Tuesday 22 September 2009

Travel by Numbers 14: Oslo-Berlin (Hot hot hot)

Total travel time: twenty seven hours
Driving time: six hours (the motorway was closed at Ludwigslust)
Driving distance: three hundred and eighty one kilometres
Total distance: one thousand and one kilometres


Spending 20 hours in captivity on a ferry is sometimes a blessing. This ferry has it all: a gym, a swimming pool, a theatre, a casino, shops, bars, restaurants and a conference centre.
This is what the shopping promenade looks like. Every half an hour or so, they dim the lights and do some spiel with moving heads and smoke machines, and sometimes a scantily clad lady sings from the walkway across the shops. It's quite strange.

For me though, all that matters is doing nothing. I read an entire novel and caught up on sleep. And I didn't get into a fight this time, so I was quite rude to some drunk man who wanted to know my name. Well, I just walked away.

I had a room with a (restricted) view. Which means I had a window. Normally I don't have a window because it's a lot more expensive, but this cabin was apparently a bargain.

This was my view.




At 10am the boat docked, and I headed for Berlin. In the car that was declared dead a few weeks ago. Now it suddenly still has enough life left in it to go for a last trip to Austria and Czech Republic.
The car overheats and prefers driving 90km/h. I'm not too impressed with that and prefer driving 120km/h. So we found a compromise where I can drive 120km/h with the heating on full and the window open. This is what we do until I overheat and then we go back down to 90km/h with the heating off.
Fifty kilometres on, I went for petrol and an oil-check. The oil was fine, but when I tried to put the stick that holds up the hood (there's probably a name for it but I don't know it), it wouldn't fit back into place. I looked at it and noticed it was completely bent. The metal had gone soft because of the heat. By the time I'd noticed, I couldn't bend it back. So I pulled it out. It didn't seem to hurt.

Tomorrow we're going on a much longer trip and the big question is who will overheat to the point of damage first: me or the Caravelle. The annoying thing is that I look after the Caravelle, but the Caravelle doesn't seem to care much about me. Which is why we've come to the end of this relationship. I feel betrayed.

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