Malmö, Sweden (Part Two)
We woke at 6:45 a.m., a time that hadn't existed for us for a while, so we could turn up at the garage by 7 a.m., their stated opening time. The solid front door was closed when we arrived (it was open yesterday) so we presumed they hadn't commenced business yet. An hour later a workman came out and I asked if they were open. He replied "Yeah" in a way that indicated "Of course". So we pushed open the door and entered the office. We explained our situation and the man behind the desk said he would call a tow truck for us right away. Excellent.
The tow truck arrived within an hour, which was a relief as we were informed we could have to wait up to three hours. The driver tried everything he could to jump start it but it didn't want to go. In the end he push started it, which allowed us to drive to the garage and leave it in their hands.
While we waited we headed back to the park to chill out on the grass, but it started raining so we walked to the caravan park instead. The cafe wasn't open today but we found a library/TV room with power points, which was perfect.
After lunch we returned to the mechanic (about two kilometres away) to see where they were up to. They said the starter motor was gone and they were ringing around to see if they could find one for us. With nothing else to do we went back to the caravan park again and hung out until the end of the day, mindlessly watching Swedish TV.
We were back at the mechanic just before they closed and we were told they hadn't found a part yet, so they were calling Peugeot. We had to wait until morning to hear the response. As we needed to sleep in our van that night, they had to push the Prince out onto the street for us. This was our third night in Malmö and we had slept in three different locations – this one was not the most picturesque.
We turned up for our morning report with the mechanic: nothing. Still waiting to hear back from Peugeot to see if they have the part. We decided to spend our time walking into town, thinking it would be about half an hour away. One hour and 15 minutes later we arrived. Far more exercise than we expected. On the way we passed a sports ground with fields for soccer, gridiron, rugby, cricket and – no joke – Aussie rules football. There was an oval, four posts set up at either end, goal squares, everything. We couldn't believe that in this tiny town there were people who played AFL. There were no footy players on the field but we were quite amazed at the ground.
We wandered aimlessly, not doing much other than being entertained by some recent graduates dressed up as sailors (the boys) and scantily clad girls, all blowing whistles and shouting while making their way through the streets. McDonald's offered us free electricity, which allowed us to charge up all our appliances and browse the internet to waste some time.
As we didn't want to be stuck in Malmö all week, we discussed taking a trip to Stockholm for the weekend if the part hadn't arrived (today was Wednesday). Passing by the train station we checked out the costs - way more expensive than we expected (and we really should expect it in Scandinavia). Much of our day was spent weighing up the pros and cons of this option.
When we arrived back at the garage in the early afternoon we found our van inside. This must be a good sign, right? It wasn't. They couldn't find a starter motor for us, so they were going to take ours out and give it to a guy they knew to attempt to recondition it. Probably ready on Monday, we were told, but he will see if he can finish it by the end of the week.
The rest of the afternoon was spent meandering around, bored out of our mind, until we headed back to the mechanic late afternoon. He had spoken to his reconditioning buddy and told him the situation, and he said he would try to have it ready by Friday for us but no guarantee. This did not help us decide what to do about Stockholm.
As we had not had access to electricity for a while, most of our food was going off and we couldn't buy a load of fresh produce that would only survive a day. To use up some ingredients I made pancakes (my best yet) and for dinner we bought a huge lasagne and ate the entire thing. It was way too much food but it was so good we couldn't stop ourselves.
We started watching a movie on the computer during dinner but it began raining so hard that we couldn't hear the movie any more. We ended up turning it off for an hour until the rain had stopped. Pity we couldn't funnel this rain into our water storage tank, as it was on the verge of running dry.
