Firetrucks and a Football Loving Pilot

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Javier and Carmen were sneaky this morning and snuck into our area in the inner city with their cars to pick us up, sneaky, sneaky! So the plan was to get loaded up with our gear and get out really quick before the police saw them.

That was the plan…

Everything was all prepaid so all that was left to do was pay for one bottle of water and bolt. But then the hotel tried to charge for breakfast, got that sorted and then it was 2.25 Euros for the water so I paid that, then the printer didn’t work and he scuttles to another office for our receipt, finally he comes back and says he needs 2 more cents!

Finally, 20 minutes and 2 cents later we are on our way!

So we drive to breakfast cafe, me with Carmen and Tim with Javier. Carmen’s English is pretty good, a lot better than she credits herself with. We followed Tim and Javier and it was hilarious to watch. Javier talks a lot with his hands and driving didn’t stop this, all we could see was his hands waving around - don’t know how he steered!

I also learned that after they dropped us off last night after 1am, they went out with Javier’s friends and didn’t get home till 4:30am, good effort being at our hotel by 9am I thought, especially considering we struggled to get up this morning!

Next thing Carmen and I know is the boys are stopped on a bend on the side of the road, so we pull up behind them thinking they are lost - I know, who would think 2 boys would get lost! But no, they’re not lost, they just think that parking under the no parking sign is a good idea - Carmen doesn’t agree. Now, I don’t speak Spanish, but I didn’t need a translator to figure out what she was saying to him!

After breaky we parted ways with Carmen as she had to drive back to Cordoba where she lives. We tell Javier that she’s really nice and we look forward to coming back for a wedding - No way he says! We’ll see…

The drive to Malaga is nice. Javier’s described his car as a ‘s%$t box with no air conditioning’, his little Holden Astra (well the Spanish equivalent) does the job just fine. Breeze made it nice and cool, so all is good in the world. Great scenery on the way, loads of sunflowers! The roads don’t go around the mountains, but straight through, so lots of tunnels along the way.

Scattered all along the way are completely white towns. Apparently you can do a driving holiday that follows a route full of these white towns. The government even arranges for the buildings to be repainted occasionally and if you don’t keep to the white theme you are fined! We can’t even stop people from putting graffiti over everything so good luck with something like that in Australia.

Along the way we stop at a local Forestry Fire station, not like Fire and Rescue, more the same as DEC where Tim works. They have a helipad and their helicopter is called the Koala, it holds 6 people plus air crew and all the equipment is held on the outside in a cage on the side. It is capable of holding about 750 litres of water underneath in the bucket.

The truck is enormous compared to our trucks back home as they are designed for mountains; trust me when I say you don’t want to be getting a flat tyre, the tyres are huge! They are really well set up for safety, they don’t just have a bull bar on the front, the entire front of the truck till the roof is covered by bar work and running along the top of the bar work all round the top of the cab is a sprinkler system.

In the truck bay where they park up has even had a lot of thought gone into it. Next to each parking area is a hydrant outlet, so they can park the truck up at the end of the day and fill where it is. No need to go out and work for 18 hours at a fire, go somewhere to fill up, then go and park up - they are thinkers these Spaniards!

Got to airport, had to walk ages to get to our terminal. Javier came with us, I think he may have regretted that decision by the time we finally got to the check in counter. But he was going to the beach after so plenty of time to rest up, he’ll probably go to sleep on the sand!

Got changed so our bags would be a bit lighter, lots of other people in line were wearing their heavy clothes and carrying jackets as well, so we weren’t alone! Our suitcases alone were 4 kilos overweight, our backpacks would have been too but they let us through. Whew

Started raining as we were getting ready for take off, so much for Javier’s trip to the beach!

Our pilot was wearing orange straw hat and gave his welcome speech from in the passenger cabin over PA, it was all in Dutch but we could tell he was excited about the soccer match against Brazil that was due to start as we took off. He gave scores though out the flight, but all in Dutch…

Holland won 2:1!!! WHOO HOO!!!!

We had to walk across the tarmac when we arrived in Eindhoven, and it was warm! Who would have thought… Our bags took forever to come, two other flights got their bags first.

Went to Hertz to pick up our hire car, we ended up with an Audi A5 Sportsback - we were meant to get Voltswagon Golf, we wanted the smallest car possible for our first time driving on the wrong side of the road - if only for the residents of Holland safety!!! Beautiful car though!

Took ages to work out how to start it, and then I kept stalling it, bloody women drivers I know! The car had already been named Veronica so it was two women! And then we had to do a couple of laps to find our way out.

Driving on wrong side, what an experience, kept getting too close to gutter so Tim’s job was to keep saying ‘move left’, and when we turned corners ‘driver stays in the middle of the road’, every time we came to a corner or a roundabout we’d hope someone was in front of would be going the same way so we could just follow, too funny!

There were loads of people riding bikes, and when I say loads, I mean hundreds! And because the soccer game had just finished, everyone was wearing orange, carrying flags and cheering, really happy times here!

It is really picturesque here, there are lakes, and tree lined streets where the trees meet overhead in the middle. The buildings still all have that old world charm about them, all neatly in a row.

But finally we made it to the Holiday Inn Veldmaarschalk in one piece! Hotel staff not the cheeriest, maybe the only person in Holland not to have seen the game!

We went for a walk over into the city to get some dinner. Again here everyone was wearing orange and waving flags. We went to Central Walk that was lined with cafes and had a big screen at the end, there were orange flags all up and down the street, so we figure they would have showed the game here. Considering everyone would have been here for hours and hours drinking, nobody was behaving badly like they would have been in Australia. They even have portable urinals for the fellas, there are no doors and three people can use it at once facing towards the centre. I guess since boys are happy to ‘go’ on a tree or building, these keep it all contained.

Looking around at everyone here, it seems once you hit 30 you must be sent to another part of town. There were a few exceptions, but there weren’t many ‘obvious’ over 30’s, the ones that were over 30 probably fitted in more here than where the other’s were sent to.

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