Some weeks seem longer than others. In this case, it is a
story of traffic queues, extreme roadworks, inclement weather, and to be
perfectly honest, gross misjudgement of distances between European cities. It always looks so do-able on a map!
My judgement was probably clouded by the fact that one day I
drove back overnight from Frankfurt to Manchester, through the Channel Tunnel
in a record 11 hours, helped by the fact that I arrived in perfect time for the
next crossing! It created a feeling of invincibility, and a somewhat casual
approach to driving distances on the pan-European journeys that immediately
followed. I stopped at a service station in Aachen on the way from Frankfurt to
Calais, and decided to eat before changing out of my blazer and slacks into
jeans and t-shirt. I sauntered up to the self-service counter and pointed
politely at the food I wanted to buy.
The serving lady, realising I was struggling with the lingo,
started to gesticulate and direct me away from her counter, which felt a bit
odd. But then in her best English said “Coach Driver. You go there!” and
pointed to a square silver badge on the lapel of my blazer. It was actually the
Gaskell Textiles badge, but she took it to be some kind of British coach driver
emblem and I was ushered into the drivers’ lounge where I was fed royally, and
served extremely quickly, for very little money!
I had driven the well-worn route from Calais or Rotterdam to
either Hamburg and Hannover on several occasions, through north-east France,
northern Belgium, across the Netherlands, and on to the German autobahns. I
generally filled up with fuel just as I left the Tunnel or disembarked the
ferry and that would ensure an uninterrupted trip into Germany. On the occasion
in question, I was to drive on to see a carpet manufacturer located in a town
in what would previously have been the very western part of the former East
Germany. It was much farther than I had imagined.
From memory I was going to visit our distributor Thomas
Siewert in Kiel, after a couple of meetings in Hamburg, and then back along the
long road back to the Channel Tunnel. We are spoiled in the UK with filling
stations every few miles apart from in some of the more remote parts of the
country. In eastern Holland at that time, there was a long stretch without a
filling station in sight, and to my knowledge, very few settlements along the
way. So as I approached the German-Dutch border with my gauge already well into
the red, I knew I had to fill up or fizzle out!
And so I turned south off the autobahn to the sleepy and
rather dull and linear town of Gronau, where not for the first time I pulled up
at the pumps as I am sure I heard my car take its last gasp. More than a little
relieved, I filled the tank to the brim and went into pay. My credit card at
the time was a NatWest card, which the lady swiped and then said “No good”.
Knowing that there was no problem with credit on the card I said “Yes. Good”
and beckoned her to try again, then for a third time. I asked her to try an
American Express card but she would not accept that. Then the lady just said “Bank” and pointed
down the road. I got the impression I
wasn’t the first British fool to have cut it a little too fine. So I reversed
my car into a parking bay and walked in the drizzle in the direction of the
bank, which I when I finally reached it after fifteen minutes was closed for
lunch and I was drenched. The bank was not just closed for a lunch hour, but
for two hours! And there was no hole in the wall!
A little exasperated by now, and with thoughts of a later
than desired tunnel crossing, I decided I was going to go back to the filling
station and call Thomas Siewert to help me persuade the lady that there was
absolutely nothing wrong with my credit card. I handed her the phone with the
words “Herr Siewert”, and Thomas asked her to try the card again and it worked
first time. It never happened again
because I made sure I filled up whenever my gauge showed a quarter full.
pickled.
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