Day 1, Part I
Worms, Germany – Basel, Switzerland
Finally, the time has come to go on the southeastcentral-ish road trip, which has been building up for many a month along with the planning and the bookings for it. I went to school in the morning for the first lesson, however, I had another lesson to teach at the end of the school day and five hours to spare in between. I wanted to do something constructive, such as a bit more of route planning or reading more about the places we’re going to. I couldn’t find much, so I basically spent the time twiddling my thumbs and eating organics fair-trade chocolate.
And after I broke free of school, I gave one of the teachers a bottle of Welsh whiskey, which I kept forgetting about since I brought it back after Christmas. And so I left Recklinghausen just after school and made my way down to Worms to meet Rob.
But to be honest, the drive down was really good. I reckon one of the best drives I’ve had for some time. It was a really nice day with nice weather and clear-ish roads… and some good tunes coming from the speakers. Couldn’t be better, really! And I even had my tank filled up for me when I got around Frankfurt, however, the apples in the shop weren’t the best. They were the non-crunchy ones with a funny taste, just as if they were a bit off and dated.
When finally in Worms (after some congestion around Frankfurt and Bensheim), we just went to a local pub with Rob’s housemate for a bit and had a local beer or two. They were also showing the football match between Wales and Germany, with Wales being unsurprisingly two points behind. But what do I care? It’s all about the rugby, anyway!
And so in the next morning, the time came for actually heading off on the trip. As we had a bit of time, we thought we’d change the route a bit, so we’d go via Basel, Zurich and St Gallen and then enter Austria on the West side, just about missing Liechtenstein. But there isn’t much to miss there anyway, especially as we’ve recently been there. We also ditched the hostel at Salzburg and stayed at a friend’s flat in Bad Ischl, which would save us a bit of money, too.
Again, the weather was sunny and warm and the skies were clear blue and so were the roads, clear and flowing well. Everything was going just peachy. But when we were approaching Basel, we noticed that the windscreen had a small chip in it, which was not at all good. I remember having a crack in the windscreen last Summer when I had the Golf, and it was rather pricey to get a new one, not something I was really planning. I really did not want to get my windscreen replaced, as it would be expensive, waste a lot of time for a replacement to be ordered and also I’d lose my Vignettes!
Another troubling thing was that as we got to Basel, we had limited ideas on where to even look for somewhere that could repair it. CarGlass and AutoGlass and places like that are normally situated in the industrial and business areas, so we though we’d have a look for signs heading that way. But it still proved difficult as we didn’t know the name of the area. I asked in local garages a couple of times, but had as much luck as marrying the Pope’s daughter.
After asking at various garages, a couple of Peugeot centres and a former windscreen repair centre; we finally found one. It would take about 45 minutes, but at a cost of 270 Swiss Francs… which is equivalent to about €150, I think, or it could have been a bit more. But still, it was not something I was happy to pay out, but it had to be done. It would have been easier to do it there and then, in a place where people don’t rip you off and where we can easily communicate through a mutual language. It would probably be a much more difficult task in such places as Bosnia and Serbia, where the only form of communication between us could be pointing, shrugging and nodding.
Finally, the time has come to go on the southeastcentral-ish road trip, which has been building up for many a month along with the planning and the bookings for it. I went to school in the morning for the first lesson, however, I had another lesson to teach at the end of the school day and five hours to spare in between. I wanted to do something constructive, such as a bit more of route planning or reading more about the places we’re going to. I couldn’t find much, so I basically spent the time twiddling my thumbs and eating organics fair-trade chocolate.
And after I broke free of school, I gave one of the teachers a bottle of Welsh whiskey, which I kept forgetting about since I brought it back after Christmas. And so I left Recklinghausen just after school and made my way down to Worms to meet Rob.
But to be honest, the drive down was really good. I reckon one of the best drives I’ve had for some time. It was a really nice day with nice weather and clear-ish roads… and some good tunes coming from the speakers. Couldn’t be better, really! And I even had my tank filled up for me when I got around Frankfurt, however, the apples in the shop weren’t the best. They were the non-crunchy ones with a funny taste, just as if they were a bit off and dated.
When finally in Worms (after some congestion around Frankfurt and Bensheim), we just went to a local pub with Rob’s housemate for a bit and had a local beer or two. They were also showing the football match between Wales and Germany, with Wales being unsurprisingly two points behind. But what do I care? It’s all about the rugby, anyway!
And so in the next morning, the time came for actually heading off on the trip. As we had a bit of time, we thought we’d change the route a bit, so we’d go via Basel, Zurich and St Gallen and then enter Austria on the West side, just about missing Liechtenstein. But there isn’t much to miss there anyway, especially as we’ve recently been there. We also ditched the hostel at Salzburg and stayed at a friend’s flat in Bad Ischl, which would save us a bit of money, too.
Again, the weather was sunny and warm and the skies were clear blue and so were the roads, clear and flowing well. Everything was going just peachy. But when we were approaching Basel, we noticed that the windscreen had a small chip in it, which was not at all good. I remember having a crack in the windscreen last Summer when I had the Golf, and it was rather pricey to get a new one, not something I was really planning. I really did not want to get my windscreen replaced, as it would be expensive, waste a lot of time for a replacement to be ordered and also I’d lose my Vignettes!
Another troubling thing was that as we got to Basel, we had limited ideas on where to even look for somewhere that could repair it. CarGlass and AutoGlass and places like that are normally situated in the industrial and business areas, so we though we’d have a look for signs heading that way. But it still proved difficult as we didn’t know the name of the area. I asked in local garages a couple of times, but had as much luck as marrying the Pope’s daughter.
After asking at various garages, a couple of Peugeot centres and a former windscreen repair centre; we finally found one. It would take about 45 minutes, but at a cost of 270 Swiss Francs… which is equivalent to about €150, I think, or it could have been a bit more. But still, it was not something I was happy to pay out, but it had to be done. It would have been easier to do it there and then, in a place where people don’t rip you off and where we can easily communicate through a mutual language. It would probably be a much more difficult task in such places as Bosnia and Serbia, where the only form of communication between us could be pointing, shrugging and nodding.
No comments:
Post a Comment