On The Road Yet Again (sept 16)

Driving from Luxembourg to Rothenburg ob der tauber. Started out before 11a with an ETA of just before 3p. How does that saying go?: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

We were tooling along great. Clear skies.  No slow downs. But the ETA kept getting later and later, of course. Then we came to a dead stop.  The trucks lined up in the right lane reminded me of the days long line of trucks on the road from landlocked Ethiopia to the ports in Djibouti. But this time we were right there along side of them.  45 km from our destination going nowhere.  I checked the maps. There was one exit ramp in the red zone on the navigation about 5km ahead.  We had a discussion again about what our best option was.  And as we were discussing, the red line on the navigation path turned white with red dots. Hmmmmm. That’s new.  Can’t be good. No, not good at all. Ask Google what does that white line with red dots mean on a road on your Google map?  Road closed! Choice made. We, and everybody else on this highway, is getting off at the exit. Then routing through small towns with little streets but with massive trucks. Fun, fun, fun.  Arriving at 4:35p.

Really, it’s been interesting. In addition to the now expected unexpected traffic delays, we had the tiny parking lot at the hotel in Garmisch (I ONLY selected hotels with parking) that was nearly full by the time we arrived late that night in the dark after the mountain pass closure and I could barely squeeze our compact SUV into a spot. In Luxembourg their robotic parking garage dictated the maximum size the rental car so I assumed I wouldn’t have to do the parking. Wrong. I had to drive the car into the car elevator, and then from the elevator to the robotic platform where the tires had to be perfectly positioned in the ruts and the car perfectly centered with the side view mirrors turned in so when the platform spun in circles and unloaded the car everything would stay attached. No stress there.  And here in Rothenburg there were those tiny little cobbled roads through arches and to the hotels garage (the blue house) with the solid, swinging out and down garage door that is on a timer and shuts on its own whether or not you or the car are in the way of the door or the swing of the door (no motion detector). Which it started to do as I was maneuvering in the tiny street in order to back in!

But we got here. And it’s adorable. (More later.)