Tuesday June 28, Mercedes Yard, Rostock!

 

Yes, the ups and downs of life on the road and as they say in Germany…”Scheisse”!!!

We had a very nice drive through to Rostock this morning, picked up a few things at the supermarket and then out to the Ferry Terminal ready for the 3 o’clock sailing to Sweden, nice and early. Lunch in the van as we waited to go through Passport Control, then drove further on and into the queue for the ferry. It was about a 2 ½ hour wait but entertaining watching the comings and goings and then the ferry arrived and unloaded. We were finally given the nod to load, but the van would not start. It turned over but wouldn’t fire, no problems with the battery. Ian kept trying about 20 times but no luck. The rest of the vehicles drove around us and boarded and we sat there deciding what to do.

Very soon a Port Van pulled up beside with a very friendly chap who spoke a little English. They suggested we rang our hire company, but when we said we owned it, they suggested we ring ADAC. As we don’t travel with a phone as such, only data we just smiled and asked for help!!! He was brilliant and after much tooing and froing with phone calls to his office and to others who we couldn’t understand, he told us that they had arranged for someone from their Automobile association to come to help us. We waited for about two hours and watched the ferry sail off as we sat like “Nigel No Mates” in the now empty queue.

Finally, a guy arrived in a tow truck, he was great, and checked out fuses and did a few other checks then decided the best thing to do was to put us on the back of his truck and take us to Mercedes in town. I had my heart in my mouth as he struggled to load us on, but eventually he squeezed us on. Then we climbed in the cab with him and set off into town. He had to drive slowly as we were so high and quite heavy, and he did mention being overloaded. My stomach was in knots but finally arrived safely at Mercedes.

The towie unloaded us, and would you believe it, she started!  But they put it in the workshop and ran the computer over it and discovered that the fault was caused by a faulty crankshaft sensor!  It was now 8 pm, and amazingly they run two shifts for trucks, 6am – 2 pm and 2pm till 10pm.  They didn’t have the part required but said they could get it here by mid afternoon tomorrow. They parked the van in the back corner of their yard and were happy for us to stay in it overnight.

A very lazy meal of crackers, cheeses and salami and a few wines was all we needed. We are so thankful that this happened here and not way up north in Lapland, where it would have been a major problem. Once we know all is working okay, we then need to organise a new ferry crossing. The people from Stena Line also saw is left lonely in the queue and told us to just come to their office to sort it out, so that’s for tomorrow hopefully.

A pleasant drive this morning...little did we
know how the day would evolve!

Had to look twice at this police car...a lowered
Audi station wagon with wide tyres!

Ready to go through passport control.

Nigel No Mates!

The towie needed to put blocks of wood under the
wheels to get the overhang high enough to load,
and then she only just sat on the deck.

An extremely peaceful spot to end the day!