Blair's Blog

I discovered this stuff a bit by accident a couple of years ago when I needed to make a quick, inexpensive repair to some scrapes in the paint on one of the vans that we had. I paid about $20 for “QUIXX repair system” at Ukrainian Tire and was pretty impressed with how well it worked. It’s a German product so it likely has a bucketful of engineering effort in its creation – it even comes with some 3000-grit wet&dry sandpaper for use with touch-up paint.

I’ve used it a few times since – before we sold the BBB and the A4, I went over each of them and dealt with all the little rubs and scrapes. The product is basically a 2-part system with a light compound and a polish that are applied by hand with a reasonably high amount of force. For scratches that are only in the clearcoat the repairs are pretty much impossible to see afterwards.  Deeper scratches into the paint layer don’t fully disappear, but 5 or 10 minutes to compound, polish then a light coat of wax on top and the results are pretty good – really hard to distinguish from an arm’s length away, unless the light is just right. Of course, anything that goes through to primer isn’t going to go away without paint – but even those look a lot better after treatment with QUIXX.

Sometime last winter someone/something dragged across the front bumper of the new Lexus and left a flurry of scratches in the paint.  About half of them through to the paint.  It really didn’t look very good and I finally got after attempting the fix yesterday.  The set of pictures shows the results from about 6-inches away in bright sunlight – the scratches are still evident in the final picture, but standing a foot or two in front of the car only the large, deep scratch still shows.

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Of course, I am referring to the Koln Dom – and the 533 steps up the tower to the viewing area.  After eight days in the Netherlands, we headed into Germany, to Cologne (Koln, in Deutsch – sorry, but I can’t figure out umlauts on my phone). This was basically a transit day with the aim of getting us back to France for our last few days of vacation in Paris.
It was also a bit rainy and grey, so a good day to make some distance. That said,  we did want to spend some time in Cologne, and see a few things.  We started out by taking the ‘seilbahn’ gondola from the north side of the Rhine to the south then walking about a large Park along the river. After the return gondola ride we drove to the center of the city.
We parked near the cathedral and walked a few blocks to the square. It was jammed with people – after touring a number of churches, we’ve seen some crowds, but nothing like Cologne.
We toured the inside first, then headed for the tower. 8€ for the family, and up we went. 533 steps for a 97m gain from the base of the tower. It’s quite the climb, with only 2 places where it is really possible to stop for a breather.
At the top, the view is fantastic, although constrained by safety fencing.

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We were at a nice little cottage last night just over the the German border into Belgium.  Unlike Holland, where it doesn’t matter what your destination is because you are practically there, in the Ardennes it’s a long way to your destination no matter how short the distance.

The other thing we have noticed is that Europeans rarely have any useable counter space in their bathrooms. It seems you are constantly juggling toothpaste and razor and soap and comb and anything else you need. The other odd thing was a lack of a mirror in some bathrooms.

And then there is the autobahn, what can you say? Even in a wacky French mini-minivan:

And, that wasn’t even the best road. That honour goes to this bit of highway:

This is a road near Monshau in Germany, near the Belgian border. It was fantastic, both going uphill and then back down. It would have been outstanding on the motorbike.

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Next stop on our European adventures is Germany. This was Dave’s request as he wanted to experience driving the Auto Bahn. So after leaving Holland I relinquished the wheel of our French rental car (a scenic Renault) for Dave to experience a road with no speed limits. Which in theory sounded good but in practice was quickly deterred by German road construction and the route into Cologne being detoured. As we have been learning on this trip you sometimes have to go with the flow. In our case we wound up taking the cable car across the Rhine and walking along the river where there were plenty of geological specimens to practice rock skipping with. Eins, zwei, drei … WERFEN!!

Skipping on the Rhine

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