How I almost imprisoned us
By Lothar. Filed in General |
We pulled into a high-tech parking garage near the Duesseldorf train station and a metal fence closed the entrance behind us. My frugal wife complained about the high parking fee and, as the obeying husband that I am, ( and being on a budget)I drove right away to the exit. The metal fence at the exit opened and promptly closed again behind us, leaving us in front of another barrier which only opens after you insert your paid parking ticket. In Germany you usually obtain your parking ticket as you enter the garage, and pay at a machine inside the garage before you get in your car on your way out. It is all automatic without any personnel on the premises. Normally you can reenter the garage on foot ( if you forgot to pay your ticket) and find a parking fee machine, but this was a very secure garage ! I could not get in to pay and could not drive out, the curb was too high to drive over and there were no other cars entering or exiting, so that I could have walked in to pay. I even jumped up and down in front of the entrance gate, but I was not heavy enough to activate the gate mechanism. Images of us spending the night in the car in this not so safe neighborhood flashed through my mind. Now what?
I just got a little work-out and manually pushed the unwilling parking gate up just high enough to squeeze our VW out of there. I expected to see the blue lights of a German police car in my rearview mirror because of 2 Euros saved and a broken gate, but we escaped !