The summer of 2003 had not been a particularly happy time for me in terms of my health. Over the preceding three years I had been a frequent user of the local primary health care facilities, visiting the Health Centre and summoning the Doctor-on-call on numerous occasions. I experienced a variety of ills; palpitations, panic attacks, stomach pains, dizziness and many other problems. Eventually I decided to stop taking the tamsulosin tablets, which had been prescribed to alleviate the symptoms of my enlarged prostate. It became clear that my suspicions were fully justified and that this medication was causing the side effects which I have described. After a while it became apparent that I needed treatment of a more drastic nature, so my doctor arranged for me to go into hospital for a T.U.R.P. (Trans-urethral resection of the prostate). I was discharged after four days and things soon started to go wrong. After many visits to the Health Centre, and several phone calls to the urology department of the hospital, it was established that I was suffering from a chronic prostatic infection. The first antibiotics had no effect, so I was prescribed a four week course of a much more specific one. I gradually got better, but it was a long haul and involved many other drugs, including powerful anti-inflammatories. The operation was carried out on May 13th, and I did not fully recover until September.

So much for the background, now for the story I intended to tell. I had been aware for some time of whispering and nudge-wink, know-what-I-mean? behaviour among the rest of the family and so had guessed that something was afoot. I had been told to leave the room on several occasions, and Lee, my elder son, kept phoning and asking for Sarah. Then, one Saturday evening, Lee told me that he intended taking me on a trip to mark my return to good health and that I should be ready at 8am on the following Tuesday, complete with an overnight bag and that I should ask no questions!

Came the appointed time and Lee arrived to collect me in his Passat. I said my goodbyes to Susan and Sarah and we set off. Turning right out of the end of the road suggested that we were not heading for Ashford and the Eurostar train, nor for the cross-channel ferry or the Channel Tunnel at Dover. We travelled north up the A21, anti-clockwise round the M25 and through the Dartford Tunnel. On reaching the M11 turn-off and heading north on this motorway it began to look as though we were bound for Stansted Airport. Sure enough, we turned towards the long-term car park. At this point Lee began to spin some cock-and-bull yarn about a park-and-ride scheme to enable visitors to go into Cambridge! I ask you!

Having parked the car we caught the shuttle-bus up to the airport. Lee had abandoned stories about Cambridge and park-and-ride and we headed for the Ryanair check-in. It transpired that we were headed for Frankfurt Hahn. After about two hours on a Boeing 737 we landed at this small quiet airport. Having collected our baggage we made our way to the front doors, where Lee told me to sit and wait for him as he had to make enquiries about our hotel, which was apparently a short walk away. As I waited, I was joined on the row of seats, by a young German woman with two children. After a short time she spoke to me in English and we fell into conversation. I told her that my son was taking me on a mystery journey, and that I had no idea what was going on. I related to her a story from “Creature Comforts”, a short film by Nick Park, of ‘Wallace and Gromit’ fame. In this film, one of the animals speaks in the voice of a frail old lady, saying “….I feel very secure. I know they will look after me and put me where I ought to be” “That” I told her “is exactly how I feel at this moment!” She thought this was very funny and wished me a happy visit to Germany.

Lee now returned and told me that we had a short walk to the hotel. As we walked through car parks and an obviously unfinished airport area, it was clear to me that this hotel was a figment of his imagination. After walking about a quarter of a mile we stopped beside a hire car, an Opel Corsa. We set off heading east on route 50, then roughly south on the 61. Our destination, I was told, was Mannheim, a city some 120km to the south. Seemingly more by luck than judgement, we found the Tulip Inn Hotel where we already had a reservation. This was on city grid C7, the inner part of the city being built on a ‘block’ system, with no street names. We booked in at the hotel and were given the key to a smallish but comfortable room.

The first job, though, was to get the car established in the hotel’s underground car park. What a surprise awaited us as we drove down the narrow concrete ramp, negotiating the ninety-degree, right-hand bend halfway down! At the bottom one could drive straight ahead or take a shorter section to the right. The parking bays, to left and right of both sections were like nothing we had ever met before and describing them is going to give me a problem. Nevertheless I shall do my best, with the aid of the accompanying photograph. Set into the walls on either side was a series of open-fronted cells, each large enough to accommodate a car. The floor was a metal, upward (or downward) sloping ramp. A car is driven up this ramp until the front wheels mount, then drop beyond a steel retaining bar. The driver then gets out and stumbles down the ramp. In the case of a lady I saw, a somewhat inelegant procedure. Mounted on the wall nearby is a key-operated switch, which, when turned, raises the outer end of the ramp, lifting the back end of your car into the upper part of the cell. What is now revealed is a downward sloping ramp below, which may already house a car. There are two ramps in each cell, an upper and a lower, each of which can house a car. The ramps are hinged to the wall at the inner end and linked to each other at the outer end. They go up or down together when the wall-mounted switch energises an electric motor. Either vehicle is available, simply by operating the key. This is a typical example of German ingenuity.

