Die Reise nach Wien – iii
July 18th, 2026
“Das lichtmaschine ist kaput”
After two eventful weeks in the Austrian capital we said our goodbyes. It was the end of a relationship for me and so a blue return home alleviated by the company of a bi-lingual native who knew the region. The journey would have been far more difficult without him which leads me to wonder if he had been encouraged to travel on my behalf as much as his own desire to visit London.
I don’t remember the journey back from Vienna until the German city of Wurzburg where the red light on the dashboard came on once again indicating a loss of charging from the dynamo and this time it was terminal. “Das lichtmaschine ist kaput” were the mechanics exact words, late at night at a garage in Wurzburg, which is where from memory we spent the night while I believe the battery was charged while we slept, since there would be no more engine charging available.
Once again I have no memory of the journey until Dover where we arrived at dusk, and being July or August it must have been at least 9pm. A policeman noticing the nose high attitude of the car waved us into a side car park, presuming there must be something heavy in the boot, and asked me to open it which I did. There was nothing unusually heavy in the boot and I explained why the suspension was so adjusted. He said something along the lines of “I could ask the vehicle examiners to come down and I’m sure they’d find more things wrong with the vehicle but I’ll let you get to London providing you promise to get it sorted out on your return”.
We were fortunate. The battery being so low it would not sustain the engine and the headlights (it was getting dark) for any length of time and so I developed a strategy of driving up behind the next car on the main road back to London and turning off our lights so long as there was no car behind us. This appalling behaviour enabled us to get to London without exhausting the battery.
We arrived home late but the others were still up, and we had a reunion before bed time. A few days later the car was deemed unworthy of further investment and scrapped, the owner was full of apologies for the trouble we had had, but it made for many stories and a few laughs.
In 1980 I purchased my first car, a 1968 former Post Office Morris Minor van, on account of knowing so much about the mechanics I would never have to pay anybody to repair it, and so it proved.
The Austrians continued to visit London in subsequent years and cars became a running joke between us, but I never returned to Vienna and so these memories are all that remain.