Nate and the Tale of the Taggs

This is the Tagg family. Joseph, Emily, their daughter Megan, (and the youngest, Isaac was asleep in his stroller when we took this photo). Their first Sunday in Munich was also my first Sunday in Munich two and a half years ago. They've been my good friends here in Munich ever since. Joseph and I served together in the young men's presidency up until last year and I was also their home teacher for a while. I even spent New Years 2009 with them and their families in France.

Well, last week the Tagg family moved from Munich to a little town outside of Zürich, Switzerland. Originally I offered to help them load the moving van. As it turns out, the saga of their move became much more than loading a vehicle.

Here is the tale...


My phone rang at 7:15AM on Friday morning and Joseph told me he was waiting on the street downstairs. I dashed through the rain from my door to the car and we drove to the Europcar rental agency. We went through all the necessary paperwork with the clerk and finally Joseph asked them to add me as an additional driver. I had dutifully brought my passport and driver's license and had them at the ready. The clerk asked for both and also proof of my current address. That was something I did not have. I would not have even thought to bring it. I mean, really, a passport isn't enough? But it was Germany after all, where order and bureaucracy are never to be underestimated. It was only a minor setback, however, since my portion of driving wouldn't occur until Monday according to our Master Moving Plan and we could come back and with the necessary paperwork then.

The Master Moving Plan went like this: The rental van was only so big (biggest we could get with our standard licenses) and Joseph decided if we packed carefully we could do the whole move in two trips between Friday and Monday. The trickiest part of the plan was going through customs at the Swiss border. Normal cars can usually zip right through, but moving vans need to stop and be accounted for. Swiss customs closes at 5:30pm on weekdays and 12pm on Saturdays (closed Sundays). So we decided to fit as much as we could in the van on Friday morning, drop everything off in Switzerland that afternoon, spend the night in the new apartment, drive back to Munich on Saturday morning, paint and clean the old apartment, Monday morning early drive the second load of stuff to Switzerland and then I would drive the rental van back to Munich alone on Monday. It was a lot of work and left little room for error if we wanted to keep spent time and costs to a minimum, but we were hopeful even with our backset at the rental agency.

I drove Joseph's Skoda and he drove the sprinter van to their Munich apartment. Emily was there packing last minute items and Megan was skipping around the house excited to move to their "new big house." Isaac was doing baby things. We parked the van right outside the front door to the apartment (luckily they lived on the main floor) and we got right to work moving furniture and boxes into the van. Soon Elder Brown and Elder Phelan arrived to help. It was Elder Phelan's first week in the mission field and so our van-loading became a German vocabulary lesson:

the box = die Kiste, the mirror = der Spiegel, the Couch = das Sofa, and so on.

The rain (der Regen) continued to wet our backs and sprinkle the Taggs' belongings as we worked to fill the van, but it kept us cool.

Before long the van was full and we were pleased with how efficiently we had packed so much inside. Joseph's first worry, if we could really fit everything in two trips, was laid to rest.

We thanked the missionaries as they left and then it was time to set off on our way. We drove through pouring rain on the Autobahn with Joseph and I in the sprinter van and Emily and the kids leading in the Skoda.




The drive was wet but uneventful and after a few hours of driving through Germany we passed into Austria. One six-kilometer tunnel and 40 minutes later we passed Austrian border control, crossed the Rhein River into Switzerland and approached the Swiss Customs area.

It was a mess of trucks and semis of all sizes parked willy-nilly around a spartan structure reeking of red tape. Emily parked with the kids as far out of the way as possible and Joseph went in with a stack of immigration papers carefully prepared and filled-out. While we waited, Megan and I went to a plot of grass to look for slugs, or as the Germans call them, "naked snails."

After a quarter of an hour, Joseph came out looking flustered. Apparently nobody was in a good mood inside that building. They wanted to weigh the van and they wanted Joseph and I to stand on the scale with the van. Seriously? They were going to be that nit-picky? But then it occurred to me what an American colleague of mine had told me in my early days here in Germany, that the Swiss make the Germans look like Jamaicans when it comes to order and by-the-bookedness.

