<font color=slateblue><B><center>Although I like boasting with my universal knowledge and absolutely superior brains, I must say I didn't hear about the town of Darmstadt until a month or two ago when I spotted it where else but on VT. Even then it remained just a name and I never bothered to check where exactly it was located. Behind God's back, I'd probably reply if asked. Really, my life was perfectly fine without Darmstadt. Who could tell that it wouldn't be long before this town would prove as a life-saver and a source of endless hapiness. But let's begin in the beginning.
It was the morning of 27 December when the four of us crammed ourselves and our belongings in our silver VW Jetta (not looking as good as the 'abstract' one on the photo) and set off for the long-awaited journey to Netherlands and Belgium. The spirits were high and the excitement even higher. We slipped through Austria, past Munich and Stuttgart, reached Karlsruhe by night and looked forward to hitting our friends in West Friesland, Holland, in wee hours. In brief - things looked too good to last. Further up the road our windscreen wipers started behaving funny - the right one lagged behind, then stood still, then disappeared off the windscreen altogether. Won't be long before they get criss-cross, one of us joked, when - bang! - this very thing happened. In the middle of a fast German Autobahn. AND in the middle of a blizzard.
We somehow managed to steer our poor and heavily tried Jetta off to the slow lane, turned on all four blinkers and started an improvised reanimation, only to find out the wipers wouldn't budge. Nobody dared voice the worst - that the engine's probably broken. Awww, great. Stranded in the middle of a foreign land, long after dark, somewhere vaguely close to Frankfurt but without a proper idea where, in the middle of the g'damn blizzard which was, very much in a Murphy manner, getting more and more blizzardy. After a short consultation which ended with the decision NOT to call the road service (yup, it may sound overly brave, but the truth is our budgets would hardly have allowed it), my friend undertook a mission-almost-impossible: driving 30 an hour while sticking his left arm out of the window and wiping the windscreen. Well, this was probably the funniest thing in my life where I failed to laugh (but I could later when I thought of it, so it didn't go to waste completely). After what seemed like hours (but was, luckily, only minutes) we spotted the turn which didn't provide the name of the place, but said only 'Polizei'. Well, OK. Better find the police before the police finds us, right? We took the turn promptly and soon arrived in some settled area. I checked the map and every available information indicated that it had to be Darmstadt we enchanted with our visit. So there it was. Darmstadt. I finally knew where to look for it. Every day, in every regard, I make more and more progress.
By then the snow died down a bit and it wasn't long before we found a petrol station. The boys went in to ask for help/advice/info while I prayed outside. The place looked neat - picture-perfect houses of Rhine valley type, very suburban feel. The direction signs indicated three stadiums and several other sport facilities. No churches or museums. I spotted a Rathaus nearby. My routine of discovering a new place obviously never changed, no matter what the circumstances.
The boys returned in a minute and said they'd been told to go links-links-rechts-links-gerade aus and find a bigger petrol station where they might know how to deal with our problem. Each straw is OK in the time of despair (note the <I>might</I> part in the instructions), so we set off to explore. We obviously took one links too many and didn't find the target object but instead came accross an 'Auspuff Expert' who was, terribly fortunately for us, just having a beer after work in his workshop. He was all eager to help, although his area of work was not the front but the rear part of the engine, checked the screws and the fuses and tore off some plastic cover under what we now knew was called 'Wischer' while the four of us were holding our breath at the side. As he uttered the determined 'A-ha!' it felt as if the light shone in the dark. We exhaled in unison only to hold another breath when he sat down behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition. Nope. Die Wischer stayed put like the stone dogs in the Tivoli park. The man did some further fumbling with the fuses and the works before finally declaring the engine 'broken. Ze new one vil kostt about twee hundert Mark.' Before we could ask where and what now he was already explaining there was this VW workshop a few blocks further and this cheap but clean hotel around the corner. 'It would be much more expensive in Darmstadt,' he said and I learned that it was actually Griesheim, the sort of suburbs, that we were stuck in. After a hearty thanks I had some milligrams of hope and another tick under 'friendly and helpful Germans' in my black book.
The stay in the hotel happened to be an excellent idea, although there were first some reservations about the extra costs. But in a night as cold as this sleeping in the car was really not an option. Not to mention how I could use a good sleep after getting up at 6 the previous morning and spending the day on the road! We celebrated by sacrificing one of the three Lasko sixpacks we brought along for our Benelux friends (Bram, I'm sure you can forgive us!) and toasted to being the (probably) first Slovenians ever visiting Griesheim. Even our friend from Heerhugowaard, whom we called to tell him the news, thought it was cool.
We got up as the morning dawned (to be precise, even before that), packed up, paid and went out to be the first today's customers in the VW workshop. We were definitely the first, only to find it closed 'until after the holidays'. Luckily there was a phone number written on the sign, laconically identified as 'info'. We went downtown (=to the main street), dialled 'info' and listened to a kind female voice instructing us where to go. Darmstadt, street this and that. I got the idea that it would be wise to ask at the nearby post office for a map of Darmstadt since it was rather big and rather alien to us, and locate the 'street this and that'. Unfortunately there was no map available, and the lady behind the counter could but wish us good luck.
It might have been her, or it might have been some winged creatures of doubted existence - we found the Autohaus straight away. We were clearly and definitely (pleasantly) shocked. We parked our Jetta outside, went in and were told to wait 'funf Minuten'. Since this was Germany of all countries, it was funf Minuten indeed before a young man of indifferent air came near. What kind of model, he asked, and we said, Jetta. At this moment all his indifference suddenly vanished. Jetta?? he jumped and looked outside. The silver one??! We nodded in unison. 'Och, bring her in here!' he joyfully exclaimed and looked as if he could hardly wait to lay his hands on our dearest car.
From then on it was like in a film with 48 shots per second - he checked here, fixed a loose screw there, looked into every hole and brandished his tools joyfully. I could understand him. Nowadays, as cars are all computers and electricity, doing some good old handwork (the principal fascination of young boys who decide to become mechanics one day) is rare and exotic enough. He was done with the original problem within a minute, and as he started the engine... yes... YES! THE WIPERS WORKED!!! We started dancing around the garage half against our will while he went on to do a quick technical examination and finally asked us if he could make a circle or two around the building with our now recovered Jetta. Of course we allowed it, and as he handed us back the key he was happy like a child. We shook hands, wished each other a happy new year, and he was off to another customer. But as we got inside to pay, we were in for another surprise - the repair cost nothing! Nada! Zilch! All we paid was five litres of oil we bought just in case. Not a penny more.
As we were driving towards Cologne we couldn't help turning the wipers on although it didn't rain. It just felt so incredibly good to see them work! And although we now talked about other things, I'm sure we remembered Darmstadt and our saviour every time we heard a swish. THANK YOU!
THE END
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