I woke up to a knock on the door of the hotel room. It was the owner with two people from the car hire company, I felt relieved that I had a car, but what did I get? After giving them all my details, we walked to the car park and I asked, “so, what have I got?”, “Q3” they replied, “here it is”.
I took the keys and said thank you. It was a manual diesel Audi Q3. I hadn’t driven a left hand drive manual before and I wasn’t really a fan of SUVs either, but beggars can’t be choosers.
“Hey Ajay, I got an Audi Q3” I announced as I walked into his room. I correctly guessed his reaction which was a mix of annoyance of me getting a new Audi and relief that the holiday can continue without any change of plans.
Ajay decided that the Q3’s boot would take all his luggage and equipment too.
Once we had left the hotel, we immediately went searching for a petrol station and couldn’t find one close by. I was slowly adapting to sitting on the left of the car and using a gear stick with my right hand, this required quite a bit of concentration initially.
After we found a petrol station, we went through a few tunnels, which Ravi kept forgetting to turn on his lights for. The sky opened up around noon and we had to deal with the sudden downpour. Ajay also discovered that BMW drivers in Germany were also psychos after one tried to overtake him and almost hit oncoming cars in the rain.
Once we arrived in Fussen and our hotel which was the Steakhaus Fussen and Tapas Bar, we played some tetris with the cars to fit them into the car park and headed into town.
Immedaitely opposite our hotel was a rather nice waterfall and series of rapids. Our surroundings were stunningly beautiful, and the rain had cleared at the perfect time for us to enjoy the walk into the town.
Ravi found a cat he really wanted to stroke and followed it down the street, the cat was quite indifferent to him but that didn’t deter him. he managed to stoke the cat before it decided that it didn’t like Ravi and ran off.
The river Lech which flows through Fussen is a weird shade of milky turquoise, this is due to the minerals in the water. The colour was stunning. Ravi also felt like feeding some ducks so we spent some time at the river’s edge. I grabbed one of the cameras and practiced some photography whilst Ravi tried to break up a fight between two ducks.
After wandering round the town, we encountered a middle east goods shop called Marrakesh run by a really nice Morrocan man. He even gave Ajay a sheet of goats leather.
After that we sat down to eat dinner and discuss the plan for the next day we decided we had to get up early to get to the fairy tale castle. After eating we went for a walk around Fussen and encountered a dry ski slope which Ravi got very excited as he explored the area. We also found a frog which tested the bounds of Ravi’s love of animals as he wouldn’t touch it, double standards indeed.
Once back at the hotel we settled in for the night. I didn’t sleep well. The room I had was very small and the bathroom did not have a door. Because of this I heard a lot of plumbing noises as the toilet wasn’t very far from the bed. Half-way through the night one of my bedroom windows swung open due to the wind. This startled me and made the night even worse. As the bed was right up against the windows I could hear a lot of howling wind noises as the area forms a valley. However, Ajay and Ravi said they had a very good night sleep, so I got the short straw with the room.
After leaving the hotel at 5:30am, we immediately went in search for petrol. We were still not getting the hang of driving on the other side of the road as Ajay went into a petrol station via the exit and had to reverse back out. After the drama of working out how to use a new type of unmanned petrol pump and filling up the cars we headed out of Luxembourg for Germany.
Whilst driving through a forested area, I noticed how many bugs were on my windscreen, it was causing me visibility problems every time the sun came out from behind the trees. Car glass cleaner would be a good purchase for the trip. Ajay informed us that it was called veiling glare and that it was a dangerous problem to have.
Breakfast was at a rather interesting sandwich and pastry shop, however, Ravi insisted he’d rather eat fruit from a Aldi supermarket. After fighting a bee which had decided he preferred the inside of my car, we set off again. Ajay almost got squashed by a tanker changing lanes and then had some more fun with his exhaust in a tunnel.
We found ourselves on an unrestricted stretch of motorway in Germany called an Autobahn and immediately Ajay’s MX-5’s temperature gauge started to rise quite a bit. We then decided to settle down to a cruise rather than trying to keep up with everyone on the motorway.
At 11am Ravi called out over the radios that something was coming from my car, I didn’t think anything of it, until he repeated that something was leaking from the bottom of my car and hitting his windscreen.
“My temperatures are going up”, I call back on the radio.
“Who’s temperature’s going up?”, Ajay asks.
“Get behind me and have a look at it”, I tell Ravi. “It’s fine now but it was spurting out”, he responds.
Ajay is still confused by the conversation, “who’s car is this?”
I overtake Ajay and call out “My temperatures are going up, I think I have a coolant leak, coolant leak. My temps are right up. Engines overheating. I’m going to have to stop.”
