Today has been a true Friday 13th for me. My weekend looked oh so promising when I worked my backside off to get most of next week's planning done ahead of schedule (God bless Work Plans and Differentiation). I then packed up my backpack and cycled back to my flat (all by myself for the first time) only to discover my car gone.
Now, with all the cycling lately I was just confused at first...had I left it at Nico's?, where exactly had I parked?, had the street been full and I parked around the corner? Nope. I cycled around in circles just to reassure myself but I knew where I had left it.
With Nico at work, I decided to call the police who gave me the number of the local car towing company..."just in case". I could almost hear the dumb foreign woman vibes screaming down the phone. So I call the company and I'm not sure whether my heart leaped or sank when she finished off my license plate number for me.
First I had to hike all the way over to the place in the heat on an empty stomach only to be told I had parked in a building zone and had to pay 180Euros to get my car back. I knew there were no 'no parking' signs when I had parked on Saturday so I let the woman call the police to come and explain things to me. The woman, to her credit, was the only positive thing in the whole experience. I have no idea how she stays so nice because she must get some people tearing a strip off when she tells them what I'm about to share with you, but as I was on the verge of tears, she sorted me out and explained tomorrow would be a better day.
So it turns out that even though I parked there on Saturday, by German law, I should have checked on the car every two days in case they choose to put up no parking signs around my car. Great. I had been at Nico's all week feeling very proud of myself for cycling and being so green when I was breaking the law the whole time. The most incredible part of this law is that if you are on holiday for two weeks and your car is towed, you still have to pay; if you are run over by a bus and spend two weeks in hospital, you still have to pay; (I imagine) if you are run over by a bus and actually have the audacity to die, your family still have to pay to get your car back. Nice.
The next turn of events came when the police arrived to tell me that actually I hadn't been parked in a building zone. The problem was that a HGV tried to drive down the narrow street where I live and park my car yesterday and had scratched my car and called the police who decided I hadn't left the required space for a HGV to drive down there and would have to be towed!
On top of all this, I received a parking ticket the week I arrived in Germany in August and have been waiting all this time for the ticket to arrive via my English address only for the German authorities to be waiting for my German address which they now have and to add insult to injury the nice police lady told me my tyre was bald and I should have it changed immediately.
Here's to an improvement in the weekend!
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