We drove the 125 miles from Graz to Vienna without incident, but when we got there, all it took to kill this battery once and for all was using the hydraulic leveling system. We had just enough power to raise the windows and here we are. We couldn’t go farther without some kind of help.
Someone is watching over us, because we got it: the closest commercial establishment to Camping Wien (Vienna) West is--drum roll, please--an American auto parts store. The proprietor searched his catalogues and computer and shook his head, suggested we go to a nearby Midas shop “just two kilometers away” and said he would make some phone calls. Our problem is the specific size of the battery and the amps it needs to start a 10-cylinder 6.8-liter engine. After one bus and two tram rides, we found the Midas. They actually had a possible contender, but they would not deliver it, the garage door would not accommodate Rover, and the parking options on the busy street were not good. Still, it was a possibility. Back to the auto parts man, who had learned nothing helpful from his colleagues around western Europe. This time we asked whether there was a battery store--someone who could figure out what we actually needed, not just look for a copy of what we had. (For example, we are not in Minnesota any more and do not drive Rover in extreme cold conditions, so we do not need the cold cranking amps we had had in the old battery.) One bus and one subway ride later, we arrived at a battery store and within 10 minutes the woman placed a battery before us (she lugged it out from the stock room herself--an impressive feat). The dimensions were good, but the posts were reversed. “No problem, I can get another one that’s right, today.” And since she lives--drum roll, please-- about two blocks from the campground, she delivered it late that afternoon on her way home, picked up the old one for recycling, and stayed around long enough to make sure it would fit and work. It did and it does. After she left she actually returned to make sure the hood would close over the battery. Something we had not done in her presence. It did and everything works.
All of the above happened during a stretch of four days while we were trying to enjoy Vienna--all the while with a dead battery in the back of our minds. But € 177 later all is well, danke.
Vienna is a beautiful city, especially in June with flowers blooming everywhere. It is obvious that many buildings have been cleaned and repaired and many more are covered with scaffolding that indicates they are in the process of being cleaned and repaired. Buildings built before and after the war stand side by side. The former have the lovely Baroque carved garlands draped above their doors and windows; the latter are plain and flat. Almost everything in the city center is less than five or six stories--the limit to what was usable before elevators were invented--while taller modern buildings are found on the outskirts of the city.
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So here we are in the city that was home to the western world’s greatest musical composers; it is synonymous with the Habsburg dynasty (about which we have learned waaay too much, having toured two of their palaces, with free audio guides); and, because most of the imperial architecture dates from the 1800s, a lot of what is on display is original, including some of the clothing and massive amounts of gold and silver table service. Nevertheless, despite all this grandeur, our two favorite experiences were much more mundane. One was our visit to the exhibit at the Austrian furniture museum, featuring the history and philosophy of IKEA, including a collection of many of its pieces over the years. This museum also has furniture available for film use and showed clips of movies highlighting their pieces. The other was the sight of people standing at crosswalks: the street is a minor one, there is no traffic coming….yet they are actually waiting for the traffic signal to change. Forty people of all ages, standing even in the pouring rain (as it did all day today); in Minneapolis you would be standing on the sidewalk alone.
(And if our preference for IKEA isn’t lowbrow enough, we must report that we have found four Starbucks and have had coffee at three of them.)
P.S. We’ve aimed this blog at people who are considering shipping their American RV to Europe, like we’ve done, and like Ron and Adele Milavsky did before us. Lest you be taken aback by our mechanical problems on this trip (the tire that lost its tread and today’s report on the battery that was difficult to replace), remember that both these problems could have been avoided had we taken a few precautions. For instance:
just because the four tires you can see are four years old, don’t assume that the two rear inboards will be that fresh, too--ours weren’t, and it was one of those ten-year-old inboards that lost its tread;
if your RV is 6-7 years old and its chassis battery is original equipment, and if the battery would be hard to replace on a continent that has rather few 10-cylinder gasoline engines, then replace it before you ship the RV to Europe; and
if your battery shows signs of weakening, don’t have the engine turned off when you begin leveling your RV with your hydraulic levelers.