berln, germany - day five

You never wish for trouble along the road but these are the things that make for the better stories afterwards.

We were 10 km from a Czech/German border, just outside a tunnel when the van died. Lenin cussed for a while and then went out to look under the hood. A part by the fan belt became detached and needed to be welded back together. Those who know me will understand why that's all the information I can give on what went wrong. Whatever it was, it left us stranded for several hours.

Lenin put on this bright orange vest and hiked to the tunnel where there were emergency phones. He has the European equivilent to AAA so he called for a tow truck. After hours in the van, a Czech tow truck came and the grumpy old man driving it said he would take us to the border and then we'd have to call a German tow truck.

We went to the border and squeezed together in the van to ward off the coldness. It took about an hour for the German tow truck guy to get there. At first, Lenin insisted he take us to Berlin because we may have a show there. The guy protested for a while and then agreed. We called on his phone to confirm that we did have a show there. It turns out that it was cancelled. The next option was for the guy to bring us to a hotel which AAA would pay for until they could send out a mechanic in the morning. This was the option I was rooting for. Unfortunately, we went with door #3 which was going to the tow guy's friend in the nearest town, Dohna, where he would try to fix the van.

We spent a few hours at his shop and he eventually got it welded back together. We drove until we got to Berlin. I rode in the front because that's where it was warmest.