June 05, 2010
by Stephen Jan in Berlin, Germany
Berlin was supposed to unfold as follows:
- Wednesday, 5PM arrival
- Thursday, gather information. Checkout the Lenon, our chosen steed. Make sure that the ambulance does in fact exist and that I wasn’t scammed. Lenon is somewhat operational. Ask the dealer questions about the car’s paperwork, what it would take to get the registration documents.
- Friday, take the car to a mechanic.
- Saturday - Sunday, nothing presuming that nobody works over the weekend.
- Monday - Tuesday purchase the car and register the car for export.
- Wednesday, either put the car into storage or take it to a mechanic to be serviced for a month or so.
- Thursday, 6AM departure
The League of Adventurists helps each team get their car into Mongolia. However, in order to do this, each team must submit information about the vehicle by May 31st, including: Model, Make, Year, Engine Size, Registration Number, Engine Number, Chasis Number. This information is passed along to the Mongolian authorities so that when we arrive at the Mongolian border, we’ll get waved in without much hassle (yeah right).
Anyway, Thursday unfolded as planned. I arrived in Berlin, my luggage didn’t get lost. The custom guys waved me through without so much as a second glance. I took the X9 bus 3 stops south to my friend’s flat near Charlottenburg. I took the S42 train east toward city center to visit a meditation group. I met people from this meditation group back in January when I took the Trans-Siberian Rail across Russia so i figured it’d be nice to surprise them and say hello. But when I got to the center, I found myself in the midst of strangers.
Most my conversations started like so:
- German: Hallo
- Me: Hello! How are you?
- German: [small pause, switches to English] Hello, I am well. How are you?
- Me: I’m well. Are you a local here?
- German: Yes. I live in Berlin. And you?
- Me: I’m from New York
- German: Ah i see. And are you here visiting for holiday?
- Me: Ah…hmm…holiday….not really… I’m actually here to buy a car.
- German: [Surprised look] a car? really? must be a very nice car.
- Me: Well…not really. It’s actually a really old beat up ambulance.
- German: [Confused] What? what for?
- Me: Well….this summer I’m driving from London to Mongolia…and I need a way to get there…..
I’d go into this monologue about what the mongol rally was and about all that’s happened so far usually winning over some interest and enthusiasm.
Over the course of the night, I introduced myself to a variety of people, among them a pretty young girl named Lillie with plans to spend July and August in New York working for an art gallery in the lower west side. She seemed genuinely excited about the Mongol Rally and said that she’d come had she not already made plans to go to New York City. I didn’t think much more about it and moved along.
The following day Mr Muller, the middle man, came to take me to see the ambulance. Mr Muller didn’t exactly look like the most honest guy with his droopy eyes and sleepy expression. I noticed that his black synthetic leather jacket had a giant tear on the rear. Since I wasn’t able to convince anyone to come with me, I was on my own to check out the car. We arrived at a house wedged between two simple looking one story houses. The front lawn of this house essentially looked like a junk yard. Rubble, glass bottles and tires were strewn all over. One corner was sectioned off to grow vegetables of some sort. I counted about seven cars of various sizes and shapes lounging around the front yard.
See, I’ve never purchased a car, let alone a used ambulance. Staying optimistic, i figured that this was just the sorta place that used ambulances ended up. Yes, it looked a bit shady, but so long as the car existed, I figured we could budget out the cost of essential repairs.
When i finally stood before the ambulance, I was absolutely thrilled. Yes it was sorta broken down looking. From the outside, it looked like it was on its last legs. The orange paint was faded. The gear shift knob was missing. The the rear compartment was used to store tires and other junk. The interior and exterior clearly poorly maintained and was as dirty as a New York City subway car. But I decided that a couple dents and dirt smudges wasn’t going to dampen my enthusiasm. I had confidence that Lenon would do the job very nicely.
