In the city of Mannheim, Germany

 “All of those cars were once just a dream in somebody’s head.” -- Peter Gabriel

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(in Germany) Mannheim, a city in and around which I lived and worked for 12 years, is closely associated with Karl Benz, the German mechanical engineer who designed and built the first practical automobile powered by an internal-combustion engine. In 1883, he founded Benz & Co. in Mannheim, which initially focused on stationary engines, but Benz continued to work on his dream of creating a motorcar. By 1888, a model of Benz's first car had been made available for purchase. When Karl was discouraged by people’s reactions, because it was deemed unsafe for the roads, his wife, Bertha (literally) rode to the rescue. She stole the vehicle one morning and took a trip of some 100 km (~67 mi.) away, to visit her mother. This trip -- from Mannheim to Pforzheim and back -- was highly publicized and it allowed Karl Benz to market his auto. People soon started buying automobiles -- and the Bertha Benz Memorial Route is now a German tourist and theme route in the state of Baden-Württemberg, and a member of the European Route of Industrial Heritage. It follows the tracks of the world's first long distance road trip by a vehicle powered with an internal combustion engine, with Bertha at the "wheel," in 1888.