E4

So last night, real late, I got the call I´d been waiting for; my lady had finally found a hotel. She´d driven from Slovenia up past Maribor into Austria taking the December high road across Europe aiming for Mulhouse, (I bet you don´t know how to pronounce it; Moolooze) France, but somewhere before Salzburg the red light for the alternator came up, and she spent about five hours driving all over the frozen backroads of Austria trying to find a replacement alternator. having started at 5 am, and now on her way again at 5pm, she drove on passing into Germany, where she couldn´t find a hotel room for less than 80 Euros, and crossed again into Austria, (which you have to do, as this landscape is all mouintains) and finally, with 800kms under her wheels, she found a dreadful, smoke-stinking hotel, where she got the last room at $61 Euros, top floor, no lift, DISABLED room, and was able to get to bed by 1am. European regs insist hotels have a disabled facility, yeah right; top floor, no lift.... but next stop is France, where there are ´Formula´ hotels at reasonable prices all over the place, well signposted. (Well, after she´s crossed Switzerland, 200 kms of highways for a compulsory 30+ Euros, with the filthiest toilets.... no toilets, really, which is why they´re such a strage lot; they´re all bustin´....) So if you´d like our opinion of Europe as a destination for a bit of a look around, forget it. If you handle bus touring, we have no experience, I´m sorry, but go and live there? If you plan to be more than three months in any one country you´ll need another car, registered in that country, with a separate insurance cover. Call it what you like, I call it BLACKMAIL, and is the grossest anomaly, and is the underlying reason my lady is driving across Europe to deposit her car back on French soil, and find a bus back, WHICH WILL NOT STOP IN SLOVENIA, AND WILL PASS THROUGH TO CROATIA, NOT EU, WHERE I CAN PICK HER UP. Fucking blackmail. I know, you´ll be saying `Just pay the insurance´ but they have a special package, that costs 1200 Euros a year, bubble car or Rolls Royce. Blackmail. Europe is one unified money making machine. Too much red tape. too much shite for travellers; you know, the ordinary people in cars who have to get something done; I´ve been stuck in some really remote places of this globe; Europe is crowded, and you´d think they´d have learned to get along a bit together, but I want to remind you that this is the home of fascism, and of foreigner´s intervention in their affairs to keep it all from degenerating into chaos, (like Russia). Nuff said.