The writer Otto Julius Bierbaum (1865-1910) published plays, stories, essays, and poetry, making him one of the most popular authors of the German Empire. Together with his wife, he undertook one of the first tourist car journeys in 1902 in an Adler convertible, traveling from Berlin through Prague and Vienna to Sorrento and back through Switzerland to the Rhine. During this trip, he achieved the first crossing of the Gotthard Pass by car. His ironic expedition report, published in 1903, consists mainly of letters to acquaintances, including Detlev von Liliencron and the painters Hans Thoma and Franz von Stuck, in which he describes a Europe that seems almost exotic by today’s standards, lacking developed roads, forests of signs, and gas stations.