Thursday, October 4th - Picking up our car.
Bob: After breakfast Monika started off a load of laundry while I worked on the computer a bit until it was time to go pick up our rental car. The sky was overcast and spitting occasional raindrops on us as we worked our way over there using Hamburg's network of busses, trains, and subways. The overcast sky made it difficult to orient ourselves once we came up from the subway to walk the last little stretch, but the GPS with its detailed map of Hamburg streets came to the rescue and led us directly to the Eiffestrasse. Although we had arranged our car rental over the web, the address we had been given, 420 Eiffestrasse, turned out to be the same Avis rent-a-car agency that we had previously used when we rented a car during Wanderung 5, which was reassurring. Our "free upgrade" rental car turned out to be a nice 4-door Peugot diesel. After a quick familiarization with the controls, I drove off toward Barmbek while Monika used the map and the GPS to navigate. We stopped off at an Aldi foodstore for bread, bottled juice, snacks, and cheese for our upcoming journey, but still managed to get back to Heinke and Guslt's place for Mittagessen (I do hate to miss a meal!). After lunch I worked on bringing the journal up to date for a couple of hours while Monika helped Heinke, and then I answered email and tried to find a cheap hotel room in the Harz while Monika repacked our things. At last I found a pension that offered a room for 2 persons plus breakfasts for 50 Euro per night. The price was reasonable and the pension had been given an 81% approval rating, so we took a chance and booked it for the weekend. After dinner we picked up all the items we had left around our bedroom and in the bathroom in preparation for starting our driving tour the next morning. |
Monika: Today we picked up our rental car. We had chosen to pick it up "downtown" since there was no extra charge as there would have been at the airport or train station. Although we had booked through AutoEurope, the actual rental agency was the same Avis in the Eiffestrasse that we had rented from before. The formalities went quickly and quite pleasantly. They even drove our car to the front and explained all the buttons and knobs. Another advantage of renting downtown, nobody is in a hurry. Our car was a midsize Peugeot since we had a free upgrade. Driving back to Heinkes, Bob got used to driving the car, while I got used to navigating with map, GPS, and road signs. There was one memorable place, where I wanted the right branch at a "Y". There were 2 traffic lights and the sign on the street approaching the first one indicated the middle lane would go straight, which was true for the first light, but at the second light it took the left hand branch and we couldn't scoot over to the right. But we managed to find our way and parked. Heinke and I had started a load of wash, and while we were gone, Heinke had hung up the clothes in the drying room of the basement and was preparing Mittagessen. After Mittagessen, I just hung out with Heinke while Bob worked on the computer. By late afternoon the clothes were dry and I could get some serious packing done. We had four suitcases: the big one with cruise clothes which we left in Hamburg, our regular suitcase with the majority of our clothes and we each had a carry on where we packed clothes for three or four days, so we could leave the suitcase in the car. We were ready to start our next adventure. |
| Prolog | Germany Map | Cruise Map | Epilog |
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