DEUTSCHLAND UND ÖSTERREICH
German wedding vows contain two extra paragraphs about neatness.
Population:
82 MILLION
(GERMANY)
9 MILLION
(AUSTRIA)
Austria has very stringent noise laws and if Julie Andrews really were to make the ‘hills’ come ‘alive’ with the ‘sound of music’ she would be arrested immediately.
Capital: (Germany)
BERLIN
Capital: (Austria)
VIENNA
Germans love meat, bread and beer. Frankly it’s a miracle the whole place doesn’t stink.
German contains many long words such as Dieschandezweiminuten-füreintreffenzuseindasnicht-vongroßerbedeutungist which is the word for the feeling of shame brought on by being two minutes late for a not-very-important meeting.
Currency:
EURO
62 per cent of Austria is on a hill.
Famous people from Germany:
MICHAEL SCHUMACHER, SEBASTIAN VETTEL, HEIDI KLUM, BORIS BECKER, CLAUDIA SCHIFFER, LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
Famous people from Austria:
NIKI LAUDA, TOTO WOLFF, ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, SIGMUND FREUD, FELIX BAUMGARTNER, WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Famous people who, rather neatly for the purposes of this discussion, can claim to be both German and Austrian:
CHRISTOPH WALTZ
Austria is one of the world’s greatest nations for recycling. Funnily enough, Ferdinand Porsche was Austrian and he invented the 911.
Got an argument you need to resolve? Quick, let’s go to Germany and Austria said no one ever. Except The Grand Tour, who went there to find the best high-riding 4x4 thing. Although Jeremy said he knew the answer in advance. So no change there then.
The majesty of a Range Rover in full flight, poised to give rival cars a damn good Güterweg.
Jeremy Clarkson steps out with an invisible lady.
The Grand Tour camera crew get some scene-setting establishing shots before a drag race. Then they move out of the way, otherwise they’ll be run over.
‘Look, James, beans.’
‘Look, Jeremy, I’m not interested.’
Mullets! Moustaches! Salmon-coloured smart-casual jackets! In many ways Germany follows its own path when it comes to taste, and that includes the special-edition versions of their cars. while the stuff they sell to the rest of the world is simple and ungimmicky, at home they cut loose with limited-production cars to suit local tastes. Here are some highlights.
Audi 100
Benny Hill Edition (1985)
VW Golf Hasselhoff (1989)
BMW 535i M People (1993)
VW Polo Hasselhoff (1997)
Audi A4 Turdyparty (2000)
VW Passat Hasselhoff (2002)
Mercedes C63 AMG Ralf Schumacher Edition (2009)
VW Golf Hasselhoff (2012)
Porsche 911 Mistress (2014)
Mercedes S600 Maybach
Sexy Trouser (2017)
THERE ARE MANY TRACKS IN THE WORLD, BUT ONLY ONE OF THEM LOOKS LIKE A HORRENDOUS HAEMORRHAGIC FEVER VIRUS. AT LEAST, AS FAR AS WE KNOW. THAT PLACE IS THE GRAND TOUR’S EXCLUSIVE TEST TRACK WHERE CARS CAN BE PUSHED TO THE LIMIT WITH ALMOST NO RISK OF CLATTERING THROUGH AN OLD LADY’S FRONT WINDOW. IT’S FAST, IT’S CHALLENGING AND ITS LOCATION IS ABSOLUTELY TOP SECRET. UNLESS YOU DO A QUICK SEARCH FOR IT ON THE INTERNET.
SWIND-O-FACTS!
THE GRAND TOUR TEST TRACK IS LOCATED IN A TOP-SECRET LOCATION THAT CANNOT BE DISCLOSED, ALTHOUGH WE CAN REVEAL THAT IT’S NEAR THE BRITISH TOWN OF SWINDON. BUT WHAT IS A SWINDON? WELL, HERE ARE SOME COMPLETELY GENUINE SWIND-O-FACTS TO BRING YOU UP TO SPEED.
Swindon’s name is thought to derive from the Old English for ‘pig hill’.
BUFFERING
In 2007 Swindon had the UK’s highest level of broadband access.
CHUNKY
Seventy per cent of people in Swindon are classed as overweight or obese.
FRISKY
In the early 2000s Swindon was described as ‘the teenage pregnancy capital of Britain’.
ACTORING
Billie Piper is from Swindon.
ROTARY
Swindon is most famous for having a complicated roundabout.
