Wouter from Hugo Boss: “Make a U turn at the next junction"

In Holland we like to take the car to go on summer holidays to say Italy. Great to have the car as it gives you lots of independence (we are big on that; we fought the Spanish 80 years for it!), and a 1000km is not that far when most of it is spent on the German autobahn or French auto-route. Sure there are a few key moments at which your marriage is at the verge of a complete meltdown when you have to negotiate the Paris peripherique to make sure you are taking the exit to Lyon and not to Bordeaux, but generally you are ticking of the miles quickly.

The difficult part comes when you get to the final stage and have to go the last kilometers to your thoroughly researched and carefully picked nostalgic inner city hotel. You want to really live the ancient culture right? That’s what it is all about. Of course by the time you are doing the last miles it is getting dark, you are tired after the long journey, and all of a sudden you end up in a maze of one way streets, pedestrian areas and roads closed for road works with not a road worker in sight.

Trying to get to the Gibraltar strait is like getting to that no doubt fantastic hotel. Out in the middle of the ocean we were on rails, negotiating the big exits and roundabouts.  Yesterday we had the road works of the Island of Madeira, with it’s big light wind lee blocking our way east. Today our version of the TomTom car navigating device, shows us a rather complicated zig-zag track to Gibnraltar. Only half of the time are we actually pointing at the goal. Inner city Rome is easy by comparison. The only positive thing is that our machine doesn’t come with the irritating women’s voice saying “make a U turn at the next junction.”, which means you really messed it all up.

And so with north winds in the north, east winds in the east, south winds in the south, and nothing in the middle forecasted for tomorrow, we have thrown the TomTom out the window, and are back to basic instincts: take the turns that get you closer to the hotel, and avoid the big pedestrian area with no wind in the middle Somehow these things have a way of working out. Surely parking is impossible and you will be late for dinner, but all that is forgotten once your wife has had a nice hot bath and you managed to persuade the kitchen to bring up some room service anti-pasta with some fantastic parmesan cheese and Parma ham.

So when you look at our track and wondering what on earth we are doing, we are just negotiating the inner city maze, which means we must be getting close!

Wouter