The Eastern Front defeated not only the German army, but also a venerable VW Golf.
Our European vacation car troubles started before we boarded the plane for Amsterdam. My traveling companion Erik?s shirt-tail relatives in Germany had kindly offered us the use of their grandfather?s car for our trip, and we jumped at the chance to NOT backpack through Europe. Alas, they also offered the car to their teenage son for solo driving practice in Grandpa?s fallow field, where he found a stump hidden among the weeds by ripping the rear axel off the car and leaving it several feet behind him, just days before we were to leave.
Unwilling to give up our plan of shopping our way through Europe, we decided to buy a used car upon our arrival and arranged to sell it to a German friend in Trier when we left. He, in turn, would drive us and our luggage to the airport in Amsterdam, giving us curb-side service for our package-laden return flight.
We found a VW Golf hatchback at the used car lot for an unbelievably low price and decided it was just the ticket. Yes, both the car stereo and the front and rear speakers looked as if they had been violently ripped from the car, and yes, unlike most cars in Germany, it had a few dings and dents. But, we figured a car stereo was superfluous when the hills would be alive with the sound of music, and we weren?t out to win a beauty contest. Since dings and dents even in used cars in Germany are all but illegal, we naturally assumed that the car?s cheap price was due to cosmetic rather than mechanical deficiencies of a German car in the fatherland. However, we were to learn that a used car salesman is a used car salesman, anywhere in the world.
At the beginning of the trip, we congratulated ourselves time and time again on our wise purchase. Since the car looked as if it had already been broken into, we could leave some of our many acquisitions hidden away in the hatch-back. Our little Golf first took us the length and breadth of Germany. At a stop to see the shirt-tail relatives in southern Germany, we lightened our load by dropping off our treasures ? our curb-side service was gaining a curb. Granted, our Golf was one of the slower cars on the autobahn, even when we floored the gas, but the plucky little car managed to scale the Alps as we toured Switzerland, and dodge the crazy Italian drivers of Milan.
Our first sign of car trouble showed up on the French Riviera, where a familiar grinding noise told me that our brake pads were not long for this world. By the time we reached the foothills of the Pyrenees, it was clear that they would not take us through the rest of our trip. We found a mechanic and I explained in my very rusty French, along with assorted hand gestures and sound effects, what was wrong with the car. Perhaps they were amused by my attempt; at any rate they replaced the break pads for a great price. We patted ourselves on the back for our ingenuity and were, and we were back on the road.
We continued to put our car through its paces as we headed through central France, up the Normandy coast, across Belgium and Denmark into Sweden, back through Germany and on through the alpine foothills to Vienna, where we dropped off a second load of loot with another friend before we continued into Eastern Europe. With no car troupble since the Pyrenees, we were certain that we had stumbled up on the used-car deal of the century.
However, as we headed north across the roads of the former Soviet empire into Prague, the car started to get louder and louder, and by the time we got to Krakow, we knew something was the matter. Erik crawled under the car and found that the exhaust system had begun to drop away from the engine, leaving a small gap on one side. A trip to a Polish auto parts store and some more hand gestures and noises soon brought us an inventive solution ? an insulated piece of metal, with strapping attached to either end, made to wrap around holes in the exhaust pipe. We again congratulated ourselves on how clever we were to manage minor car repairs in a country where neither of us spoke the language.
We continued our Eastern European journey and saw homes and businesses everywhere undergoing reconstruction and improvement, but road repair was evidently not a priority, apart from the occasional shiny new stoplight in tiny villages where squeegee boys descended upon your car as soon as you came to a stop. As we bounced in and out of pot-holes that covered half the road, the already noisy exhaust system started to get louder.
At the Slovakian crossing on our return trip to Vienna, the border guard looked at us with suspicion; two people with American passports driving a noisy, tough-looking non-rental car with German license plates. But, after some hesitation, he stamped our passports and we were on our way. Bumping and jostling over decrepit roads through the lovely, castle-studded Tatra and Ore mountains, it became clear that our Polish exhaust system fix was not holding. Another look under the car showed that the exhaust system had moved farther away from the engine. Erik moved the patch in an attempt to bridge the gap, but even the ever-present squeegee boys started to give us looks.
The Austrian border was the gateway back into the European Union, and we faced a border guard who took his job very seriously, especially since our car now made us look and sound like illegals in search of Austrian jobs. He questioned us in detail about who owned the car, where we bought it, etc. and scrutinized our paperwork, but he finally let us through after we assured him we were only making a quick stop in Vienna to pick up our stuff and then were heading for America. As our car became ever louder, passing motorists started to turn their heads and point. After a night in Vienna, we packed up our goodies and headed over the foothills to southern Germany for a brief stop at the shirt-tail relatives to pick up the rest of the many, many items we?d obtained during our trip.
The miles and miles of driving finally overcame the Polish fix, as the exhaust system pulled further and further from the engine. The repair kit, after all, was only intended to cover a hole, not form a bridge between the exhaust pipe and the engine. With the un-muffled exhaust exiting the engine just in front of the passenger compartment, we drove with the windows down so as not to die of asphyxiation and with Kleenexes stuffed in our ears so as not to go deaf. Our fellow drivers were starting to get whiplash as we motored along the autobahn.
At a rest stop half way to our near-final destination in northern Germany, we found that the car would no longer shift into first and third gear. Now we had a clue into what was really wrong with the car ? the exhaust system wasn?t moving ? the engine was. We abandoned the autobahn in favor of slower roads, so didn?t arrive in Trier until about two o-clock in the morning. Trier?s narrow cobble-stone streets lined with stone buildings rang with the sound of our un-muffled car, setting off car alarms and no doubt waking most, if not all, of the town?s inhabitants. We didn?t have to ring the door-bell when we arrived at Erik?s friend?s house.
Gone were all thoughts of driving the Golf to the Amsterdam airport, and our friend didn?t have a car (which was why he had planned to buy ours). Desperate early morning calls confirmed his suspicion that none of his friends were willing to loan him a car on such short notice. Train schedules were consulted; we found that we would have to change trains seven times between Trier and Amsterdam?s Schiphol airport.
Now all those heady purchases along the way became a burden rather than a joy. Such former necessities as unusually shaped Italian pasta, an adorable Tyrolean hat for my nephew, four bottles of German wine, and assorted candies and chocolates from each and every country no longer seemed like bargains; but having come this far, we were unwilling to give them up. So, after only three hours of sleep, we hauled six suitcases and four bags in and out of trains and up and down the underpass and overpass stairs of seven train stations. We survived, but just barely.
When we arrived in the US, Erik called his friend in Trier. Naturally, we had given him the car for free, along with an offer to pay for its disposal should it prove un-repairable. However, he told us that his mechanic found that the simple replacement of an engine mount put the car back to rights, and he drove it for several years thereafter, though perhaps not in Eastern Europe.