Having put the car to bed and organised ourselves in the room, we agreed that we should take a stroll around the city, both to see the sights and to quell the hunger pangs. We did not have time to see very much, but we were impressed with the wide streets, the imposing buildings and the tramway system. Our visit to Pizza Hut may not have been very adventurous, but it was clean and pleasant, the service was prompt and the food was enjoyable. We were slightly amused that the waitress looked a dead ringer for Carla from ‘Cheers’ but fortunately she had none of the traits of that lady! Walking back to the hotel we began to see an activity, which provided us with considerable entertainment well into the night. We happened to be in Mannheim on the night before the municipal collection of large items of refuse. On the evening before, businesses and householders put out on the street all manner of goods for which they have no further use. This appears to be the signal for a substantial portion of the population to take to the streets in search of anything, which might ‘come in handy’. Some simply walk around trying not to let others know they are on the scrounge, whilst at the other end of the spectrum are the ‘professionals’ who go around with every type of collecting vehicle, ranging from an old, clapped out pram to a medium sized van, complete with roof-rack. There is an amazing variety of treasure to be found and some of the hunters appear to be in pursuit of a particular quarry. We saw one chap who specialised in compressors from old fridges and freezers, of which a surprising number were on offer. He seemed to employ mainly his boots to disembowel his victims in order to reach the ‘heart’, leaving the remains strewn across the footpath! Next we saw a cyclist making off down a side street with a spare bike slung over his shoulder. Belt and braces we wondered? We continued to watch this sport from our hotel window, an excellent vantage point on the second floor at the front of the building. A computer monitor was inspected and rejected by several ‘hunter-gatherers’, whereas several apparently useless items of broken furniture were eagerly borne away and thrust into whatever mode of transport the finder employed. A van made at least two slow passes, with the driver scanning the piles of rubbish, in case he had missed anything earlier. It had a roof-rack, on which was surely the most bizarre prize of the evening. A largish, wooden, pink and yellow toy giraffe with no legs!

In the morning, we were woken by shouting and clattering from the street below. The dustmen had arrived to take away what was left after the mass foraging of the previous evening. There was, however, one final act to play out in this comedy. The rubbish had been sorted, and all metal piled on the far side of the street. Among this was a lamp, which we had noticed the night before. It consisted of a circular base, a tubular-steel column and an uplighter shade. Above this was a bulb-holder, taking the overall height to about six feet, or a little under two metres for you continentals! The dustmen had gone and were replaced by a chap with an open-backed truck who was collecting the metal. There now began a race against time for a passer-by who had spied the lamp and was endeavouring to remove the fittings from above the shade. He was not a tall chap and was standing on tip-toes to reach the bulb-holder while he wielded his screwdriver! It apparently never crossed his mind to lay the lamp down! Heigh-ho.

You must remember that I still did not know why we had come to this town and Lee now told me that I had some navigating to do. I replied that it was surely straight back up the route we had come. But no, we were going further south! I was not allowed to know our destination, but I was required to guide us out of Mannheim and onto route 6. This was accomplished without too much trouble, once the one-way system had been overcome and we had crossed the enormous bridge over the Rhine. (It is time for a small boast at this point. During the summer of 2003 I have spent a lovely evening on a Thames Pleasure Boat in London, had a trip on a similar craft on the Seine, in Paris and crossed the Rhine in Mannheim. Well I’m impressed!)

Back to the story. We headed out of the city and I directed Lee onto route 6. I then directed him onto route 6 in the correct direction, a mistake brought about by Lee’s conviction that he knew better than his navigator! After about an hour on this autobahn I was instructed to put the map away and to reach for a large envelope behind the driver’s seat. “In there” he said, “you will find your new glasses”. I reached in and pulled out a pair of industrial safety glasses, which had been obscured by pieces of card stuck over the lenses. In effect, a blindfold! “Put those on and don’t try to see anything” I was instructed. We soon turned off the autobahn and followed a rather twisty route for about ten minutes. The car then stopped and I was given further instructions. “Face straight ahead and remove the glasses”.

When I did so I was facing a large, hangar-like building, above which was mounted, on enormous steel stanchions, a Tupolev Tu 144 supersonic airliner. It was in flying pose, and looked extremely impressive. This was the aircraft that was built as a rival to the Franco-British Concorde.

