Photo Gallery: Tour the Volkswagen Autostadt in Wolfsburg, Germany

With a busy week behind you and the weekend within reach, there’s no shame in taking things a bit easy on Friday afternoon. With this in mind, every Friday TriplePundit will give you a fun, easy read on a topic you care about. So, take a break from those endless email threads, and spend five minutes catching up on the latest trends in sustainability and business.

When it came time to buy my first car, my dad and I drove down to the used car dealership, and we wound up buying the first one we saw. Here in the states, this is a fairly common occurrence. 'See it, like it, drive it, buy it' is the typical car-buying process for millions of Americans, myself included.

So, you can imagine my surprise as I sat down to lunch last week at the Ritz-Carlton, Wolfsburg and learned that buying a new car often takes months for Europeans. Forget picking one out and driving it off the lot. Across the pond, most families work directly with an automaker to customize every aspect of their new ride. They then wait weeks for their custom vehicle to be produced.

After all that waiting, many European drivers crave a bit of pomp and circumstance when they pick up their new car. That's why thousands of car-buyers journey here to Wolfsburg every year. They often make a weekend of it -- staying at the Ritz-Carlton, touring the stunning countryside and visiting the Autostadt, Volkswwagen's theme park and educational center that focuses on "people, cars and what moves them." During their stay, buyers head to the Car Towers, the world's largest delivery center, to pick up their ride (picture an enormous vending machine -- but filled with cars).

But car-buyers aren't the only people who visit the Autostadt. In fact, the park attracts around 2 million visitors each year -- more than 29 million since the official opening in 2000 -- making it one of the most popular tourist destinations in Germany. I had a chance to tour the park, which sits on the site of an old industrial complex and puts the automaker's efficient and sustainable design on display. Click through for the virtual tour to catch an glimpse for yourself.

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All images by Mary Mazzoni

Editor's Note: Travel accommodations for the author and TriplePundit were provided by Volkswagen.

Based in Philadelphia, Mary Mazzoni is a senior editor at TriplePundit. She is also a freelance journalist who frequently writes about sustainability, corporate social responsibility and clean tech. Her work has appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News, the Huffington Post, Sustainable Brands, Earth911 and the Daily Meal. You can follow her on Twitter @mary_mazzoni.