Travelling down the Dortmund-Ems canal we reached the 'T' junction with the Mitteland canal, the Mitteland canal is a watery motorway and the main East West canal connection to Czechoslovakia, Poland and all the Baltic ports, even up as far as Russia or down to the Black sea, we met 2,000 tonne barges of all nationalities as we travelled along it.
At the junction we stopped at a bunker boat, basically a filling station for barges and got a nasty shock, the barges pay 60 cents a litre for red diesel, white (road diesel) which we have to use is around 1 Euro 10 cents a litre in a normal filling station and this guy wanted 1 Euro 60 cents.
We said we would take about 600 litres between the two boats and could we kindly have a deal, his words were 'I haf diesel, you vant diesel, you vant cruse you pay' Hmm! nice guy, I bet his freakin dad was in the gestapo....
We took only a 100 litres to get us a bit further on and search for a better deal.
Turning into the Mitteland canal we tried several places which the pilot book said had diesel and the book was wrong each time.
We finally got to the Luebecke yacht club and moored up for the night, the cost was 1 Euro a metre including electric (called strom) and water.
In the bar, where else ? we got chatting to some of the members over a beer or two in our pidgin German and we gave them an Irish flag to put up along with their own collection of burgees.
We explained the problem with the diesel and they said 'He very bed men ve get you in ze morgen mit ze tank'
Jesus H are they bringing a Panzer ? I only said my Dad was in Germany many times delivering, 'what did he drive' they asked ?
'Lancaster bomber' I replied....
Only joking..
In fact, true to their word we got diesel at pump prices delivered to the boat by road tanker at 8 am sharp, obviously we filled up both boats and everybody was happy. We appreciated their kindness and it took away the bad taste of the fuel bunker boat. A bottle of good French wine seemed an appropriate gift for their kindness.
We left to cheery waves and were wished 'Gute Fahrt' (Safe Journey) and continued our cruise and came across another gem at Bad Essen, a brand spanking new marine with a shopping centre literally across the road from the marina.
Boy oh boy, that was the girls happy, all thoughts of cabin fever disappeared faster than snow off a ditch in spring.