Picking üp Rosi

After waiting for such a long time for the ship to arrive it was crazy to see that we could actually see it from our Apartment window and a few hours later would track again the GPS that we had hidden in Rosi. (Check out extra page we built to introduce Rosi) So we knew the van was safely on land. Next steps was  to handle all the important organisational steps:

– Insurance for the car (check, already via email before)

– Immigration approval for me, which was funnily enough not the stamp in my passport. I had to get a separate document which I had done a few weeks before as well.

– The shipping agent needed to be paid and we needed to sign the bill of landing of the ship. Here it gets interesting: I could sign this bill, but it would not be released before the ship leaves the harbour again.

– I needed to go to the customs agent and hand in all the previous document plus the documents of Rosi.

– After the ship left, which we could see again from the apartment, I couldn’t wait to be informed by the customs agent that we can pick up Rosi.

We have been told multiple times that only the owner of the vehicle can enter the harbour, so Linda stayed in the hotel lobby with our stuff.

After Linda showed in the last blogpost her version of the pick up day. I want to explain how this all looked from my perspective:

I met up with a couple, that I had already met when I dropped of the van in Hamburg. They travel with a bad ass huge Unimog and stayed by accident in the same hotel as we did, so we went together to the customs agent. When we arrived we had to paid his fee (in cash and without a receipt of course) and all of a sudden way more people arrived to pick up their vehicles. We ended up being 11 people, 10 couples and me…. Everyone wanted to join to pick up the car and even though it was told that they cannot enter the harbour area together they at least want to try…. and they could. So once again we were just too german and were sticking to the rules we have been told by everyone (including the customs agent himself). 

After everyone had paid we went together to the harbour and checked in with our passports. The customs agent told us to wait at the cafeteria, because he just “needed to organize some things” and than disappeared.

We all thought that he will come back soon, but that was not the case, so we waited and talked. I mean it was really interesting to hear the plans, worries and thoughts of the other „Overlanders“ (that is how people travelling by van being called here), so the first hour flew by pretty fast, but I felt sorry for Linda who was waiting in the lobby. The second hour stretched itself a lot and another 30 min later all of sudden Eduardo, the customs agent, appeared and said. „Vamos, lets got“, as if we was gone just 30 seconds and waited for us. 

Now, only the vehicle owner were allowed (stereotypically all the men) and we stuffed ourself in the little pick up van of Eduardo. One of the guys and me had to sit in the trunk of the pick up van. Than Eduardo drove through the harbour area. It felt unreal to sit there, with the wind in my face and huge containers being loaded on ships left and right from me and than, we saw them. Sticking out of the huge mass of normal cars you could firstly see the huge unimogs and than also Rosi. Eduardo stopped the car and told us to check the cars if everything would be ok (keys would be on the driver seat inside the van) and showed us the guy who signs a paper if anything would be missing. We all went straight to our vans. Before going inside, I checked all sides. Hearing and reading of the shipping process I expected at least a few scratches and hoped soooo much that Rosi would not be too damaged, and I found….nothing, not a single scratch. Yes she was dirty, but the vans were standing next to the terminal were the ships were loaded with loose material, and we had seen from the hotel that this can be very dusty, but there was not a single scratch. I was already soo happy.

Next step was to go inside. Therefore, I tried the doors. All of them were closed. „Weird, closed doors and the keys shall be insight“, I thought and opened the van with a spare key. I looked inside and could not see any key, while I already heard the question from the others: „Did you find your keys?“, so I turned around and we asked Eduardo. He told us, that he was wrong and we would get the keys soon… Back to the inside of the van: Also, here we heard so many stories about stolen stuff. We had all our valuables with us, but there was still sooo much items with a sentimental value for us inside Rosi. The first thing I saw was an open cabinet door, but it seemed to be full. The surfboard and the bicycle were still on the bed and than I check every cabinet door and compared it with the pictures I had made when I had dropped of the van. Every single drawer looked exactly the same! I opened the back door and checked the garage under the bed. Same here! Nothing was gone! Everything was there! I cannot describe the feeling I had at that second. I felt so relieved that I had to fight my tears. I quickly wrote to Linda:  „I’m am with Rosi“ „Everything tiptop“ „Everything here“ „Not a single scratch“. Than I looked again in all the cabinets. I was so hyped. Turning around I looked to the others and could only see smiling faces. Every vehicle was without a scratch and nothing was stolen. We were all so happy. Than we got our keys and signed that the vehicles were ok and than slowly drove out of the parking lot, which was not so easy because the cars are all parked very very close to each other. We parked all the vans in a long line (funnily sorted by size): The Ateco in front of(a huge truck), two very similar Unimogs, a 6m Fiat Ducato, Rosi and a pretty old Mercedes camper. Like this we drove over the harbour back to the customs building were the others waited. During this short drive next to the cranes lifting containers, I realised that all was fine and yelled out multiple times „Yess, Yess, F*** Yess“ I was soooo happy.

Back at the customs building the woman of the others screamed in happiness and I felt so bad that Linda was not here. (Next time we will at least challenge what others tell us). Eduardo took us again to the customs building where we had to sign the customs documents for Rosi and than we all said a farewell, exchanged a few contacts and I drove off to pick up Linda, four hours after I had left.