First step successful

So I went to the Audi dealer this afternoon to place the order for my car. The young man I spoke to last week was off today, so I spoke instead to the sales manager.

We went through the order sheet. Here's what I ordered:
Audi Q5 2.0T - Moonlight blue metallic paint with Cinnamon Brown interior
Premium Plus package
3G MMI with navigation
19-inch wheels
Bang and Olufsen sound system
Trailer hitch
Rear side airbags

The salesman asked when I wanted to pick up the car, and I told him I was hoping for mid-September and that my research had indicated I needed about two months lead time. He responded very non-committally, but politely. He said he would make some calls, get the order placed and let me know what he found out. He asked if the dates were flexible. I told him that they were, but the car was a birthday present for me and my birthday was in September, so I was hoping to pick it up then. It seemed like a silly thing to say at the time, but I'm glad I did.

Tonight, about 7 pm, I got a call from the salesman with good news. He said he spent the better part of the day getting my order placed and working with the Audi people to get everything done. He said he was told that because of demand, lead time for Q5s was running about four months. But...he said the district manager is new on the job and trying very hard to impress his dealers, so he pulled some strings with the Audi factory and got my car pushed up in the queue for production the last week of August. That should make it ready in time for me to pick it up on my birthday. Mentioning my birthday to the sales manager was a good thing. He passed that info on the to district manager, who used that as extra incentive to leverage the changes he needed to be made.

Now, all of this is tentative. I should receive confirmation in the next day or so and then I'm hopeful I can get firm enough dates to book flights. Until then, I will keep my fingers crossed and hope it all comes to fruition the way it looks like it will right now.

Nikki and I are both very excited about this trip. There is so much of my life I want to share with her, so she can get to know a little bit more about where her dad came from. My history then becomes her history.

I've been tentatively planning an itinerary, or at least a list of places to visit. I want to show her some historical and cultural sites. I want to show her some of the places I lived, many of which either no longer exist. The troop drawdown in Europe over the past 10 or 15 years has seen the closure of many U.S. military bases and the return of the property to the Germans. It's interesting to look on Google maps' satellite photos and see how things have changed since the bases closed. It will be surreal to visit them more than 30 years later. I plan to take lots of pictures and post a few of them here.

Our tentative list of places to visit:
Salzburg, Austria
Munich, including Dachau, the former Nazi concentration camp
Ludwig's castles: Neuschwanstein, Linderhof Palace, and Herrenchiemsee
Rothenburg and the Romantic Road
Wurzburg, where I went to high school my freshman year and where my parents were stationed after I left home.
Wertheim, my second home town and where I lived for four years spread over two tours.
That will likely exhaust our precious time there, but we will see a lot in those days.
Of course, like all vacations, itineraries are subject to change without notice!