Saturday, 21.07.2007

 

After some hectic packing, we finally started our great rally at 10:30 A.M.

for the first etappe from our home town Burgsteinfurt to Prague. There is a big meeting of all teams in Prague on Sunday, before they will head in small groups or just by themselves into all possible eastern directions. Most of the other teams are at the official start in London today, which we decided to leave out.

 

The trip to Prague was mostly without problems. Only in traffic jams and in the city traffic (after some hard work on the autobahn) our Wartburg showed some heat problems which resulted to some failures of the ignition system. At some point we had to replace one of the three ignition coils to make sure that the car will run on all three cylinders. But these were only minor problems!

 

There was one funny coincident: In a traffic jam near Bad Eilsen we met Daniel Schulz, a Wartburg fan and expert who gave us many good hints and practical help for the preparation of our car. But this was our first personal meeting, since before we always had contact only by e-mail, snail mail and telephone!

 

After our arrival in Prague we met with Anneli (daughter of Siegfried and sister of Jonas) who arrived just one hour before us. Anneli spends some days in Prague with her friends. When we found her she already had organized some cheap but good accommodation for us!

 

 

 

 

Sunday, 22.07.2007

 

On Sunday morning we started quite easy going. We slept long and then strolled a bit through downtown Prague. Quite soon we were able to see the first Rally cars coming into town from London----but unfortunately, we could never see them on one place together, since the parking garage which was recommended by the Rally organization did not allow a view on all cars at the same time, and since the price of that parking was very high (approx. 45 Euros a day), there were many cars at that place anyway.

 

But the evening party in the cafe Dinitz was great! Very good atmosphere and many nice people talking about their plans and their routes to Ulan Bator. There

we also organized a small convoy with other teams: among them another father-son team from the UK, which takes almost the same route as we do!