I did the best I could to ask questions about the condition of the car and getting the vehicle registered but Mr Muller’s English was pretty terrible. I wasn’t really able to get them on my side so far as helping me understand what needed to be done. The seller didn’t speak any English at all. All the seller would try to communicate was that everything was “no problem”. Registration? No problem. Repair work? No problem. Driving this wreck to Mongolia? No problem. When I asked the seller to start the car, it took three tries. First he tried to charge the battery. Second, he unscrewed the steering column and started fiddling around with the wires. Finally when he decided he wasn’t getting anywhere, he picked up his cell phone and called some mechanic and began speaking in Arabic. Half an hour later, Lenon sprung to life…well with some coughing and wheezing.
I didn’t have much choice other than to go along with these people. I needed to return from Berlin with registration information for a car. I told them that I needed them to help me get the vehicle registered under my name. They expected me to pay the rest of the balance. I shrugged and told them I’d try to get the money from the bank. I spent Friday arranging the funding for the car. I also discovered that Monday was a holiday shrinking my window by 30%. If the German DMV is anything like the American one, I should expect long lines and waiting. Furthermore, if I was missing documents or if the car was stolen, I’d be pretty screwed. At that point it was looking as though the top priority would be just registration, not so much if the car was in working order or if I had time to take it to the mechanic.
So as the weekend came around, I ended up spending most of it with friends. As it turned out, Lillie was my friend’s flatmate. I spent 3 days and nights pitching mongol rally telling her about all the crazy things that’s happened to our team, the experiences of other teams of previous years, the interesting people that will be participating. By the time Monday night rolled around, Lillie was about 90% committed to joining our team. She told me that she’d decide after she saw the car on Tuesday. Having a local team member capable of preparing the car leading up to the launch day would be a great asset to the team. I crossed my fingers and hoped that she would join us.
Lillie came with me to see the Ambulance. The car started up pretty rough but it did eventually start, after extensive coughing and wheezing. We took the Ambulance around the block for a spin. The engine was loud. The ride was rough. Lenon didn’t have any power steering. The gas pedal stuck a little bit. The conclusion was that the car needed to be inspected by a mechanic. We told the seller that the suspension needed to be checked out. The brakes need to be changed. The fluids needed to be swapped out. The gas pedal needed to be fixed. At the end, the seller said that everything could be done for 250 euros but at the same time, we wouldn’t be getting out deposit back, and we couldn’t take it to our mechanic, it would have to be his. He was coming across as a pretty crooked dealer trying to force the sale onto us. I walked away from the seller feeling very apprehensive. The way he conducted himself to my new teammate didn’t give me much confidence in the sale at all.
Team Magical Mystery Tour was facing a dilemma: Option 1: take the original car requires that we trust someone who doesn’t appear very trustworthy at all. Option 2: Find a different car. This would mean that we’d probably lose that 500 euro deposit, plus other cars are more expensive. The decision would have to be made tomorrow, 4PM Wednesday. We decided to take a trip to see other ambulances from other listings. Also, it was at this point that we got our 4th team member.
The following day started at 10AM. We borrowed our friend Bernhard’s car to drive to Leipzig to shop for ambulances. I discovered on Wednesday that I was probably dealing with the shadiest car dealer in all of Germany. Every single vendor that we encountered on Wednesday looked about a hundred times more legitimate and professional than the first seller. Everyone else had an office, a staff on hand, and a full fledged operation bustling with activity. They had mechanics on staff working on repairs, Cars and trucks hoisted up in the air being serviced, huge lots of up to one hundred cars, buses, ambulances, and trucks all neatly arranged.
We were supposed to end the day by 4:00PM but after getting lost a bunch of times we arrived at our final destination in Leipzig at around 7:00PM. We discussed the two possibilities. The decision was made to drop Lenon, try to get the deposit back but possibly eat the loss and pickup a different ambulance. The new ambulance has yet to be named. The 1992 VW T4 is essentially the same model as the previous one we looked at. It’s a bit older but has 60K km fewer miles. The rear compartment has a ton more head room, and the vehicle looks to be much better maintained. The plan was to have Lillie take her time to check out and inspect the vehicle with her expert friends while Stephen returns to New York and continues to work on raising money for the ambulance.
I one of the last ICE express train out of Leipzig, arriving in Berlin at around 11:00PM. 4 hours of sleep later, I made it to the airport on time to make my 6AM flight back to New York with a new ambulance and new teammate.