Lee had brought me to ‘Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum’. Earlier in the year, he and his girlfriend Debbie had been in the area, when they accompanied Sarah to a concert. They had come across this place and had time for only a quick visit. He determined then to make a proper visit and to bring me, once I had recovered sufficiently from my ‘poor-old-sod’ mode! I shall not be able to do justice to this enormous achievement, but I will do my best to convey the sense of awe which I experienced during the six hours or so that we spent on the site.

The exhibits are displayed in, above and around two very large, hangar-like buildings. They are predominantly, but by no means exclusively German and include just about every type of machine, including aircraft, aero-engines, ships’ engines, railway locomotives, electrical generating equipment, tanks, guns, amphibious vehicles and other military equipment, lorries, cars, racing cars, racing and touring motor-cycles, bicycles, prams and chain-saws.

The ex-Air France ‘Concorde’ is a recent arrival and the plan is to display it atop the hangar, in company with the Tupolev Tu-144. There are several other aircraft mounted in flying mode, including a ‘Twin Pioneer’ in a steep dive and an Ilyushin 14 in a nose-up attitude. This has a forward passenger door open, which leads into a box-like structure outside. From this, a large, circular chute allows children of all ages, including my 41-year-old son, to slide, on a mat, down through the roof of the hangar, to finish up at ground level inside the building.

He had previously taken me to see a large tank of water, which had two parallel rails rising from one end at about 45° and to a height of roughly fifteen to twenty feet. At the base of each rail was a small ‘boat’, just large enough to accommodate one person. The self-appointed victim climbed into one of these boats, sat down and pulled upon a hanging rope. The boat was then pulled up to the top of the ramp and released, whereupon it, and its occupant, careered headlong down and hit the water with an enormous splash, before floating serenely across to the other side. It was then retracted to the base of the rail in readiness for the next intrepid rider. Lee had two turns on this, on the second occasion nearly sinking! He came out grinning from ear to ear and urging me to follow suit. Yeah, right, as they say!

We paid our entrance fee at the front of one of the buildings and then continued towards the first exhibition hall. The ticket, which you receive on paying, has to be inserted into a turnstile, rather like those at underground stations. In this hall we found American cars of the thirties, such as a Cord and a Graham, with their enormous chrome exhaust pipes snaking out through the side of the bonnet and down under the body. One of Hitler’s gigantic, armoured Mercedes Benz cars is on display, with its inch-thick, bullet-proof glass! There are Rolls-Royce Merlin and Griffon aero-engines and similar products from Daimler-Benz.

I shall certainly run out of superlatives in a very short time when describing the marvels of engineering to be found at this site. There is a ship’s engine, of V12 layout, in front of which I stood for a photograph. I was only there to lend scale and I am sure you will see what I mean. Apparently, six of these are typically used to power a destroyer!

The steam-powered railway locomotives employ some of the heaviest cast-iron and steel components to be found in any land-based form of transport engineering. The forward view from the footplate, along either side of the enormous boiler, is negligible. How the drivers of these leviathans controlled them at speeds of up to 90 m.p.h. is beyond my comprehension!

Among the cars on display are a ‘Blower’ Bentley, Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, Mercedes 300SL, Ferraris, Aston-Martins, De Lorean, Audi Quattro, Jaguars, including a pristine red SS100; Alfa-Romeos, Lamborghinis, B.M.W., Volkswagen, Bugatti, Porsche (by the dozen) and a Laurin-Klement, forerunner of the Skoda. This list represents only a fraction of the total number of cars in this enormous building. There are several formula one racing cars and many bizarre inventions.

Motorcycles are also well-represented, Manx Nortons, B.M.W.s, B.S.A. Gold Star, 4-cylinder Gileras and M.V.Agustas, a 6-cylinder Benelli, racing sidecar outfits, Vincent 1000cc V-twins, scooters, bubble-cars and much more.

One of the most alarming machines was a two-man chainsaw, of very early vintage. This was a petrol-engined device, which had two handles at the ‘operator’ end, set about eighteen inches apart in the horizontal plane. The ‘assistant’ end was furnished with only one handle, about six inches long and positioned only a couple of inches from the cutting chain! Presumably the other hand was kept firmly in a pocket, out of harm’s way.

