned later, by a bad car crash. Filtering through traffic is illegal in Germany, but if we hadn’t done it we’d have died of the heat and we’d probably still be there now. The hostel was a welcome sight, I can tell you. Here we met up with some of the other folk going, about a dozen or so. A quick shower, then off for the meal - goulash, beer, black bread. Excellent stuff after a long day. Then back to the hostel and straight to bed.

 Up early, breakfast and then another 300 miles the following day. Travelling on the autobahns is quite easy, if extremely tedious. Enormous distances can be simply gobbled up. Today was virtually identical to the previous one, except no major hold ups on the road. Arriving at the campsite, which was just across the road from the factory, we met up with the rest of the lads. A grand total of 23 camping, with another 4 in local B&B’s. Not a bad turn-out. The fact that we’d come all the way from the UK (Scotland, England, N. Ireland & Wales) seemed to impress the hell out of everyone we met. Had we all come on MZs? Yes, for the most part. They just shook their heads in wonder/disbelief.

 It is difficult to convey the scale of what the factory had put together, and just how many MZs there were. There were thousands of bikes, and everywhere you looked were MZs. Mostly modern 4-strokes and immaculate older models like the BK350 and RT125. Kurt later informed me that the factory reckon the crowd was in the region of 17,500 (although only about 2,000-3,000 were actually camping). It would have been larger but for the devastation left by the flooding in the surrounding areas, none of which affected our weekend I’m glad to say

 Camping for the weekend cost 10 Euros and, if you didn’t bring a tent you could hand over 40 Euros and get a tent as well which you got to keep. I should have forked out the extra for the tent. It would almost have been worth it to roll up to your next rally and pitch your tent with MZ emblazoned along the sides. You won’t be seeing too many of them, I’m guessing.

 You then paid a further 5 Euros for a pass giving access to the factory site itself for the whole weekend. Total cost, minus the tent, £10. Not exactly over-priced, was it? Friday was mostly spent settling in, getting the lay of the land and stocking up on beer. On the Saturday morning some of us took advantage of a guided tour around the factory. We caught the advertised English language tour and our guide turned out to be Peter Körner, Marketing Manager for (amongst other places) the UK. I’d last met Peter at the Scottish Bike Show earlier in the year and he was as enthusiastic about MZ as ever. The factory itself is a curious mixture of the old and the new, as you might imagine. Production was limited to the Charly scooter (running two shifts to produce the numbers being ordered, apparently) and the Baghira/Mastiff. The Skorpion had by this point ceased production, and the Moskito mopeds are assembled elsewhere. The most interesting part was seeing the work being done on the 1000S. These were in final R&D mode, with prototypes being put through their paces on rolling roads. The factory was gearing up for full production of the 1000S, with the first models due for public release soon.

 What can I say about the adjacent auto-jumble? It was awesome. The sheer volume of MZ spares beggared the imagination. And the prices! I suppose it’s because we’re not used to finding anything for MZs at such events. And there were some serious bargains to be had, as well as parts which we’d not been able to get our grubby mits on for years. How about side-stands for £5, brand new chrome panels for a TS250 at £28 a pair etc etc. It was almost a shame not to have a bike to buy bits for, although the others managed to get enough between them to build a whole machine. I did manage to pick up a brand-new silencer for my other bike, a Rotax, for about £30, though, so that I didn’t feel left out.

 To my knowledge, no one bothered with the organised ride-out as it was scheduled to take the whole day Saturday (8am-6pm) and there were too many other things to see and do.

 What else was on offer? How about test rides on all the latest bikes. Simply present your paperwork, get given the keys to the machine of your choice and ride off into the afternoon heat.

 Live music, or at least loads of noise. The local radio station, Radio JUMP, had turned up and their DJ’s were working all weekend when there weren’t bands playing. The bands were a bit hit and miss for my tastes. Euro-pop doesn’t feature highly on my list of preferences, I’m afraid. Headlining Saturday night, though, were the delightfully named “Sweety Glitter & the Sweethearts”, a German Glam-Rock band playing mostly 1970s cover versions in heavy Teutonic accents. Hmmm.

 You needn’t want for food or drink. A huge array of concessions catered to this need. My one complaint was that wherever we went you could only buy pilsner (oh, and Cola-Beer, which is pils mixed with cola. A bit like shandy, only more disgusting). Not that I have anything against pilsner, and it does make ordering something to drink a damn sight easier for us pointers if the choice is limited, but I was looking forward to sampling some the wheat beers or local specialist beers. Oh, well. Another time I suppose. The food stalls were a vegetarian’s nightmare. Meat, and lots of it. One was even roasting whole pigs.

 Saturday evening ended with a huge firework display which we watched from the top of the hill where we were camped. Being British we’d decided to forego the ‘Erotik Show’ and head back for a cup of tea at the day's end.

 Besides all the organised stuff it was nice to just wander around, looking at the bikes and talking to people (or pointing a lot and smiling). One of the amazing things for me was just how available the folk at the factory made themselves over the weekend. They were all to be found mingling with the crowd. We spent an enjoyable Friday night talking to one joint CEOs, R. 'Vasu' Vasuthewan, a Malaysian who spoke English, so we could do more than point at things. It turned out that the poor man’s house was underwater and his wife was less than pleased that he’d ran out on her for the weekend. When he found out that David Wallace was an American, despite his wearing a kilt for the weekend, he went away and found the head of sales for the US who was in town for the weekend. I even spotted the other joint CEO of MZ, one Petr Karel-Kouros, just wandering about nodding to folk and having a beer. Can you imagine this happening anywhere else? The trip home was just a reverse of the trip there, except that we got lost more often for some reason. Hottest day of the trip was the Sunday with temperatures in the mid-30s C. Too hot for this son of Caledonia!

 Total mileage for the week was something like 1200 miles. Fuel consumption was excellent, between 70-80mpg (well, I was travelling at 60mph for the bulk of the trip in company with John Shaw on his ETZ). I enjoyed my first foray onto foreign roads and the Skorpion just ate up the miles without so much as a hiccup.

Details of the annual Emmenrausch Rally: http://www.emmenrausch.com/