Some shows and car events will always be shows and events, great though they may be, some become institutions, Bonneville speed week, Bug Jam, Goodwood Festival Of Speed.  You can add to that list if you haven't already Wörthersee.  Or more properly Auto News Wörthersee Treffen.

Worthersee is a lake in Austria, which has three main towns around it Krumpendorf, Pörtschach and Velden.  For one week each year the area around the lake is taken over by the biggest gathering of VWs in Europe.  Literally taken over.



This year is the 27th running of the event and since its first years the number of attendees has grown to 100,000 people, think about that for a second, that is the population of a reasonably sized town, all turning up to one place to talk and show off cars.  People travel from all over Europe, in fact they travel from all over the world, to get a slice of the Wörthersee spirit.  The show is now so big that it effectively spreads all the way around the lake.  It is possible to go for the week and not see the same car twice, such is the volume of cars there.

Luckily for you, if you've missed the chance to got his year, we have DarrenW on hand to record, by way of many many photographs, the whole event.  However we are impatient sorts and want to see some pictures now.  The internet being the instant medium it is a quick search on Flickr already brings up a handful of pictures.  The ever reliable vw-pages.at gallery also serves up an early taster of the event (click on galerie -> events to see the pictures).

We'll have to wait until at least next week for Darren's return, but in the mean time we can trawl websites and google for information and start picking out our favourite cars.  We can also start looking into how we're going to get to the event next year, this is a must visit for all car fans, weather you are a VW fan or not.

All the photos used here are taken from this flickr user