Hot, bothered and fleeced!

I said I would aim for a blog a day. Failed at the first hurdle. Hey ho. Onward and upward.

Two VERY hot days driving in the general direction of Austria. Gandalf has no air-conditioning so it gets pretty stuffy in the van. The interior thermometer says 36°C most of the day. Phew!

The following is a photo of Mrs P looking very hot driving Gandalf. A statement incidentally that can be interpreted two ways. Both are correct.

Mrs P swerves to avoid a Frenchman

Let me tell you (read: rant about) an irritation we encountered in France. Not with the people, or the roads, but with the petrol stations. In France it is surprisingly difficult to find a petrol station that is not automated. You have to insert your card and enter your pin number BEFORE you can get any fuel. It then refuses the transaction anyway and spits your card back at you with a heavily accented and highly contemptuous “Ptooey!”

The reason it does this is because it first takes a sample transaction of between €150 and a staggering €1,100 from your account to see if you are a sound financial bet. If your account doesn’t have those kind of funds available the system deems you to be too poor to be trusted and possibly a touch too foreign. And so, “Ptooey!” It says.

Unaware of this frankly ridiculous system we unsuspecting fools tried to get fuel at no less than four automated pumps. Result, unbeknownst destitution. Now usually, allegedly, they reverse such test transactions immediately, but not always. As we discovered when we tried to use our bank card later to pay a small road toll fee. “fonds insuffisants“ which is French for “Someone stole your money.”.

We checked our account and found that one of the automated machines had taken £572.80 as a sample fee and had not returned it or given us any fuel. “Merde!” I said, which is French for “Tarnation!.”

I was trés peeved as they say that n these parts. I found a tank lying around at the side of the road (a more common occurrence than you might think) and checked behind the sun visor but unfortunately couldn’t find the keys. Had they been there I would have advanced on the head offices of Intermarche and demanded my money back..

Bourg la Rein was disabled on 22nd of November 1944. It was turned into a memorial by none other than General Leclerc. I failed to borrow it to march on Paris ironically on Bastille day.

Now dear reader you will be pleased to find the story taking a more positive note. We have a Starling bank account. I only just opened it. I opened it because it can be used abroad with no additional fees and with sensible exchange rates. Starling Bank is an on line only bank, so I was a bit worried about how useful they would be on the phone. I needn’t have worried. called them, explained the situation, the nice lady put me on hold for about one minute after which she returned to say that they could see the problem and had already refunded the money. I could call off the tanks, they would chase Intermarche. I awarded her a virtual medal.

I cannot recommend them highly enough. Starling Bank. Marvellous.

By now we had crossed the border into Germany, so it was probably best that I left the tank behind. We spent the night in a delightful German town called…

Oberkirch. So good the blew up some balloons in its honour.

There was some kind of festival going on, which we totally failed to appreciate as we were too tired and had an early night instead.

Oberkirch. Shortly before we retired to bed.

The following day, today - Saturday 15th July - we spent the day finding out why one should never drive through Germany to get to Austria. Three-and-a-half hours the sat-nav said. Eight very hot hours and multiple huge traffic jams later and we are still in bloody Germany! Did I mention that we don’t have air-conditioning?

Mrs P looking slightly less hot. Though not to my eyes.

We managed to find a great campsite near a tiny winter ski resort. Campingplatz Weiderhofen. Run by the inimitable Wilhelm. We chatted in German over a couple of lovely cold beers.

The more I drank the better my German became (not!)

Only a short drive tomorrow to Austria. Let’s hope there is space at the campground when we get there.

Watch this space for more blog meanders. Tell your friends. Spread the blog love.