STEAMY
Isambard Kingdom Brunel built a huge railway works in Swindon. It’s since been knocked down.
PAMPLEMOUSSE
Swindon used to be home to a large Renault logistics centre.
BITS
Swindon is home to a small museum of computing.
JAMES MAY
A rapid-fire Q&A with the ex-magazine sub-editor turned Grand Tour presenter.
Hello.
So, first question …
Just to clarify, the idea for this feature is that you have precisely three minutes of my time and must ask as many questions as possible?
Yes, that’s right.
How are you timing it?
On my phone. Look.
Ah, yes. They’re pretty accurate, the clocks in mobile phones. I’m talking about the actual clocks, of course, but the stopwatch is a component of that. Most of them regularly synchronise with a server that will itself take time from a highly accurate timekeeping device, probably an atomic clock, which of course is very precise, though not unerringly so since there are various other factors at work, and frequently the chips in everyday devices contain offsets or ‘cheats’ in order to compensate for other factors.
Yes, so anyway …
But when it comes to watches, it’s ironic that you can spend thousands on an exquisitely made mechanical watch and yet it will be less accurate than a five quid digital bought from a petrol station.
Yes, I see, but …
Really, it’s one of the greatest achievements of modern mankind that you can, for relatively little money, buy a device that is so fantastically accurate when it comes to timekeeping. One of the greatest breakthroughs was being able to regulate quartz in a digital way rather than having to trim the quartz tuning fork. Nowadays the chip within the watch allows for the crystal itself running ‘fast’, as it were, and skips crystal cycles at set intervals to allow for this. It’s very clever, and the end result is that you could keep pretty accurate time for less than the price of a big sandwich.
Fascinating, but I wonder if we could get back to …
Though I suppose in some ways that’s also a reflection on the price of sandwiches. If there was some kind of meal deal going on, you might be better off with the sandwich, and they’d probably throw in a bag of crisps and a bottle of fizzy drink for the price. It’s actually not bad value, except that you can’t tell the time on a sandwich. Or a bag of crisps. Or a bottle of pop. And what bothers me about the meal deal is that maybe I don’t want the crisps that are included, maybe I want a different sort that aren’t, but then the people in the shop can get very confused. It’s almost like they don’t want deviation from the meal deal. You have to wonder, why are they so wedded to the meal deal? I think they’re hiding something. They’ve over-ordered on certain things and now they’re trying to get rid of them. Well, I’m onto them and I won’t play that game. It’s why I never do the meal deal.
I see, I just wonder if we could …
Now, if they gave away a small, cheap digital watch with the meal deal, then I might be interested because to my mind that would represent good value when you consider what you’re actually getting for your four or five pounds. All that precise engineering, but very carefully designed and evolved over many years to allow mass manufacture at an accuracy that once upon a time we could only have dreamt of.
James, I was hoping we could …
The only problem is, you can’t eat a small, highly accurate digital watch. You could try, but I really wouldn’t. The battery isn’t very good for you. Also, you might choke on the strap. Oh dear.
What?
We’ve only got 10 seconds left.
Well, I think we could start again, since I haven’t asked any questions.
But that would defeat the purpose of this feature. Once the three minutes is up I can’t speak to you anymore. It would be dishonest.
Yes, but it’s not really a hard and fast rule so, if I can, I’d like to ask a few questions.
James?
Are you not speaking to me because the three minutes is up?
Really?
James May, thank you.
Having a great time here in Nashville. Got here a day early to settle in and decided to go for a walk into town. After two minutes Jeremy declared that he ‘hates walking’ and that we had already covered ‘a million miles’.
It was actually about 200 yards. When he stopped moaning about how his ‘knees are literally going to fall off’ we found a place for lunch and discovered that in Tennessee ‘hot chicken’ refers to the spiciness and not the temperature, but only after our eyes had started bleeding. Later we met Brian Johnson out of AC/DC and went to another restaurant which was quite fashionable and we knew it was quite fashionable because it was almost pitch black inside and everyone had to use their phone torches to read the menus. Up bright and early this morning because The Grand Tour is brilliantly organised and we only realised yesterday that the tent was facing a very reflective river and also the exact spot where the sun started setting, both of which made the whole set unfìlmable after about 11 a.m. So we started early. Problem solved. Whole thing went very, very well. American audiences are great. Hope all good at home,
THE GRAND TOUR
P.S. Brian died.