So Joseph and I stood sheepishly on the scale and then we both went inside. The crusty woman behind the window informed us that we were overweight by 760 kilos and therefore MAY NOT enter Switzerland. Joseph stood there dumbfounded for a moment and then asked the woman what he should do. The tone of her voice made it clear it wasn't her problem as she explained we had to go back to Austria where we could rent another vehicle or a storage unit. It was also clear there would be no appeal with this woman, especially with a group of burly truckers loitering around, a sob story would do no good. But that wasn't all, since we were overweight we had to pay 30 Swiss francs for the weighing itself.

We payed the fee and went outside to tell Emily the bad news. She was as dumbstruck as we were and it began to sink in how our entire moving plan had just been shot. To make matters worse, Joseph and Emily needed to pick up the key to the Swiss apartment from the landlady before 5pm or else they would have no way to get in before Monday. Also, members of the Tagg's new ward in Switzerland had agreed to help unload at the new apartment and would have dinner ready for us when we got there.

Of course we couldn't stand around at customs all day, we had to go back to Austria. So we climbed into our respective vehicles and drove back across the Rhein. The Austrian border guard pulled us over to the side upon entry and asked what we had in back. Joseph explained the situation, and then we received our first lesson in the lack of compassion among Austrian border guards.

"Bad for you!" the guard said matter-of-factly. "If you're too heavy for Switzerland, you're too heavy for Austria. You'll have to pay a fine."

He then proceeded to lecture Joseph about what he should have done to be a perfect law-abiding mover, including checking in with the Austrians with our load before leaving their country. Joseph eventually couldn't take much more of it and just asked him how much the fine was and where to pay it.

€50 later we were finally back in Austria with tensions high and frustration reaching its limits. We pulled into an empty parking lot near the border where we could take a moment and figure out what we should do.




Renting a truck or a storage space, driving back to Munich, were all out of the question financially and time-wise. It was already nearly 4pm and the border would be closing in an hour and a half. Not to mention the landlady with the key at 5pm. It seemed like a hopeless situation, and to add to the stress the kids started to get cranky.

What could we do? Where could we go?

Luckily I had the number to the mission office elders in my phone. Also, luckily, this region of Austria had been combined with the Munich mission only a month and a half before. I called the office elders and asked them for the number to the missionaries in this region. I also got the name and number of the bishop of the local ward and the address to the church.

We started calling numbers and found them all to be either out of service or no answer on the other end. So we decided to at least try and find the church and figure things out from there.

Luckily, according to the GPS in the Skoda, the church was only about 8km away from our parking lot. So Emily drove ahead with the GPS and we followed behind in the van. As we drove, it seemed, to the bewilderment of the friendly voice in the GPS, that every road we needed was blocked off due to construction. Time was ticking as we fought our way through construction-snaggled Dornbirn and in the chaos we got separated from Emily. As we called her moments later, she herself was lost and it seemed our situation kept going from bad to worse.

Joseph and I pulled over and told her exactly where we were so she could find us with the GPS. Once we reconnected we realized that the church was now only 1km away. From there it was suddenly easy to find.

Finally we came to the familiar sight of an LDS church building and parked the van in the drive way. No one was there.

Meanwhile, during all the driving, the office elders had made contact with the elders in this region of Austria and they called Emily on her cell. She told them briefly of our situation and they agreed to come to the church, though it would take about 40 minutes.

Emily also called the landlady and arranged to pick up the keys a bit later in the evening. It seemed the best idea at this point was for Emily and the kids to continue on to Switzerland and at least get the keys to the apartment. They would then most likely have to continue driving across Switzerland to the French border where Emily's and Joseph's parents both live, since there would be no furniture in the new apartment.

Soon it was just Joseph and I with 760 kilos of stuff to unload somewhere and an hour to go before the customs office closed.

Just before 5pm a pair of white shirts and ties with black name tags rounded the bend and walked towards the church.

Now, try this one out for a bit of Church trivia: Which LDS missionary companionship in the entire world encompasses parts of four different countries, three of them landlocked, and yet the elders live on an island?

