Club Arnage

Norse Saga

Well its time to tell the tale of our trip from the Icy North to Le-Mans in 2011.

Myself and Roar aka John set off from Norway at 4.30am on the Saturday before Le-Mans,
I had just had the car inspected by NAF (the Norwegian Auto mobile club) and been given a full clean bill of health with no findings, so we hoped for a smooth trip down.

All went great we arrived at our ferry from Larvik to Denmark with good time to spare, booked Business class seats so we could relax and get some sleep for a few hours.
Thats when things started to go wrong, the next people to take there seats where a polish couple with a small boy, who seemed to have a broken volume control and promptly kept everyone awake for the next 3 hours and only when the father wanted to sleep did the mother take the kid outside to the play area. Sensing my chance for revenge I thought now would be a goo time to play Angry Birds on my phone with the sound on :-)

Arriving in Denmark we soon made rapid progress  towards the German Border and country no 3 on our travels.

We had so much time to arrive in France and be the first of our group to arrive that we kept the car 10km under the speed limit as to not over stress the car, soon passing Hamburg, stopping for a break  to stretch our legs and drain some of the fluids we had consumed. Setting off again we planned to take our next stop for dinner around 6pm, that's when the car started to run on 3 cylinders and bellow black smoke,  we pulled into the next lay-by and called NAF our breakdown company, that informed us someone would be along soon to help us out.

Being keen motor sports fans and both having our own race cars, we whipped out the trusty Haynes manual and started to diagnose the problem while we waited and both came to the same conclusion that the no 3 injector had failed. When the ADAC truck arrived he listened to our description of the problem, the just said NEED SERVICE Audi Village or Audi City, so thinking it would be less busy we opted for Audi Village.
Arriving 10 minutes after  they had closed, he just unloaded us and the car drove of pointing HOTEL over there and left us there.

So we had 2 days until the garage opened, so we set off looking for a Hotel after calling NAF and being informed that they would cover up too 120 euro per night. The first Hotel in the village was full and of the 2 people that ran it the Wife spoke some English and the Husband not a word, so after pushing his wife out of the way the man took charge of giving us directions in German that neither of us understood, but at least he supplied a map of the Village. As it turned out all hotels full, so we decided to eat dinner then find a hotel after.

So having stopped right in the middle of the part in Germany that was the centre of a food based E coli outbreak we took the decision to avoid salads and ordered Pepper Steak with fries thining his would be a safe option. When the meal arrived the first plate the put down was a lovely prpared and presented Salad that myself and Roar looked at as if they had just placed a severed head on the table :-) pushing his to one side we ate a nice meal and walked back to the car to use the gps to find a hotel, found one at Bremmen airport and called for a taxi, when asked do you speak English they replied No, but Autohaus Brandt and Airport seemed to be understood and the phone hung up, so we waited with baited breath to see if the Taxi arrived, it did and we made it finally to a hotel. The next day we spent enjoying the city of Bremmen.

  Monday morning we arrived at 7.00am at the Audi garage asked the very pleasant young lady(as it turned out) if someone could help us out, within 10 minutes we were sat down enjoying a cup of coffee and the car was being looked at, we did not tell them what we thought was wrong as it was best to get a new diagnosis. The Audi mechanic came to the same conclusion as us, so they ordered the part and informed us it would not be there until the following afternoon, then booked us a hotel and gave us the use of one of there cars until ours was ready free of charge. Fantastic service from them and im ashamed to say I dont think 2 foreigners would have been treated the same at home in Norway.

So night no 2 in Bremmen, plus a phone call to MikeC from the Liverpool boys to explain the problem, He kindly offered to collect our caravan from its storage place in France for us so that was one less thing to worry about (Great friends you meet through CA)

The next day we watched the time drag slowly by as we waited for 3pm, when we arrived at Autohaus they gave us coffee and told us the car would be ready soon!!!  Then the Lady from reception came over and I asked if I owed them money, too which she replied not yet its still not good, so we went out to look at the car with the mechanic that did not speak any English, he removed the intake pipe from the turbo that should suck air, but it blew back to which he tried his best German/English “is not good MOTOR KAPUT” and under his breath its F#ched

So we rang NAF again who said they would arrange a hire car for us.
And arranged with the garage that it was ok to leave the car there until I could arrange something.
NAF then rung us back saying a Ford Mondeo station wagon was being sent to pick us up soon, so we unpacked everything into the middle of the Audi Dealers forecourt including Stus carbon  garden chair and waited and waited and the people form the garage went home and we waited after 2 hours we rang NAF again who said they would find out what happened. They called back and said that ADAC had forgotten the case and were sorting it now.
10 minutes later the phone rang, it was sixt hire car who informed us our car was ready to collect at Frankfurt airport, remember we were in Bremmen on the other side of germany. So I informed her about this and the fact that we were sat in the middle of a car park with al our camping gear and there was no way we could get to Frankfurt. So luckily they had a car for us in Bremmen but I had to go there to collect the car.
So into the taxi hoping our stuff would not go missing we arrive at Bremmen Sixt hire car go up to the desk only to be informed no booking for you, so back on the phone to NAF in Norway that ring ADAC in Germany the phone rings at the Sixt desk and a embarrassed  girl at the desk informed us they had a car for us after all.

So back to the Audi garage load up our belongings and set off for Le-Mans 4 days and 600 euros later.
Called Mike C to let him know we were on his way. (They had planed if we did not get the hire car sorted  to drive from BN to Bremmen to rescue us, now thats what you call friends.

Nick

Bloody hell, Nick.  You make my 77 hour trip back to NZ sound like a walk in the park by comparison!

Dx

Wow !! Thankfully you arrived, but how's the car now? Is it fixed, did Werner manage to help at all?

Well thanks to help form Werner, my car is now working again and back in Norway, the Viking Wenche is glad to have her car back as it has been raining alot in Norway and as i stole her car she has been cycling to work  ;)

thanks for all the Help Werner

It was a pleasure, Nick!

Glad to hear the Norse Saga finally had a happy end ;)

I hope there's no part 2 next year ;D