A Near Disaster Narrowly Averted

Monday September 13th

In the night Mary had heard rain on my roof and realised that the awning wasn’t tilted to take account of this so told Alan, who got up and tilted it. Because it was dark he didn’t realise that it had been raining a while already and there must have been a considerable amount of water already accumulated in the awning. When Mary got up she realised that they had created a water reservoir and the awning was almost collapsing because of the rain that had collected in it. It needed both of them to get it so that the water would pour off onto the ground creating a flood all around me.The photo is of thebus about tents. Guess they got really wet!

Mary goes off to have a shower, followed by Alan. Mary comes back and finds me locked. There must be a reason for this, she thinks. Perhaps Alan thinks there are just too many people around. They had got pretty slack about locking me when they were they were just going across to the ablutions block as it was so close. But it is raining and not particularly warm and Mary has wet hair that she wants to dry. She looks inside and her heart sinks. There on the bench are the keys to open me and every door is locked and her keys are in her backpack. Panic starts to set in. Not only is the hair drier in me, but everything else, food, money, phones, clothes and shelter. She is starting to think this will need a call out and probably take ages and cost heaps. She takes a walk around me and looks at all the possibilities. The feathers and fur brigade are completely oblivious and useless. There is a sliding window by the bench that she opens when she cooks. It locks shut, but by chance she has not pulled it completely shut. She pushes it and it opens! She can reach in and get the keys! Alan arrives back and she is sitting in me drying her hair as if nothing is unusual. You locked us out she says. Of course he can’t believe this as she is sitting there with my door open. Somehow the sliding door latch was set up to lock when he pulled it shut and this locked it automatically. Because they always use keys to lock me to stop this sort of thing happening, this really surprised Alan. So a major disaster was averted, and extra care will be needed to make sure it doesn’t happen again and that they don’t leave windows open so that others can get in just as easily.

It was a grotty day outside and Monday, when lots of places are closed. The little kiwis and Berlin opted to stay back with me today and let the big people go out in the wet and tell the story today.
Actually we were all museumed out, so decided to go into town and get Alan the haircut he has been needing for ages. On the tram ride yesterday I had seen a sign that said men’s haircuts for €11 which was the best price we had seen; some are €40. So we took note of how to get there. We had got off the underground train and got on a tram, when I looked across the road and saw a place with haircuts for €9. We quickly got out of the tram and went across. There was no waiting and Alan got a great cut for €9. I was reluctant to let them loose on my hair so it is getting longer.

A rainy day calls for a bit of retail therapy and I had an overwhelming desire to shop. Alan found a UK paper at the station for reading later in the day. We had brought lunch with us but it becomes a problem on a wet day; there is no where to sit and eat it. We had read up about the BMW Museum and it actually sounded great so we decided to take a train in the direction of Olympic park and go and spend the afternoon out there. You have to go through BMW Welt to get to it so we went to their luxurious toilets on the way through. There, downstairs in a lovely lobby were beautiful leather couches so we sat down and ate our lunch there in the dry. There I found a promotional booklet about the whole place and it said that 250 people a day come to pick up their new cars and that the public can watch this from a balcony. So we went and looked at the people getting their new cars. The cars are brought up a special lift and driven in place onto individual turntables. A saleperson meets the buyers and escorts them to their car where they have their photo taken. They spend about an hour going over the finer features and detail. They then shake hands and go over to a trolley by the car which is full of drawers and cupboards and they sign up the paper work. Finally the buyer gets to drive a grand circuit and then down a ramp out into the traffic and their brand new BMW. There were five deliveries taking place while we were there, all of them the SUV model. It was fascinating and there were quite a few spectators. the photo shows the BMw complex with the head office in the shape of a 4 cylinder engine and the Welt with it's massive roof in front.

We carried on over to the Museum, only to find it too, was closed on a Monday. So we took ourselves back to town and into the San Francisco Coffee Company to get some coffee and internet. It was still raining steadily and not too warm so it was a nice place to be.

We made our way home a bit earlier than usual and spent the time sorting our diaries and having a giant throw away of useless accumulated pieces of paper. Tomorrow we travel to Strasbourg in France and this will be our last major stop before heading back across the channel to the Uk.