(This post may be a bit long for some email software, so if you don’t see “Next stop: Introducing Scappa Van” at the bottom of your email, you’ll need to click on the title to go to the website and see the full post).
After some fairly intense weeks trying to pack things up and prepare our NZ motorhome for sale, it was somewhat of a relief to be climbing on a plane for a few hours. With fairly cramped seating in the Boeing 777 for the leg to Singapore, the meal service required an “elbows in” style of eating, giving us the opportunity to appreciate what it must have been like to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex. We disembarked the plane in Singapore, activated our free eSIMs (courtesy of Singapore Air), cleared through Immigration and hopped on a train into town to find our hotel for a shower and a sleep.
Despite telling ASB that we would be travelling to Singapore, tapping Steve’s credit card on the train station ticketing gate obviously triggered an automatic blocking order on his card, which caused some issues when he tried to exit the train station at the other end of the trip (thanks for the extra angst ASB!). In addition, we found that the eSIMs weren’t working despite being activated as per the instructions. This left us without cellular data and modern navigation tools, so we reverted to old school navigation techniques - like asking somebody for directions.
After a short walk from the train station we found our hotel, checked in and crashed. The room was fairly basic, but adequate, although the bed was extremely firm (as in rock hard!). Oh well, it was better than trying to sleep on the plane, and slightly less cramped.
Getting back to the airport was simply a case of backtracking to the train station and tapping on (using a different credit card). We cleared back through Immigration, found some food and awaited our next flight to Frankfurt on an Airbus A380 (a much quieter and smoother aircraft with more room at each individual seat).
Arriving in Frankfurt meant going through the relatively new electronic registration system for non EU citizens which took a little bit of time (photographs and fingerprints taken), but at least our luggage was waiting for us on the baggage carousel. The hotel shuttle arrived shortly after we found the pick up point and after a few minutes we arrived at our hotel in time to check in, take a bit of a walk to stretch our legs, have a celebratory German beer and then crash.
Job #1 the next morning was to organise some local SIM cards to get data on our phones. Just after 7:30am we walked about 15 minutes to the nearest Lidl to buy a couple of SIM cards (€10 each for 25GB which is valid for 4 weeks). Then we walked back to the hotel to use their Wifi to register and activate the SIM cards. Only …… there were one or two issues involving geo-specific app purchases, residential addresses and identification verification. Firstly we had to log out of our Apple accounts and create new ones based in Germany, with our German CarTurf address, and were then able to download the Lidl Connect app. Eventually we found out that the online ID verification couldn’t be completed because they didn’t have a box marked “New Zealand” to tick as country of origin. 🤦♂️
So we were told that we would have to go to a Vodafone shop (the Lidl cards are a Vodafone product) to get our ID verification sorted. So we walked for 35 minutes past the Lidl to the nearest Vodafone shop, only to find that they could not support the product because it wasn’t sold by them. Plan B was to buy two SIM cards from Vodafone directly and sort out the Lidl cards later ….. except that Vodafone were having technical issues with their billing and sales system and they were unable to actually sell us any prepaid SIM cards at all.
Plan C was to go across the road and buy an O2 SIM card (more expensive). The O2 shop were happy to sell us a SIM card but they were having technical issues and could only sell using cash, so we had to go to the ATM to get some euros. Next we had to go to a superette across the road to buy a top up card, then back to O2 to load it on the account before activation. Finally, the card was activated and we had data! But we still had to walk 35 minutes back to the hotel. Ten minutes into our 35 minute walk, the O2 shop phoned us to point out they had forgotten to get payment from us for the SIM cards. We turned around, paid the cash, and turned once again in the direction of the hotel. By this time it was past midday and our expectations of German efficiency were starting to look a little bit shaky!
We had been unable to get the local public transport app to accept our credit card (technical fault at this time …. again!!), so it would be easier to get the shuttle back to the airport to use a ticket machine. But not so fast! The shuttles did not operate between 10.30am and 5pm, so we cut out the middle man and grabbed a taxi to take us to the main train station (Hauptbahnhof) in Frankfurt. We had to take a train to Friedburg and then a bus to Bingenheim which is where the van was parked up with it’s previous owner. We bought tickets OK, but then we asked where the train departed from and got sent to the wrong train on the wrong platform. After working that out we got directed to another platform to await the correct train ….. except we could have taken an alternative train on the next platform which would have taken us to Friedburg sooner. 🤦♂️
We were also advised that once we got to Friedburg we should take the RB1 bus to get to Bingenheim. So once we got to Friedburg we were directed to the RB1 bus, but ….. it turns out that there are two routes for the RB1 bus (which nobody told us about!) and we took the wrong one. About 500 metres from our final destination the bus turned right instead of left and started taking us away from where we wanted to go. As soon as we realised we got off at the next stop and worked out that we needed to catch another RB1 to take us on a loop and back toward our destination (in hindsight we should have stayed on the bus, but ….). By now, any thoughts about German efficiency were well and truly shattered and we were questioning how the country managed to function at all. We messaged the van’s seller to let him know that we were a little delayed and he took pity on us and drove the 3 minutes from his home to our bus stop to pick us up, which was fantastic. 😀
We finally got to see the van and that was when we realised the next issue existed. The company that was handling the logistics of purchase, registration and insurance had sent registration plates and papers by UPS but … they hadn’t arrived by the time we turned up on Friday afternoon (and, of course, there are no UPS deliveries over the weekend). So this meant that we couldn’t drive the van without plates. By now we were pretty certain that German efficiency was not only a myth, but maybe some kind of sarcastic joke. Good thing the previous owner was happy to let us stay in the van in his driveway.
Next stop: Introducing Scappa Van
