Let me tell you how great this car is. It has full leather interior, nav system, seat heaters, dynamic stability control (for fast cornering)...
So, now picture this. It's a nice brisk November afternoon. You've had a customer visit in the morning in Münster (about 220+km NW of Frankfurt), and you're dying to get home. So you're banging down the Autobahn at a lazy 180km/h and you hear this BANG! from your car, followed by a rhythmic thumping from the back end. Your first thought is "Shit! There goes a tyre!", so you cross the 3 lanes and pull over on the side of the road. You carefully get out of the car, with traffic screaming by, and check all of the tyres...everything seems ok. You walk around the back of the car and find this...
That's right...that's my $%&$!§ MUFFLER DRAGGING ON THE $%&$§§! GROUND! WTF! I mean HONESTLY! WHOSE MUFFLER BREAKS OFF AND STARTS DRAGGING ON THE GROUND? REALLY!?!?!?!?! So much for German-$%&$§§!-engineering!
So, if this had happened to me in Australia I would have freaked out enough, but at least I would have known who to call. But this time I am in a foreign country, where I don't speak the freakin' language, and I have no goddamn idea who to call...and I have no goddamn idea where I am!
Anyway...I put a call in to one of the admins at work, and once she got over the "What happened?", and the swearing Australian on the other end of the phone, she asked me where I was...good question! All I knew was that I was on the A45, and the Ausfahrt (exit) ahead of me was saying U25 and U37. What the $%&$§§! does U25 and U37 mean? Are there submarines down there?
So the admin puts in a call to the lease company while I go firstly for a slash (up a very steep hill, in the bushes) , and then secondly to see if I can find out any more info on where I am. The nav system was good enough to tell me that I was near Olpe, about 10km past the nearest rest stop, and about 5km from the nearest BMW dealership, but other than that it was useless. I walked back up the A45 (kinda scary with traffic doing between 120-200+km/h), and managed to find a distance marker reading 83,5km (83.5km from where I still don't know), and a sign naming the towns you could reach on the exit...I am SO Sherlock freakin-Holmes!
Anyway...long story short (too late)...I get back into the car, turn the seat heaters on (it was about 9C outside), and wait. BMW service finally turns up, tears the muffler clean off the car, and then gets me to follow them the 30km to their service center (What about the one only 5km away!!?!?!?).
At the service center it turns out that they don't have the new part in to fix the car, so they "repair" it for now, and I have to take it to a dealer in Darmstadt tomorrow to get it fixed properly. On the upside, I did manage to get a quote on a new BMW 120d, including a €3000 discount, that I will submit to the leasing company tomorrow. (Do I really want one now, after all of this?!?!?!).
What is God's name will happen next???
PS: Bel bought me snacks to make me feel better...and is looking forward to eavesdropping tomorrow when I tell our German teacher what I did for the last few days...and attempting to do it in German. :)
PPS: Good thing it wasn't the tyre... :)
Q: How does one say "And then my $%&$§§! MUFFLER FELL OFF!" in German? Tansy? :)
Tschüß,
'Brush
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9 comments:
What a crack up! This post made my day!
You are the new Sherlocken Van Holmzigen!
As for the Beemer... sweeeeet... but remember it's just like a Ford when in Germany!
George
Oh and I forgot to mention -- they even personalised the car for you: the number plate starts with "BB" ! :-)
Well - it serves you right for being a twenty-something driving a beamer. Do you think you're Paris Hilton or something? What's wrong with a beat-up old combie, I ask you? (or public transport for that matter - works for me here) *pbft*
Navigation system, my *@^!*(#@
My car has a map book!!!
GkT...I wouldn't say that a BMW is like a ford over here. Sure, there are more BMWs on the road here than anywhere else in the world, but most ppl still can't afford them. Therefore you still see a lot of Nissan, Opel, and other cheaper brands on the road.
As for the BB...I wish I could claim that it was personalised for me. The "BB" stands for Böblingen, which is where the car is registered. The "AT"...well you can work that one out for yourselves (not that hard).
Tschüß,
'Brush
Man, I wish I could drive here.... Of course, I'm riding a scooter around. Illegally. Think: sparks. That would be the scooter stand against the road when taking corners. <grin> Does that count?
Already been in 2 accidents in 6 months (one very mild). But your story is still more exciting.
you've come a long way from crashing uncle boney's green machine into the poplar tree at 5 kph be careful doin 180
p.s took ya mum out for tea the other night
Damn it! I was hoping that everyone had forgotten about that... :)
BRETT CRASHED THE GREEN MACHINE!!!
That's some nice blogging.
We're you listening to some hard core 'discotheque' fun boy?
Brett,
I felt awful that I couldn't talk to you for long last night when you called. It sounded bad about the car but seeing the pic just freaks me even more. Very glad you are safe and OK.
By the way "Wolf Creek" (new movie) rather scary...
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