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Germany Hail Stories
What can say about the Germany Hail season, I loved this storm. The damage was fixable, the prices were reasonable, and the beer was wonderful. In this storm I once again took my younger brother Jay, and Richard from New Zealand, and also my good mate Chuck and his wife Amy from the USA, which gave us a small but very workable team concentrating on fun while making money. The flight there from Australia was long, Brisbane to Sydney, Sydney to Singapore, Singapore to Dubai, Dubai to Frankfurt, then train from Frankfurt to Stuttgart. And it only got worse as we arrived as I was taken by car directly over the border to France to do a demonstration for the CEO of Allianz insurance and his staff. My eyes were hanging out of my head as I tried to contemplate fixing a car in front of about 50 people with none of my own tools, and lights I was not used to. Chuck stepped up to the plate and lent me some tools, as he had arrived a few days earlier, and his enthusiasm rubbed off on me as we completed the car effortlessly and made a lot of people happy. We then headed back over the border for the Germany hail and into our respective shops, to start a nearly 6 month stint of fixing hail, bumbling over languages and meeting new friends. We rented a small apartment close to the shop, and decided to buy a couple of bicycles to get around the town, which was in hindsight one of the funniest and best things ever, if you have not tried to negotiate a steep downward hill in the dark with 10 Steins of good German beer under your belt, well lets just say it was fun and properly a little dangerous. The thing that amazes me about Europe is the proximity of the countries, coming from Australia which is basically in a world of its own, we could eat lunch in Germany and then eat Dinner in France. On the weekends we would just drive in a direction and see where we ended up, which led to some great nights in Luxemburg, and other parts of France. Driving on the autobahn was also an experience, we had a newish model ford Station wagon, which at about 190km started to feel a bit loose, so we had to stay in the slow lane, as Ferraris and BMW’s left us like we had stalled. The speed at which some of the cars were traveling left no room for mistakes; in fact if there were an accident, you would not bother sending an ambulance, just send a mop and bucket. After 3 months seeing some of the most remarkable sites I have ever witnessed, and walking down roads that Caesar, Napoleon, and 2 world wars were fought on, I had to make a quick stop home for my daughters birthday. I left on the Thursday, and after 36 hours of traveling arrived back on the Gold Coast in Australia at 7:30am just in time for my little girls party after all a promise is a promise. But there was no time for relaxing because only after 26 hours at home, I was returning back to work. That week was difficult, my body clock was so out of sync I didn’t know if I should be sleeping, working or eating. A couple more months later we were done, we finished the last of the cars and started to pack to go home. It was a strange trip in the sense that I had been away for so long, and would need some time to reconnect. The first thing I did after patting the dog and cuddling the cat, was to pack the family in the car and drive north to the Great Barrier Reef. We spent the next 4 weeks there, fishing and snorkeling, without distractions such as phones and Tvs, this was the medicine I think we all needed. |
