Reply to "Pre-LMC trip to the Swiss Alps"

So woke up at 4:30. Pretty annoying, but with the Longchamp not in good shape and the rest of the trip potentially hanging in the balance, I didn’t sleep well. I could still probably get me and the broken car home, take the Cadillac and drive to LMC trip and be buuh’ed at for a week But that was not the plan. No, I knew that the garage opened at 8 am, so had plenty of time. They insisted I spoke German, which for normal conversation works fine, but describing car parts in German, that’s not easy. So I did it another way. I made a small powerpoint (finally powerpoint can be used for something useful) and pasted pictures of the stuff I needed, and wrote the quantity besides. So no need guess. Then I just needed to bring the laptop to the garage. Probably their first customer ordering parts like that.

However, the laptop was low on juice, and the cable I had with me, which been modified to fit in French sockets, it didn’t fit in the German sockets. The legs were OK, but it’s round and the German sockets want round with small indents. So I had to make some indents. I asked reception for a knife, they only had a pair of scissors. Can you imagine cutting a plug to a new shape with only a pair of scissors? Had to be done, took a while. But it worked, so now I was ready for the garage.

Had breakfast, paid my bill, and then looked at the garage, the port was open before time, so went over there. One guy was working, no English, my broken German again. Showed him the powerpoint, then he took me to the parts shelves. We found every connector I needed, but no wire and worst of all, no relay.