Mayhem near Munchen (Munich) en route to Rothenberg
I have to confess there have been many times in recent years when those nagging doubts that invade the minds of the ‘Elderly’, have certainly made their assault on my grey cells. Non-positive thoughts such as: old, useless, in-the-way, nothing –to-contribute,etc. etc frequently invade the mind of this ancient, fairly deaf, getting physically less-able, out-of-touch old codger.
Today was just the second day into our motor home adventures and it was set to be a glorious day. The sun shone from a cloudless sky, barely a breath of wind, the countryside alive with birdsong and Spring’s first radiant flush of brightest greens and yellows. Ah the world looked good, and indeed it was – and still is.
We travelled in convoy with Rob and Rach in the lead – trail-blazing with the aid of map and trusty GPS. I was getting more and more comfortable with the job of driving the second vehicle – we were even overtaking heavy trucks on the autobahn, on the long slow-ish climbs, and tooling along at 90 ks felt fine. (Oh how the mighty have fallen! )
Driving along a quiet secondary road, towards the end of the day’s run, my attention must have wandered and suddenly I found the outside wheels of the van were in the soft shoulder of the road. Immediately the van veered onto the grass verge and started bucking like a wild bronco. I was wrestling very hard to maintain a semi-straight course. trying hard to regain the seal. Well I was getting there ok but unfortunately the Germans had decided to put up a sign on a pole,right in my way. I was still struggling to keep the van from getting right out of control, so avoiding action was not an option. With a tremendous thud the pole was demolished and we lurched on. back to the safety of the road.
A stop at a rest point shortly thereafter gave us an opportunity to survey the damage.
Horrors. It was far worse than I had feared: the canopy that overhangs the van’s cab (sleeping quarters for two) had taken the full force of the blow and was very severely dented. Wrecked would be a more descriptive way of putting it. The damage is severe, It will have to be fixed and that will take time, not to mention money.
Now you know why I started with those negative thoughts, Believe me they are hard to shake off when you do something really stupid like this.
Rob and Rach are very gracious and have not vented there frustrations upon me. But at times like this I have to wonder – maybe it’s time to act your age and go home and have a nice cup of tea and a nap.
We finally arrived in Rothenberg and parked at a very nice Van Park close to town.
Next day. We spent most of today trying to sort out someone to repair the van. This turned out to be another saga – which we are getting accustomed to with things relating to vans. Rach & I found a friendly mechanic who did all he could to help. In the end he suggested we try a caravan repair place in a town 30 kms away. So off Rob and I went and found the town. Passing through we noticed a large motor home dealers so we called in there before moving on to the recommended place. The dealership was full of luxury super-homes and as we trundled in with our sad & sorry-looking 1983 Fiat you could almost feel the immaculately-suited gents recoil in horror. They really did not want our thing spoiling the look of their display. We climbed down and asked if they could effect the repairs. They looked pityingly at us and said the repairs would cost at least E3000 and the van was only worth E800! “please go away” was the message we got. So away we went and found a friendly service station guy further down the road. When we described the place we were looking for it quickly became obvious that that was where we had just been! Our options had dwindled to one – do it yourself. So off we went to the local ‘Mitre 10’ and bought up tools and bits and pieces which we hope are going to be sufficient for us to tidy things up and make it all watertight. Today it rained so repairs were out of the question, Instead we drove down to Oberammergau, nestled in the foot of the Alps. Beautiful countryside and we found a nice cheap place to park the vans
More later.
Tags: Transport, Travel, Tag Index
kiwijoe
May 27th, 2009 at 3:07 am
[…] Every train trip we have taken has presented us with different scenery, a different story. Could every road day do likewise? The scenery started out a repeat of snippets of various countries west of Mongolia…..evergreen forests, vibrant flowering yellow fields, windmills, orange-roofed villages in the distance. But there was difference too – the brown billboards town marking signs with points of interest painted on them, the castles appearing on hilltops, the *whoosh* made by cars faster than us zooming past at speeds deemed too dangerous to contemplate in New Zealand, the car we passed (yes, we passed a car on the autobahn! And went on to pass a few trucks too), the children complaining that there was nothing interesting to look at out the window because they actually wanted their noses stuck in card games and Sudokus, the obviously ill rabbits that didn’t run away at our lunchstop, getting off the autobahn and weaving through narrow-streeted villages with houses so close to the road you could pick flowers out of windowboxes from the van, the crying Youngest Child (oh no, that was the same as yesterday – although today she only lasted five minutes before dropping off to sleep), and the Grandpa taking out a road sign. But that’s his story to tell, not mine. I just happened to look in the wing mirror as Rob yelled into the walkie talkie, “Are you OK?” and panicked to see “The Other Van” half on the grass verge swaying about searching for road. Rob had seen the demolishing of the road sign just before that and was splitting his gaze between the road in front and the drama unfolding behind. Thankfully a parking lot appeared almost immediately and we pulled over to assess the damage. That was the pivotal point of difference for today and we hope not to repeat that story again another day! If you want to *see* what happened, take a look HERE. […]
October 6th, 2009 at 10:59 am
[…] Someone I’ve heard of put an intriguing blog post on fillingthegaps Blog Archive Mayhem near Munchen (Munich) en …Here’s a quick excerptI have to confess there have been many times in recent years when those nagging doubts that invade the minds of the ‘Elderly’, have certainly made their assault on my grey cells. Non-positive thoughts such as: old, useless, in-the-way, … […]