Checkpoint Alpha
A few years ago, a colleague and I were working at Airbus Bremen. We then had to attend a meeting at Elbeflugzeugwerke at Dresden airport the following day. "No problem", I thought and looked at the Lufthansa timetable.
But my colleague had other ideas and elected to drive. 480 km across Germany in mid-Jan with some pretty serious snow around didn't seem like the world's best plan to me, but off we chugged in a VW Touran....
At Helmstedt, we came across the old Checkpoint Alpha. Now just run down, sprayed with graffiti and looking desolate. As was the little of the landscape we could see which wasn't covered in snow.
Despite having been a navigator, my colleague didn't have much of a clue about where we were and the map he had wasn't much use. But I'd just bought myself a nice new toy on my way through Birmingham airport, a Garmin SatNav. Which found our hotel without any snags some 5 hours or so after leaving Bremen. Despite all the rebuilding, much of eastern Germany was still rather ugly and run down in a Funeral in Berlin kind of way, but the hotel was fine. As was the rather 'ethnic' Köhlerhütte pub nearby, where a pot of Schwabentopf mit Käsespätzle each and a few Dunkelbiers soon brightened things up!
After the meeting I went back to the UK. But I dug my heels in and flew back from Dresden to Birmingham via Munich. Whereas I subsequently learned that my navigator colleague in the Touran, scornful of my SatNav, took the wrong Autobahn turning at Halle and then tried to navigate cross-country through snowy lanes back to the A2. It took him hours - because sign posts were still rather sparse away from main roads and his map was all but useless.....
Rule 1 - Never let the navigator drive!
Rule 2 - If compliance with Rule 1 isn't possible, make sure you've got a SatNav!