On Sunday we took Opa, Oma, & Tuhk to our favorite castle ruins (Kusel Castle) & then Monday we did a lot of laundry, grocery & German souvenir shopping, & packing. It was nice to just relax & hang out at the house for a change.
Opa & Oma took the kids on a walk to Wasgau, our local grocery store for treats & lunch.
It was time for them to go home to the states. . . but they didn't want to leave the beauty of Germany.
And of course, because this was the very final thing of our 3 week Big Family Adventure, something had to go wrong right? YUP!
Their flights left Frankfurt at 8:00am so we needed to get them to Frankfurt no later than 4:00 or 4:30 am due to the insane things happening at airports this summer. Frankfurt is about an hour & a half away so Opa insisted on leaving at about 1am. They all woke up at midnight & hopped into the van right at 1:00am. They drove a grand total of 40 minutes when the van's lights starting dimming & blinking for no reason. The power steering shut off entirely & the entire electrical console starting blinking lights like it was Christmas! They pulled off the Autobahn (freeway) & the van just completely shut off. DONE. GONE. It was dead.
Trek panicked. It was 1:40am, there weren't any other cars in sight. Mom, Dad, & Tuhk needed to get to the airport . . . Trek needed to get back home to go to work at 7. This was BAD. Trek called over 20 different taxis in the area trying to find anyone who would be willing to drive them all to the airport, but they had NO luck. About an hour later, Trek was able to get through to ONE taxi driver, but the man lived in Manheim (40 minutes away) & didn't want to drive that far. Opa & Oma ended up paying him a fortune just to convince him to come get them off the side of the road & to the airport. He showed up around 5am & drove them to the airport. They got there, through baggage check, security, & to the desk JUST AS THEY WERE SHUTTING THE DOOR TO THE PLANE. Luckily, they let them on. At least something went right.
Meanwhile, Trek called a tow truck & had the van towed to the nearest car shop which was about 10 minutes from where he broke down. The shop didn't open until 8 am so Trek went for a run, then took a nap in the van (it was freezing) until it opened. Once the shop opened, they told him to take the van somewhere else because they didn't service American vehicles. So Trek called another tow truck who was kind enough to tow him to Kaiserslautern to another shop.
Trek left the van there & had a co-worker pick him up for work. He called the shop every day for over a week to ask about the status of the van. (I cannot live without that van for transporting the kids everywhere). They hadn't even looked at it yet. But they promised to look at it soon. We have the sweetest friends in the world who lent us their van until ours got fixed.
Another week goes by & the shop STILL hasn't looked at the van. Trek finally calls yet another tow truck to tow the van to our local mechanic Viktor. (We love Viktor). Within a hour, he told us we needed a new alternator & that we needed to order it from the states. He gave us the part number & told us to find the cheapest one we could find & order it & he would fix the van no problem. We ordered the part & it took 3 weeks to get here. And the day it came in, Viktor went on vacation for 2 weeks. It's just the way our luck works.
Viktor got back from vacation last week & had our van up & running within 2 days. It feels SO good to have my own van back. It works wonderfully & after two whole months of not having it, we are SO glad to have it home again.
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