The answer: The Vorarlberg companionship. The church for that ward is in Austria, the elders live on the island city of Lindau, Germany on Lake Constance, and parts of Switzerland and Liechtenstein also make up part of their area.

We greeted the Vorarlberg elders, Elder Byrne and Elder Stringham, and explained our problem.

First we asked them if they knew of anyone in the ward who could store 760 kilos of stuff for a day or two, but the elders had a better idea. This church was unique in that it contained in the basement a huge storage room. The elders led us inside and we found a spacious room with some dusty couches, a ratty pool table, a random drum set, and a variety of other pieces of junk leaning against various walls. There was plenty of room for whatever we had to store temporarily and apparently this room was hardly ever used for anything else.

Finally a bit of good news! It was well after 5pm now and Joseph and I resigned ourselves to the fact that we would not make the customs border that day, which left us wondering where in the world we would sleep that night, but first things first: How much is 760 kilos?

We knew it was a little over 1/3 of the total weight of our load, and so we did our best to take stuff out until we felt like, between the four of us, we had moved 760 kilos to the basement of the church.

We secured the rest of the load in the van and closed the rear double doors. Now on to the next problem, where do Joseph and I sleep for the night?

The elders volunteered to start calling around to see where we could stay and told us where to get a hot bite to eat (we had eaten only snacks the entire day). So Joseph and I walked down the street to a Turkish döner shop and sat down and enjoyed a tasty meal.

Meanwhile, Emily called and said that she made it safely to the new apartment and got the keys. She also said that the bishop of their Swiss ward had a place for her and the kids to stay that night.

With half of our problems solved and food in our bellies, the grimness of past three hours began to lift rapidly from our souls, but we also realized how exhausted we were.

We got back to the church and the elders told us that the bishop would be able to put us up for the night. We thanked them for their help and set off to find the bishops house in the nearby town of Hohenems, Austria.

As the sun set and the rainclouds lifted from the surrounding mountains, we noticed what a beautiful part of the country we were in. When we came to Hohenems we found a small town at the foot of a very long series of cliffs. Out of these cliffs were grandiose waterfalls, fed by the day's rains, gushing wildly onto unseen rocks and pools below. It was idyllic.

We found the bishop's street, a narrow lane very near the cliffs; so narrow in fact, we were afraid we might not get the van out again. But we persevered and found the bishop's house at the foot of a mighty waterfall, hundreds of feet high. For us weary travelers it was better than Leprechaun's gold.

We squeezed the van narrowly into the driveway and went around to the front door. Bishop Stubbe greeted us quietly but warmly and invited us in. He led us upstairs to our room where we met his 20-something son (the last one still at home) and his wife who was making up the beds. They explained that the rest of the kids had flown the nest and so there were plenty of beds for spontaneous visitors.

We introduced ourselves and Joseph and Sister Stubbe played the "Mormon Game" figuring out which people they know in common.

After setting our stuff down we went downstairs and declined their invitations for food. We chatted briefly on the couches of the living room until the bishop recommended we watch a movie. Tonight's feature: the LDS film One Good Man, a cinematic portrait of a fictional bishop in Salt Lake City. As it turns out, the writer and director of this film, Christian Vuissa, is from this region of Austria and we were watching his movie about a bishop with his actual bishop.

It was a rather light-weight movie but a nice distraction from the day's toil.

After the movie I showered and went speedily to bed. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. But in that moment before touchdown I reflected on how I had no idea as I began the day that I would be sleeping in the house of strangers at the base of a fairytale waterfall in the Austrian Alps. I've always been grateful for the Church, but that night I was extra grateful. I think Joseph was too.


TO BE CONTINUED...


The bishop's street in Hohenems, Austria:

The bishop's house with waterfall:

Joseph and I with the Sprinter Van:

Here is the map of the route from Munich to Fischbach-Göslikon, Switzerland:




View Directions to Zentrumstrasse 1, Fischbach-Göslikon, Schweiz in a larger map

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