toofpikk
Hyper Poster
It’s surely common knowledge that if you have seen me comment on ride technicalities, I will often use it as an opportunity to apply anecdotal information I picked up during my season working at Europa Park in 2017. During this time I made quite a few close friends, some of which I remain in contact with to this day.
Despite only having seen eachother once in the interim, a good friend of mine from Europa and I have been planning 2 road trips since we both left the park. One in America, as he is from Canada, and then one in Europe. We would pilot the road trip which was in our native continent for one another. After much deliberation, head scratching and fantasising, we decided around the end of last year that the first road trip we do should be short but sweet one around Western Europe, consisting of:
Everything was booked by March in prep for our mid-june trip. Things were looking great. I haven’t done a trip like this in years, so I was getting super excited. It was surely to be the trip of a lifetime.
Then my car’s exhaust fell off a week before we were due to leave.
Not taking any chances, I took it to my mechanic who I’ve been with for years and asked for a full service, and basically said ‘this is my budget, please make it roadworthy for a 1,600 mile trip’.
He said ‘yeah sure, no problem’.
I got my car back, feeling the wind blow through the hole in my wallet, but no less, still raring to get going.
I scooped up my friend from the airport, and we set off at the break of dawn to Dover towards the eurotunnel. Through border control, a poor group of bachelors and their old banger were stuck on the side, engine smoking. My friend and I laughed, ‘imagine the luck!’ Little did we know how harshly we had just jinxed our next week.
My biggest worry wasn’t that my car would break down, or that I’d have an issue with my paperwork (the sheer panic of trying to find your v5c 4 hours before you’re supposed to be leaving…), but rather I’d get pulled over because one of my cars reflectors fell off between my mechanics garage and home. No less, we made good pace, and were due to arrive in Hamburg to meet another one of our old colleagues from Europa for beer by about 7pm. 600k into the drive, with around 200k still to go, we hit some bad traffic in a bottleneck of roadworks around Osnabruck. My car’s AC had cut out about an hour before and the sun was glaring down on us. As the traffic crawled forward at a measly 30km/h, my clutch gave in, and got stuck in gear. Because of the lack of hard shoulder due to the roadworks, sheer panic kicked in, along with a crescendo of swears in frustration at the fact I just spent as much money as I had fixing the damn vehicle to make sure something like this wouldn't happen. Thankfully the traffic didnt stop, and I was able to get into the outside lane, and then into the drive up to a closed off layby. We sat for a while seeing if my engine would cool down as it had started to smoke under the bonnet, and the water was bubbling away in its container. After about 40 minutes of sitting on the barrier watching the traffic creep passed, something started leaking heavily from under the engine. With some pretty heavy sighs, I called up my insurance and asked for a tow truck. 4 hours later a big friendly mechanic who spoke no English came along, towed us back to the nearest town, Osnabruck, and left us on the curb, stuck with our own devices.
This was not how I wanted to start the trip.
I was pretty annoyed, confused, deflated, and at this point, tired. I was embarrassed that my mate who I hadn’t seen in 4 years was having to go through all of this because of my car's reliability. I kept thinking what else could I have done, but I’m fairly sure the answer is nothing before buying an entirely new car. The insurance worker was predictably illusive and a bit rubbish, but eventually we got a hotel sorted near the garage for the night, and were instructed to come back to the garage as it opened in the morning. I was really, genuinely worried that not only would I be carless from this point on, but my mate and I would end our trip abroad without getting on any coasters.
I don’t like doing structured trip reports as I find a lot of the same stuff is often said over and over by different people, so I’ll split the reports into fairly short park commentary & overviews instead of a breakdown of our days, and then maybe some anecdotes about struggling around Europe on a road trip…without a car.
Despite only having seen eachother once in the interim, a good friend of mine from Europa and I have been planning 2 road trips since we both left the park. One in America, as he is from Canada, and then one in Europe. We would pilot the road trip which was in our native continent for one another. After much deliberation, head scratching and fantasising, we decided around the end of last year that the first road trip we do should be short but sweet one around Western Europe, consisting of:
- Hansa Park
- Heide Park
- Walibi Holland
- Toverland
- Phantasialand
- Walibi Belgium
- Plopsaland
- Hamburg
- Saltou
- Enschede
- Eindhoven
- Bonn
- Cologne
- Brussels
- Ghent
- Dunkirk
Everything was booked by March in prep for our mid-june trip. Things were looking great. I haven’t done a trip like this in years, so I was getting super excited. It was surely to be the trip of a lifetime.
Then my car’s exhaust fell off a week before we were due to leave.
Not taking any chances, I took it to my mechanic who I’ve been with for years and asked for a full service, and basically said ‘this is my budget, please make it roadworthy for a 1,600 mile trip’.
He said ‘yeah sure, no problem’.
I got my car back, feeling the wind blow through the hole in my wallet, but no less, still raring to get going.
I scooped up my friend from the airport, and we set off at the break of dawn to Dover towards the eurotunnel. Through border control, a poor group of bachelors and their old banger were stuck on the side, engine smoking. My friend and I laughed, ‘imagine the luck!’ Little did we know how harshly we had just jinxed our next week.
My biggest worry wasn’t that my car would break down, or that I’d have an issue with my paperwork (the sheer panic of trying to find your v5c 4 hours before you’re supposed to be leaving…), but rather I’d get pulled over because one of my cars reflectors fell off between my mechanics garage and home. No less, we made good pace, and were due to arrive in Hamburg to meet another one of our old colleagues from Europa for beer by about 7pm. 600k into the drive, with around 200k still to go, we hit some bad traffic in a bottleneck of roadworks around Osnabruck. My car’s AC had cut out about an hour before and the sun was glaring down on us. As the traffic crawled forward at a measly 30km/h, my clutch gave in, and got stuck in gear. Because of the lack of hard shoulder due to the roadworks, sheer panic kicked in, along with a crescendo of swears in frustration at the fact I just spent as much money as I had fixing the damn vehicle to make sure something like this wouldn't happen. Thankfully the traffic didnt stop, and I was able to get into the outside lane, and then into the drive up to a closed off layby. We sat for a while seeing if my engine would cool down as it had started to smoke under the bonnet, and the water was bubbling away in its container. After about 40 minutes of sitting on the barrier watching the traffic creep passed, something started leaking heavily from under the engine. With some pretty heavy sighs, I called up my insurance and asked for a tow truck. 4 hours later a big friendly mechanic who spoke no English came along, towed us back to the nearest town, Osnabruck, and left us on the curb, stuck with our own devices.
This was not how I wanted to start the trip.
I was pretty annoyed, confused, deflated, and at this point, tired. I was embarrassed that my mate who I hadn’t seen in 4 years was having to go through all of this because of my car's reliability. I kept thinking what else could I have done, but I’m fairly sure the answer is nothing before buying an entirely new car. The insurance worker was predictably illusive and a bit rubbish, but eventually we got a hotel sorted near the garage for the night, and were instructed to come back to the garage as it opened in the morning. I was really, genuinely worried that not only would I be carless from this point on, but my mate and I would end our trip abroad without getting on any coasters.
I don’t like doing structured trip reports as I find a lot of the same stuff is often said over and over by different people, so I’ll split the reports into fairly short park commentary & overviews instead of a breakdown of our days, and then maybe some anecdotes about struggling around Europe on a road trip…without a car.
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