A Strange Holiday

August 2026

The tiredness is taking over more and more as I hold the steering wheel. No wonder — we have
been travelling for almost sixteen hours.
I’m going on holiday with my children, both teenagers, travelling by car as we usually do. Boredom
sent them to sleep a long time ago, and I can feel myself beginning to fade too.
We left home at nine the previous evening. The ferry departed at midnight, and at around three in
the morning we arrived at the port of Calais.

It is now half past twelve in the afternoon. I have driven almost a thousand kilometres, but the hotel
where we are spending the night is finally not far away.
The quiet, steady hum of the engine is beginning to sound like relaxation music, making it harder
and harder to concentrate. 

And then I see the hotel on the left side of the motorway.
Great. Another five or ten minutes and we’ll be there. I can finally rest.
I don’t even wake the children. I think I’ll tell them when we arrive.
At the next exit I leave the motorway. From here, it should be only about another three minutes of
driving.
The thought wakes me up completely. I can almost feel the refreshing shower waiting for me in the
hotel room.

I have just reached the slip road when suddenly—the clutch pedal drops to the floor.

This cannot be happening!

It cannot have broken down now!

I can’t change gear, so I have no choice but to stop.
A thousand thoughts run through my head in a matter of seconds.

The children. The plans we had made months ago. My family, whom I haven’t seen for several
years.
And, not least, the photography trips!

It’s probably nothing serious, I tell myself.
But somewhere deep inside, I know it might be.
As soon as I stop, the children wake up, and I tell them that we have a problem.

“What happens now?” they ask.
“Nothing,” I reply.

I call the insurance company, explain the situation and give them all the information they ask for.
Then we do exactly what they tell us to do.

We wait.

After nearly three hours in forty-degree heat, the recovery truck finally arrives. The driver loads the
car and takes us to the hotel.I ask him when he thinks the car will be repaired.

“Maybe four or five days.”

Fine.

We have had a very long journey. Let’s go to bed, get some sleep, and tomorrow, when we’re rested,
we’ll figure out what to do.And that is exactly what we do.

The first thing the next morning is to sit down together and discuss our plans.
My son and daughter immediately make one thing clear: there is no reason to be miserable just
because we are going to spend the first part of our holiday in Germany.

After all,“We can be tourists in Germany too!”

They are right.
There is no reason to sit around feeling sorry for ourselves.
So we take out our phones and start looking for sights, museums, swimming pools and anything
else in Nürnberg and the surrounding area that might interest us.
It isn’t particularly difficult to find things.
Like a well-coordinated team — and we really are one — we set out each day to discover Nürnberg
and its surroundings.
Museums, restaurants, shopping centres, leisure centres, swimming pools, walks through the local
forest.
We see everything.

But after five days, the car still isn’t ready.

After ten days...still nothing.

And that is the moment when we realise that this holiday is going to end here in Germany.

After ten days we have seen pretty much everything worth seeing, and we are starting to get bored.
Calling the garage gets us nowhere.

Just the usual:
“Tomorrow by five it should definitely be ready. We’ll let you know.”

In the end, it takes them thirteen days to replace the clutch.

The evening the car is finally ready, we have a quick family conference. I buy ferry tickets back to
Dover for the following morning.
After driving through the night, we arrive at Dover at seven in the morning.
By eleven, we are home.

Now, looking back as I write these lines, what do I think about that holiday?

It was good.

It didn’t go according to plan.
But we were together.
We laughed a lot.
We discovered places we probably never would have discovered otherwise.

I took a huge number of photographs. None of them will ever be part of my artistic portfolio, but
they are just as important to me.
Whenever I look at them, I remember those funny — and sometimes frustrating — moments I
shared with the people I love most.

And I have to give credit to my children.
The way they approached everything played a huge part in turning what could have been a disaster
into an unforgettable experience we shared together