Episode 6: On the Road Again

Utrecht to Cologne is a short drive and can be done in well under a couple of hours (once you cross the border, of course, you're on the famously not-speed-limited autobahn). The journey time might be lengthened somewhat if your car still hasn't got it's clean air certificate, without which you can't actually enter Cologne. This was the case with us and we foolishly believed what the travel guides and the hotel receptionist told us about how the stickers were available from all petrol stations.

In fact every one we stopped at bounced us on to the next one until we finally were directed to a mechanic's garage where the sticker can be purchased... but only if you can make it over the language barrier.

It's been a constant failing of this trip that our French and German are about as good as our Martian. Learning a language was part of the plan before we came out here, there just ended up being no time, as there was no time for a lot of things that really should have been viewed as essential; properly planning what we wanted to do in each city for a start.

Waking up of a morning and asking "what do you wanna do?" is fine when you've got a couple of weeks in one place. With less than a day per destination, making it up as you go along wastes precious seconds, minutes, hours, not to mention mobile data while you try and map out where you are and where you're going.

In the end we didn't see much of Cologne today, due in part to the fact that my running joke about a lack of tea has become a serious matter. Dehydration is always a risk on long journeys and my attempts to ration the water are a fine idea but with nothing else to drink of an evening, I've been feeling the effects. Tomorrow's trip is a short one, and we'll have time for a look around Cologne in the morning before we head off for Bonn and Frankfurt, so I'll report back more tomorrow.

(Author's note: this was published about half a day late, so in this piece "today" refers to the 20th of July 2017, "tomorrow" to the 21st)