Feeling somewhat trepidatious, we left the dealer in Strasbourg. We went to a discount electronics store we’d spotted and then while waiting for them to come back from their two hour lunch, we again bought good bread from (another) Lidl, and threw in a car dustbuster for good measure. Man these Lidls and their random junk aisles can suck you in. While there DutchBoy also called the VW dealers in Freiburg, and luckily enough, one of them had the part. It’s time like this I appreciate being married to a multi-linguist – he dealt with the mechanic in Strasbourg in French and then promptly called the Freiburg dealer in German. I’d be struggling, since France and Germany don’t tend to have as many people who can speak English as the Netherlands.

No GPS to our taste to be found, we put the route into the computer and headed off to Freiburg. We got to the dealer, got the part, and were told it was a simple in/out type thing. After looking, we realized our engine looked nothing like the diagram they’d given us and got one for an engine closer to ours – where it may be a simple in/out, but the problem is getting to it, hidden away as it is behind cables and wires and tubes and such. We figured, well, with the part, if it gets bad, any mechanic should be able to put it in.

Then we headed off to the Media Markt to find a new GPS. This made me nervous. Normally when we buy something like this, I spend forever online researching what we want, reading reviews and comparing prices. And here we were, determined to buy one here and now. And we did it. We went in thinking we’d go with Garmin again, but after the sales guy pointed out some benefits of the Navigon, we ended up walking out with one of those instead. We’ll see how we like it.

After that, we thought we’d get on the road again, so we hit McDonalds, since at least in Germany they have veggie burgers. But by the time we were done, it was late and we looked in our book and found the RV store we had hoped to get to had free camping spots, so we headed there. But it was full, and rather nervously we decided to sleep in a seemingly abandoned parking lot down the block, that nonetheless had a violators will be towed sign. We decided since there was an Italian camper there we’d be OK.

And we were. In the morning, Saturday by now, there were a few cars, but we packed up quickly. Here’s DutchBoy getting ready, and Sprockette being cute.

We then headed to find a bakery for breakfast – German bread and pastries are very good. Then got some stuff for the water tank from the RV store, and hit the road, aiming for lunch in Liechtenstein.