Bloody Gutless Wonder

I have gotten the green light to blog about our van (the only reason we can let the parents know about it is the fact that we are no longer riding around in it).

Anyway, we christened our grey fiat van The Bloody Gutless Wonder. It was rented in Switzerland for fifty bucks (or franks, I'm not sure) a day. It get's around nine hundred kilometers per liter and has a touchy stick shift. For two weeks it was our only transport and quite often our bed too.

Schyler was our driver, and we could not have asked for a better one. As Liesl put it, Schyler was born to drive in Europe. The drivers here are insane daredevils who stretch roads, traffic laws and their cars to the limit. Speaking of limits, I don't think they've even heard of the one for speed. And Schyler plunged right into this chaos with an enthusaism that would've made any European proud. By the end of the trip I would've trusted Schyler with my life. In the middle of the trip, I often didn't have a choice.

Let me start off the telling of our most harrowing adventure by talking a little about swiss road design. Swiss cars are tiny, but for some reason they half the roads they build can fit only one. You have to drive off to the side to let another car past you. Secondly, they don't believe in guard rails. This may be due to the fact that they expect the people who drive their tiny roads are capable enough to not drive off them. Or perhaps they just needed the room to let cars traveling in opposite directions to pass eachother. The Swiss also have a lot of cows... just fyinformation.

Add to this the Bloody Gutless Wonder (BGW). We were practically the biggest car on the road (except for the Mercedez trucks... All the trucks here are made by Mercedez and half of the busses are too. It's super cool). BGW was not really worthy of much trust (although we did make it the whole trip without a single breakdown). For one thing the airconditioning didn't work. The closest we could get was a lot of warm air blowing at us. Second of all, BGW's engine overheated whenever we went uphill unless we had the heat going... So we spent a lot of time with the windows down.

Add to all of this...

THE SWISS ALPS!

to be continued...