I get bored very easily. When I am not a truckie, time can pass very ,very slowly. But after yet another Morocco experience, my free time was absolute bliss. I have been in contact with almost everybody and I have heard so many things concerning the last race. Suffice to say, we are all glad that is over.
So now we have to head towards a relatively new and for us, an unvisited circuit. Slovakia Ring is in the middle of nowhere. Or so it seems. As you drive across an almost flat area of countryside, 40km east of Bratislava. The large, open spaces, show all the signs of the old Communist collective farm methods. Vast areas of very fertile land with only a few hedges and trees separating them. The odd village appears but the old Tannoy systems still hang from village street lights. These were used to broadcast the Communist propaganda to the Party faithful and the downtrodden citizens. The roads are not very smooth and you get the impression that a covering of winter snow would make the drive a little less bumpy. Modern styles mix with the drab, grey buildings of times gone by. Slowly but surely, democracy and "westernization" have taken over.
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| Dutch wind power |
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| Pride of Rotterdam ferry |
An overnight ferry crossing to Holland is the start of a journey that will bring motor sport to the masses, and money to the governments. We leave the ferry and after 5km, we have to stop to buy our Benelux truck tax. It costs 8 Euros for the day. On into Germany and yet more road tax must be purchased. A slightly more complicated system now takes over. You are meant to specify which road number you come into the country on. As we are also due an overnight stop in Germany, we also have to specify which motorway junction we exit from when we stop. Likewise, when we depart the next morning, we have to specify where we join the motorway and which road we finally leave the country before entering Austria. Now we are subject to using the Austrian Go-Box. This is an electronic device which we bought a few years ago, and we only have to make sure that we have enough pre-paid credit installed,to cover our journey along the Austrian motorways. Finally , we reach Slovakia. And yet more tolls. I had checked on the Internet and I thought that we could just pay a transit toll. We had only a short distance to go on the Slovakian motorways before reaching the circuit. But the Slovakian government wants money!!!! We stop at the border and after an hours wait, we have now had to purchase, yet another, electronic toll device.They stopped selling transit tickets in March 2012. This looks positively archaic, with its cigarette lighter socket power supply. That will be another 100 euros. THANKYOU.
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| Slovakia box, Austrian box, Benelux ticket, German tickets. |
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TAX,TAX,TAX,TAX. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY.
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| Dutch road work sign |
Driving through Austria, we see some amusing signs for the roadworks. It certainly puts a smile on my face. The roadworks do not slow us down for long and the journey across to Slovakia has been very good. We have made very good time and we arrive at the Slovakia Ring at 1900 hours.
You see some strange sights when you drive through all of these different countries including neon signs for gentleman's clubs and a very, very, very big chair.
There is also time to enjoy the beauty of the River Danube. We make the most of it as when we are driving around the Bratislava ring road, the River Danube justs looks brown and dirty compared to when we crossed over it earlier in the day.
Once we had turned off the Bratislava ring road, it is a very slow and quite bumpy road that leads to the Slovakiaring. Situated in the middle of nowhere, a newly built circuit appears as we turn left off the E572.
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| Problems?????????? |
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| Asimple job becomes very difficult |
Once we had washed the truck and parked up, I had chance to talk with the other truckies. It appears that 3 trucks sustained damage to to the lack of decent ferry ramp facilities between Morocco and Spain. The team who had tyre troubles that I mentioned, previously, somehow managed to keep going until finally the tyre blew out. Unfortunately, this also damaged the air suspension control. Work was still being done to the truck in Slovakia while the garages were being set up.
Slovakiaring is very new, a nice big paddock area and an excellent cafe/restaurant. But is there any need to write "PIT LANE" and "PIT WALL", every 3 metres. Do they think we are stupid or had somebody bought a stencil set and wanted to get maximum use of it?
Anyway.I think that all of the teams are happy to be here. Hopefully, the crowds will come and add to the glorious weather that we are promised for the race.
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| Are these real shells inside the tank?? |
A few people made good photographic use of the army tanks which were being stored behind a building at the circuit. I do not know if we were allowed to go inside one the tanks but we did.
