Stuck... Again....

After our excellent weekend in Berlin with John and Marta we got back to Dusseldorf to pick up Callum which was in perfect running order. We camped for the night in Dusseldorf again. The next morning we headed to Colone (Koln) about 50KM away and stopped at a camp site just outside the city. The weather was perfect and we had the most beautiful view over the Rhine. The guy at the front counter was a real tosser (we found out later that he’s a jerk because we turned up at his lunch time and interrupted him... apparently thats rude over here....). We took the tram into Koln to check out the Kolner Dome which is the biggest cathedral in Germany. The Cathedral took more than 600 years to build due to stop start work, but was completed finally in 1880. The building survived heavy bombing in WWII with hardly a scratch. It’s absolutely massive and well worth the visit. Andrew climbed the 503 stairs to the top of the Dom which was quite an effort, Jamie still wasn’t feeling all that well from her cold, so stayed down stairs.

The next day Cal didn’t start all that well, as a precaution we took it back to the mechanic in Dusseldorf to check it out as we knew he had replaced the starter. After getting there and “speaking” to the mechanic in German, we found out that the 2nd hand starter that they had used will have to be replaced with a new one. That wasn’t a problem and was done in half an hour. This is when things turned bad..... AGAIN! When we tried to reverse him out, he didn’t want to move at all, it seemed as though reverse wasn’t working... We’ve now learnt several bad words in German and they were all on show by the mechanic. These guys have been great to us though, yesterday they gave us a car to take for a drive, so we went down to the local lake and had lunch. Cut to 7 o’clock last night, and our gear box is in the back of a car leaving the mechanic. Last night we camped in the mechanics front yard again which has a lovely view of the industrial complex across the road. We rode their bikes down to the local pub and had a Schnitzel and watched the football. The Schnitzel was about the size of Andrews head.... HUGE! We shall include a photo when able to.

Today we’ve taken a tram into town and walked around a bit. We’ve discovered that this shitty little town (Krefeld not Dusseldorf) is actually quite nice. We’ve decided that we require some reliable transport so we’re about to go and buy a couple of bikes for 150Euro (Jamie’s has a basket). Hopefully we’ll be back on the way soon... Maybe...

A&J