In the nineteen-fifties several small engines came onto the market, which were fitted to pedal cycles, driving one or other of the wheels by various means. The Cyclemaster was probably the neatest of the British units, being built into the hub of a specially constructed wheel, which replaced the original rear wheel of the bike. It consisted of a two-stroke engine of 32 cc capacity, chain drive and a fuel tank. The Mini-Motor was mounted behind the saddle and drove by a friction roller onto the rear tyre and another design was mounted over the front wheel. This, I believe was called the Power-Pak. These were quite familiar to me, but the device in this museum was outlandish in the extreme. An ordinary touring bike was fitted with something resembling a lawnmower engine. This was mounted behind the saddle and drove a wooden, aircraft-style propeller of about three feet in diameter. A metal guard enclosed the prop, in order to prevent its removing limbs and random bits of flesh from other road-users! A similar principle, but of somewhat greater proportions was employed on a converted Messerschmitt Kabinenroller, or bubble car. On the rear of this, someone has mounted a Volkswagen ‘Beetle’ engine, which drives, again, a wooden propeller. This is encompassed by a strong, wire mesh guard.

I did say there were some bizarre inventions in this place, but in this category I have left the best till the end. This is the idea for replacing the pneumatic bicycle tyre. As you will see in the photograph, the tyres have been removed from the wheels of a bicycle and in their place is a series of coil springs, fixed upright all round the rims. Just imagine trying to ride a bike fitted with this invention!

Having spent more than six hours here, and worn ourselves to a frazzle, we decided to have one last look at things we might have neglected and then to head north for the airport.

This was a fairly straightforward journey and I was not required to wear the blindfold! On the journey down we had seen lengthy tailbacks on the northbound carriageway of the autobahn, due to roadworks not far from our turn-off. We did not want to get held up in this mêlée, so I directed Lee on an ‘Umleitung’, but not of the extent of those we had experienced in the newly reunified East Germany in 1994! This was a relatively short diversion, but it did enable us to avoid the jams we had seen earlier in the day. We rejoined the autobahn ‘6’ at junction 32, after a pleasant drive through Dürhen, Eichtersheim and Mühlhausen and set off apace as far as the Hockenheim Ring, where we joined autobahn ‘61’. As we buzzed along in our little Corsa, we were overtaken by many impressive and speedy cars, among which was a Seat ‘Leon’ sporting twin exhaust tail-pipes at both left and right, i.e. four in all. On returning home I enquired of John what model of Leon this might be. He confirmed that it was a Leon Cupra ‘4’, sold only on the continent and not in Britain. It would probably have been powered by a 2.8 V6, through a ‘Haldex’ 4×4 transmission. A genuine ‘hot hatch’! I told Lee to catch up with it, so that I could get a better look at it, but for some reason we didn’t see it again. I think Lee was just not trying!

We continued on the ‘61’ to junction 45 where we turned onto route ‘50’, heading back to Frankfurt Hahn airport. We arrived in good time, returned the car and, having checked in for our flight, went in search of food. I spied a delicious snack, which consisted of an opened out bread roll with a large ‘Bratwurst’ sausage on top, the whole thing covered in grated cheese and then grilled. I have managed to replicate this at home, even finding cheese flavoured rolls. Great stuff!

It was soon time to board our Boeing 737 ‘800’ and return to Stansted. To round off an exciting and adventurous couple of days the flight was by no means crowded and I found a window seat with an uninterrupted view. Although it was nearly midnight and there was little moonlight, I was able to see the ground, or the sea for the whole flight. There was not a cloud in the sky and, from 28,000 feet it was a truly stunning experience to see the lights of cities, towns, villages, and motorways, all set out below like an enormous model world.

We landed fifteen minutes before our scheduled time and were soon through the airport and on the bus for the car park. This was very crowded and driven by a man who proved to be the original big fish in a small pond. The car parks cover a considerable area, and are served by a system of shuttle buses, which convey passengers to and from the terminal. The car park rows are identified by a system of letters and numbers, and the bus stops by a similar, but not identical system. This is where we fell foul of the ‘big fish’! We had noted the row number in which our vehicle was parked, but had failed to appreciate that this was not the bus stop number. We went around the car park with the driver calling out the stop numbers, none of which we recognised. Eventually we were the only passengers left on the bus. He enquired what stop we wanted and was delighted to be able to point out the error of our ways, in that we had noted a row number and not a stop number! We apologised humbly for our misdemeanour, whilst he self-righteously declared that he had been pointing out throughout the ‘journey’ that a row number was no use to him! Having wrung the maximum satisfaction from our discomfiture he drove about a hundred yards further forward and stopped close to our car! Arsehole!

We soon put this awkwardness out of our minds and pointed the Passat southwards down the M11 in the direction of home, where we arrived at about 1 a.m.

This had been a tremendously interesting and exciting couple of days and I will use this account to record my thanks and appreciation, firstly to Lee, for all that he did for me and also to Susan, Sarah and John, who all played a part in organising it and keeping the secret. Love and thanks to you all.

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