As I attempted to define my options for travelling in Europe, I was provided with plenty of suggestions and I considered everything from Ireland to Africa to the Canary Islands, but I just couldn’t decide what to do. Most of the people I hang out with were going to be either out of town or working over the weekend and, as I wanted to make a long weekend out of it, it was going to be hard to find someone willing to take days off of work anyway. It was setting up to be a solo trip, which didn’t really bother me too much – after all, I’ve been there before on my post-graduation trek around the Eastern U.S.
Throughout the decision-making process, I kept feeling pulled toward the mountains and I finally settled on a ski trip to the Alps. While I would have preferred to escape the cold for a few days, that was proving to be much more challenging (and likely much more costly) than a 5-6hr road trip to higher elevations (where at least I could take advantage of the cold and snow). So skiing it was…but where? Once again, I was inundated with suggestions, this time for various ski resorts in the French and Swiss Alps. With the World Economic Summit being held at my first choice (Davos, Switzerland), I finally settled on the Jungfrau region near Interlaken, Switzerland. The plan was to drive down on Friday (29 January) to settle in, rent skis, etc., and then ski Saturday, Sunday and possibly part of Monday before heading home. But as seems to happen all too often, my plans were rearranged…
I had a feeling it would eventually happen. After a number of close calls, my luck was running out - I just didn’t know when or where it finally would. Yes, from the first days of snow and ice in Luxembourg, I knew my company car was destined to make a trip to the body shop sooner or later. And it was as if Mother Nature wouldn’t turn off the snow until it finally happened.
Before I could leave town on Friday morning, I needed to make one last trip to the office to send an e-mail and pick up some paperwork to take with me. To avoid being seen on my day off, and in an effort to get out of town at a reasonable time, I went to the office around 6:45am to take care of my business. As was becoming fairly typical, it had snowed overnight and the roads were slick, but I had no problems driving to the office (partly because there were very few people on the roads at that time). The return trip home, around 8:30am, for last-minute packing/trip preparations, however, was a different story entirely.
My apartment is less than 5km from the office, and I was only about 1km from home when it happened. The 4 cars in front of me were stopping behind a bus and, though I should have had plenty of time and space to stop as well, my car was having none of it. I knew immediately that my big hunk of metal was going to slide into the back of someone else’s big hunk of metal if I didn’t perform some kind of evasive maneuvers. And the last thing I wanted was to have to deal with the headache that comes with hitting another person. I would gladly have run my car straight into the ditch on the side of the road, but in that ditch were 1) a very sturdy-looking metal sign marking the entrance to the village; 2) some equally sturdy-looking wooden posts; and 3) a row of medium-sized trees. My best (and only) hope was to thread the needle between the next car and the sign/posts/trees, but, unfortunately, the Audi A6 doesn’t lend itself to threading anything very well.
By the time the car had come to a rest on the other side of the posts/trees, almost the whole passenger side of the car was scratched (including a shattered side mirror) and the back left quarter-panel was crushed. The latter happened when the rear end of the car fishtailed to the left and made contact with the right rear corner of the car I was trying so desperately to avoid. The lady driver of that car was pretty shaken up, but she wasn’t hurt and there was not much damage done to her car. In the end, I was able to avoid a front-end collision with another vehicle (or a tree) and the damage could have been much worse than it was.
Pictures of the damage (though they don't really do it justice):
Obviously, I did not make it out of town on Friday. I won’t go into too many (more) details, but I spent much of the rest of the day with my secretary as she helped me with all of the insurance paperwork and escorted me to the dealership to drop off the car in exchange for a loaner, which we didn’t receive until almost 5:30pm. One thing we did learn through the process, however, was that my car was not equipped with winter tires (as it should have been). That (in addition to my being from Texas and rarely driving in winter conditions) may help to explain all the problems I have had with the snow/ice here.
Clearly, this was not how I wanted to spend my day off and the first day of my birthday weekend.
More to come...
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