BMW Motorrad Days Garmisch 2012

The biggest event of the year in the BMW motorbike world is the three day festival in Garmisch Germany. I’ve never been before and jumped at the chance to go when I was invited to give a presentation. It’s hard to separate the mountaineering I’ve done from the motorbike adventures… so I didn’t! I talked about getting to Baja Californina Mexico in January this year (which I rode across on a BMW GS 800) but getting there via the top of the world… including how I’d got that point too!

The event was amazing. Huge groups of riders had come from all over Europe, some even from Russia! 250 riders came over from the UK alone. There were more BMW bikes than I’ve ever seen in my life including a few that were a bit different to the norm.

Chris Pfeiffer was there doing displays that defied physics! Watching him was like watching motorbike ballet.

Meeting Chris and having a chat with him was definitely a highlight. He was there with his wife and three children. His boy, who’s five, was racing around on a tiny trails bike skidding everywhere – he was a little dude!

The other displays were very impressive too.

The German’s certainly know how to put on a good party and Saturday night was spent in a huge tent enjoying a traditional Bavarian knees up!

Unexpectedly I sat next to Troy Corser, the Australian super bike champion, on the flight home. He’s really cool and told me a few interesting things – You probably already know that BMW stands for Bavarian Motor Works but did you know that the company began building planes not motorbikes and the logo is a representation of a propeller – the white is the propeller and the blue is the sky?!

Not only was the event great but Garmisch Partenkirchen is a stunning mountain resort in Bavaria, Southern Germany and well worth a visit if you want to see a beautiful part of the world.

I’ll leave you with this image… It made me smile! I believe his name is Junter Van Schrechlich.