Ok, fun update. No track time will be seen at all. YAY!
Up until now, I've had high's and lows with the Audi:
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I found the nice beginnings of a massive tire failure yesterday afternoon on the Audi.
Up until now, I'd really kind of forgotten why I was so excited to leave Germany back in '07 but this morning really was a wake up call. I made the call to Europcar about the tire and they told me to take it to Trier's rental place, which was about 4 blocks from my hotel. No big deal... Upon arriving, they told me the only car that I could have was:
Europcar (which is National over here in Europe) should be sucking my beanbag with how much business I've generated for their conglomerate. I've had a rental car EVERY DAY for the past 2.5 years. No, seriously, every day. Even if I'm out of town, I drive a rental back to my house before I fly out for use when I return. This type of business that I've done with them does not warrant giving me perhaps the crappiest car ever made. Honestly, whoever drew this design up AND DID NOT THROW IT AWAY IMMEDIATELY AFTER LAUGHING THEMSELVES should be ashamed.
So yea, of course I called Europcar back and told them the Trier office only had one car in my "class" and that it was a total piece of ****. They said that my only option was to drive to Frankfurt, which is open 24 hrs and would have another car for me. And I set forth!
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Upon arriving at the Europcar desk in Frankfurt (half a tank of diesel away, which is about 40 euro) and burning half my afternoon, the guy at the desk said that if I already have a car in the class I'm in, I cannot exchange. I told him the folks on the phone said I could exchange and he said they were wrong. I asked him how he thinks going from an Audi A4 Wagon with GPS to a Citroen S***F*** with extremely poor highway gearing and no options was remotely fair. He said that these were the rules. I spoke to his supervisor, he said these were the rules. I asked them in a relatively American fashion how the f*** could a company tell me to drive 140 miles, waste my whole Saturday and then screw me over royally and tell me I have to drive back in the same piece of crap that I'm paying the same amount for as I was the Audi? Das is da rules!
The memories came flooding back... I genuinely cannot wait to leave this place again. Germany has inconvenience in abundance and loves to deal it out in massive helpings.
So, here I am in the hotel lobby, drinking their pisswater they call beer and wishing they had Guiness, but that too is a convenience. Oh yea, the pisser in the lobby also costs 1 euro to open the door (they have a lock like on a gum ball machine) and I'm feeling a galactic sized wiz coming on. Looks like I'll be trudging up to the 12th floor to piss in my own room.
