I ride with Andy again the next day, heading for the Frankfurt Oder crossing on the German border. Andy has his CB on, and we're listening the general chatter of other drivers.
One talks about Belarus guards at Brest who walked up the line asking which western truckers would pay extra to jump the line and how much. The ones who paid got through, but the guards have all been arrested now.
Another driver says that wasn't Belarus -- he heard the same story about the Lithuanian Polish border. It may be both, or it may be just another myth. In the days of the Silk Road some Europeans thought Asians had no heads, and that their eyes, nose and mouth were in their chests.
A few years ago Andy waited 37 hours to cross this border one trip, and he had to wait in line on the highway like we did coming into Poland. Now they have a big parking lot, and a huge border building that houses German and Polish officials, customs brokers, a bank and a restaurant. Borders are still a hassle but we get through with very little pain.
But I almost get pain at the bank, where I try to change some American dollars for German marks. At the last moment I realize that the Polish bank plans to change my dollars to Polish Zloty's, then the Zloty's to Marks. They will take a commission on each transaction, and they don't have German coins so I will also get the odd change in Zlotys. When I realize what they're doing I take my dollars back.
Andy is supposed to get seven days at home after six weeks on the road but he hasn't been in England for four weeks or in his home town of Coventry for six weeks. He should be heading home now, but as we approach Berlin he gets a phone call. Instead of going to England he will switch trailers at Dover, and go to Rome.
He's not happy because he says he hates Italy. "It's full of thieves bandits and homosexuals," he says, "and they all wear police uniforms."
He says he would rather go back to Poland than to Italy.
He's is not sure whether he likes driving in Germany or not. German cars always yield the right of way to trucks, he says, because discourtesy on the road is an offense and drivers know that a truck takes longer to stop.
But on the other hand trucks are not allowed to pass trucks on German Autobahns. With Andy and with other drivers I have often been stuck behind slower trucks. I have also been in trucks that passed other trucks, but that's another story.
But there's no question of passing other trucks here. About mid afternoon we pull up behind a line of cars, then follow Mick and Dave off on a detour. For more than four hours we are stuck in a traffic jam, and as we pass through one village a pedestrian out for a walk passes us four times. When we do get back to the Autobahn Andy says we are about five miles from where we turned off, so our average speed is less than one mile an hour.
We lost track of Dave and Mick at the start of the detour, and we later find that they turned off on a sideroad and missed most of the traffic jam. About 2am we catch up with them at a truck stop at Asten, in Holland. They are asleep and, rather than wake them, I check into the hotel. Next morning Mick is unhappy because he had cleared his upper bunk for me and he expected me to wake him when I arrived.
Now I ride with Mick to the ferry at Oostende, while Andy heads for Dover. Ralph Davies company policy says the trucks should be washed before they return to England, but this is Sunday and the truck wash is not open.
Mick has been away from home 13 weeks and he is due for a week off. After we unload at a Mars warehouse near London he expects to go straight to Cheltenham and get a lift with another truck to meet his wife in Glasgow.
When Andy was diverted to Italy he told me that Ralph Davies is famous for diverting his drivers. English truckers even have a joke abut it.
It seems that three truck drivers are lined up to get into heaven. The first one tells St. Peter his name is Smith, and he drives for Jones Transport. St. Peter looks in his book, finds the name and waves the driver inside.
The second driver is Jones, from Smith Transport. St. Peter checks the name, and waves the driver in.
The third driver is McGillicuddy, from Ralph Davies International. St. Peter looks in the book.
"Wait a moment," he says. "There's a fax here for you."
It's a good joke but it's dated, because Ralph Davies' trucks now have satellite communication. When we land at Ramsgate there's a message on Mick's terminal. After we deliver at the Mars plant he will reload for a run to Scotland, and another driver will take his truck from there.
No problem. I hitch a ride with another truck to Bristol, and take a bus to Cheltenham. A couple of days later, Dave gets back from Scotland.
He's been on the go for a while too, he tells me. He has a house in Manchester, about 100 miles from Cheltenham, but he hasn't seen it for five months.
And he won't see it now. Next day he gives me a lift from Cheltenham to Heathrow Airport. It's not out of his way because he has to pass Heathrow, on his way back to Moscow.
I haven't seen any of the truckers in this story since that day but I know that Dave, and Mick and Mike and Rene and thousands like them are still out there somewhere -- bribing and bamboozling policemen, customs agents and pompocrats, getting lost and finding new routes, getting stuck, getting flat tires, getting intestinal worms and catching colds; always on the lookout for clean fuel, a clean washroom and good coffee; trying to sleep when the regulations say they have to and to stay awake when they have to drive; sharing information and helping each other out of trouble and jumping line-ups when they can; getting robbed and ripped off and hauling the goods we use every day.
They are all part of a tradition that dates back to the axe traders of the Neolithic and a vital part of our economy and our culture, but the long-haul international truckers are special. To be successful they need the skills of a diplomat and a mechanic, the independence of a rogue elephant combined with a willingness and an ability to cooperate. Many of them think of their work as dull but the routine but bores them would rate as high adventure to most of us.
Long distance international truckers may travel through several countries every week of the year and they may know their way round half the cities of a continent, but many of them have never seen a 'tourist attraction' or a 'cultural center.' They have no need for either because they are not tourists and they don't need to learn about culture because they are themselves one of the most important cultures of human history.
They are part of a tradition that built civilization, and that still keeps it going.