We all pull over to the hard shoulder of the unrestricted autobahn and I immediately get my high visibility vest and warning triangle out from the boot. I initially placed the warning triangle at a distance I thought was appropriate, however, I realised that on such a fast road even with excellent visibility, the lorries were really close to us. So I moved it even further away, I also added duct tape to the legs as the wind from the passing vehicles pushed it over very easily.
I called the RAC breakdown European travel insurance and told them the situation, after a few calls back and forth to confirm the details of what had happened and where we were they told us they were going to get a tow truck to take the car to a garage to be checked out. Ajay immediately started diagnosing the issue with the car and we reckoned it was a water leak from a coolant pipe at the back of the engine. He gloated that I had made an error in judgement in picking a car which hadn’t been used as heavily as his.
After waiting a long time at the side of the road in very hot weather, we told Ravi to carry on to the hotel and we would meet him there. Once the tow truck / low loader had arrived, the driver immediatly winched it on and off we went. Luckily I broke down less than 20 miles from our destination, Wurzberg.
I was a little surprised that they took us to an actual Mazda garage and dealership in Wurzburg. The garage mechanic was quite pleased to see an original mk1 MX5 and found the problem to be a split hose behind the engine. He asked me if I could wait till tommorow morning and he could just cut the pipe before the split and reattach it. I told him our plan was to drive on the Stelvio pass and a few other difficult driving roads and he laughed. I asked if the car would survive and he told me that he wouldn’t risk it because the engine could have been running without cooling for a little while and therefore doesn’t know what effect that could have on the reliability for what we were planning.
I informed the RAC breakdown insurer that the mechanic reckoned there could be potential damage to the engine and they immediately asked to speak to the mechanic. The mechanic explained that the coolant pipe went “kaput” and that they do not advise taking the car on the rest of the trip. The lady at the RAC breakdown centre didn’t sound happy but told me that they would send the car back to the UK and get me another car for the rest of the journey. I then asked for a taxi to get me to the hotel we were staying at that night and then set about removing all my items from the car and loading them into Ajay’s MX-5. Making sure to take anything of value like fire extinguishers and first aid kits in case they went missing on the trip back to the UK.
Whilst we waited for the taxi to show up, we had a look round the Mazda dealership, especially the brand new MX5, the mk4 in soul red. We both agreed that it was a great looking car and that this wouldn’t have broken down. I secretly was hoping that I got one of these as the hire car just to annoy Ajay and Ravi.
When the taxi arrived, I dumped my bag in the back and sat in the front passenger seat, this bit of detail is important to what happened next. The driver was quite chatty and had a bit of Ali-G / trying to be youthful about his language and mannerisms. Even trying to show off about his bottle of Evian water which amused me. Hopefully this wasn’t a German thing I thought. Ajay followed the taxi quite well, even the driver commented that he did well to keep up.
When we got to the hotel called Brunnenhof am Spielberg which to my surprise was an Aparthotel, I thanked the driver and jumped out the car, he gave me a card reciept even though it would be the RAC cover that would pay him. We went straight to the hotel room’s lounge and crashed on the sofa. Then Ajay turned to me and said, “where’s your bag?”, my bag had my passport, all the important paperwork as well as cameras.
Shit! it was still in the taxi, we raced out of the hotel and found the taxi nowhere to be seen, we went to the road and looked to see if it was parked waiting for it’s next job and saw no sign of it. I suddenly remembered the receipt he had given me and called the number on it. A taxi phone operator picked it up, after I explained that I left my bag, the operator said she’ll send him back to me. This is turning into quite the stressful day.
When the taxi driver arrived he said “your not having a good day”. My bag was were I had left it on the back seat with all the items still in it, I thanked the driver and gave him 15 euros for the trouble, I wondered whether he would take it or not, he smirked and took the money.
A wave of relief overtook me and now I was hungry, we hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast and it was now 6:00pm. Ravi had gone to the local supermarket and found some Tofu to cook in the apartment / hotel room. We needed food so we walked down to the town centre of the place we were staying, which was just outside of the city of Wurzberg. Ajay decided to ask who he thought was a local, as they always know the best places to eat. Turns out the lady he asked wasn’t a local but was staying in the area for a conference and had just been out for an evening run. She was very helpful and told us about a few places we could eat. Whilst Ajay was listening to her and explaining my car drama, I had received a call from the breakdown cover call centre and they asked me what my plans were on the holiday. I explained I was travelling everyday and will be in different locations every night. The lady on the call sounded a bit rude as I think they didn’t like the idea of getting a hire car in one country and dropping it off in another one a week and a half later. After a terse exchange, I told her the location of the garage that I would need my MX5 to go to.
Ajay had finaly decided to pick a Greek restaurant called Restaurant Syrtaki and decided to pick pizza from the menu, which seemed wrong in a Greek place but I was too exhausted by this point to care.
Long Way There 