The Road to Germany 2006 Part II (published Sep06)

The conclusion to the Road to Germany, the journal of our 3-day, 18-hour road trip from London to Stuttgart to see England play in the World Cup. We pick up from where we left off, returning from Stuttgart after the England vs Ecuador game in the middle of the night in very stormy weather, wondering how we were ever going to make it back to Cologne that night…
9.00pm – We get on the highway – it has no lights and the visibility is really poor. It’s absolutely pouring and for the first time in my life, I find myself driving for survival, and not to get to my destination asap. At 50mph, our ETA at Cologne is 2am! To be on a dark highway in the middle of the night in pouring rain in a foreign country can be pretty daunting to say the least. It reminds me of when I left high school back in Nigeria and it took 25 hours to complete an 8-hour trip back home. My dad insisted on driving at night after police in Ughelli had held us up for hours for refusing to give them a bribe after they asked for the receipt for a 10 year old stereo system we had in our possession (Nigerian readers will understand what I mean!). The visibility was similarly poor then and we ended up having an accident and the three of us sleeping on one single bed in a village called Patani! But that’s a story for another time and place – God forbid anything of the sort to happen here, but you can see the places my mind is going…
11.00pm – The weather clears up and although we should stop at least every 2 hours, we are afraid to exit the highway for fear that we might lose our way…the GPS is long gone, we have no map and route planners cannot help you if you go off the route, if you know what I mean…
12.30am – Somehow, we make it back to Cologne ahead of schedule. But we get lost again! After about an hour of circling the area, the penny drops and we realise that there are two Richard Wagner Strabes at opposite ends of Aachener Strabe. We get back to Angie’s at 2am and go straight to bed. We have a long journey back to London tomorrow.
Monday 26th June
8.00am – We are getting ready to leave. We need to be back at Calais by 2.40pm to catch our train on the Euro tunnel back and it’s an estimated 4-hour trip
11.15am – After finding time to visit the Dome in Cologne and get some souvenirs, we hit the road back to Calais. Sele finally takes the wheel and ends up doing all the driving today – how else can we say, “WE drove to Germany”?
2.45pm – Three and a half hours later, we arrive in Calais to catch our 3.12pm train. WE MADE IT! And with time to kill… The trip back to Calais was much smoother and we didn’t get lost once, despite Bambo’s concerns about me driving – he will claim that his stellar route mapping and sign reading skills made all the difference. After going through customs, we make a quick stop to relax. The time is 2.55pm! We still have LOADS of time, I’m thinking to myself, as we get out to stretch our legs.
3.01pm - Bambo suggests we start making a move, as the gates will probably shut 5 – 10 minutes before departure. We get to the gates, but something doesn’t seem right: They are all shut and there’s no one in sight. How do we get through??? Then we notice an electronic sign, reading “Les portes fermes 15 minutes avant le départ”! In our rest and relaxation, the gate had closed. The only lane that is open is blocked off on our left, with the entrance 100m back.
3.02pm – We can’t afford to miss our train – there are no cars behind us, so in our desperation, and after a quick change of driver, cue some serious James Bond style reversing! Ours is the last car to get on the train at 3.06pm. We are barely on the train when it starts moving… phew!! That was extremely close!
2.45pm (local time) – We arrive back in Folkestone and hit the M20 straight away, in an effort to make it back home within six hours.
4.20pm – We arrive back home 6 hours and 5 minutes after leaving Cologne. It’s been an amazing trip, but we are happy to be home after 1,200 miles of driving!
Epilogue
So that’s it folks – The journal of how we made it to the World Cup – on the Road to Germany! It’s been a great experience; we’ve driven through five different coun­tries visiting Brussels, Maastricht, Cologne and Stuttgart along the way and we’ve hung out with Germans, Brazilians, Ghana­ians and the Dutch. Getting the GPS was a great idea even though it didn’t work out exactly as planned, although getting lost in random back roads in the middle of Germany made the experience all the more fun and worthwhile (if getting lost can ever be a worthwhile exercise!) – we’ll have to remember to actually re-charge the batteries next time – and fix the ciga­rette lighter in the car which we never realised didn’t work until we needed it to plug in the GPS!
Finally, we would say that we learnt how to make the best of situations when things don’t exactly go our way (better to learn this in trivial circumstances) – At first I was busy almost wishing we didn’t stop in Maastricht in the first place (while we waited in the town centre over an hour), but soon we were enjoying the atmos­phere and taking lots of photos of the beautiful scenery – It really added to the whole experience; and every other time we got lost just became another experi­ence that we could laugh and joke about afterwards. It’s just like in life, sometimes all we do is grumble about where we are without really realising and thanking God that where we are is not so bad after all, that in fact it is actually a beautiful place and a testimony to His goodness. And much like when we lose our way and find the right path again, we should be able to laugh and joke about the times when we were lost and praise God that now we’ve been found.
So with that we’ll leave you, and watch this space! Our next road trip will be in 2010 for the next World Cup, and you are welcome to join us! Did I hear you say the next World Cup is in South Africa? Don’t worry, you organise the ride, we’ll meet you on the other side!