[Nine17]

I went to the Schlumpf museum back in '93 (it's much nicer now) and combined Porsche and Daimler-Benz in Stuttgart as well as the now broken-up Rosso-Bianco near Frankfurt. There is now a 199 mph TGV on the first phase of the Ligne Grand Vitesse Est which cuts the travel time way down -- about 3 hours and 10 minutes Paris to Mulhouse with no connections if I read the schedules correctly. The TGV service of the SNCF is incredibly good -- I've taken the TGV to the South of France and the special TGV that they lay on from the Gare Montparnasse to the 24 Hours of Le Mans -- the speed and smoothness are remarkable. With the inauguration of the LGV Est you can now probably see the Schlumpf museum as a day trip from Paris; it will be even faster when the second phase is completed in 2014!