I got up at 6 am to do some work on the journal and had a good breakfast when Alison woke up to make some fried bread. I thought that I would get the tent down first before having a shower. As I started winding the tent down,

 the handle suddenly came very stiff as though something had jammed the rods. I forced it but it was making an unusual noise and Alison went up to check the threads of the rods. She found a small stick and removed it but the crunching noise persisted. Suddenly the crank was loose and easily turned. That was when I noticed the front end of the tent was not coming down.

Alison was grumbling about the tent giving trouble on birthdays, mine when we lost the crank handle and now Adian’s when we could not lower the tent. She was suggesting that on her birthday we ought to stay in a hotel and get away from the tent for the night. We will see when her birthday comes.

While I tried to figure out what went wrong, Alison managed to contact Maggiolina in Italy to ask for their dealer in Germany. We were given a Stutgart number to call and they in turn referred us to Mathiias Kruger in Rathenow, which is 80 kms away fro where we were in Potsdam. Mathiias told us to bring Tuah up to him and he will have a look to see what could be done. If it needed spares then we could be waiting up to about a week as he would have to order from Italy.

The rear end of the tent was lowered and the front was tied up the best we could and we drove back towards Rathenow. We did it in 2.5 hours driving in the rain and when we got to Autihaus Kruger, Mathiias was waiting and told us to drive into the service area. He and his mechanic went to work on the tent immediately. He found that the chain joining the 2 rods was broken and with parts from a bicycle shop he went to get, the tent was back in operation after 1,5 hours work. The best thing was he refused payment insisting that it was a service from him!

We thanked him gratefully and set our course towards Prague. 20 kms down the road we stopped at McDonalds for dinner thinking that we were going to take turns in driving and probably camped on the highway. As we were leaving Alison asked me about the awning, then it dawned on me that it was left on top of the water tanks as we drove off from Mathiias garage. We went back to see if we could find it along the route we came but there was no sign of it. We then decided to stay the night in Rathenow as it was already too late to star driving towards Prague. As the campsite nearby was closed, we decided to camp in the compound of Mathiias garage hoping that he wouldn’t mind.