Ritual cleaning of the holiday car
Everyone celebrates their holiday in their own way. There is an incredible amount of variation in that. But coming back home is a group process, a collective ritual.
On the third Saturday of August around noon, returning holiday traffic squeezes along the A2 near Den Bosch. After this weekend, schools in the southern region start again. The ‘construction holidays’ are also over by then. Cars with caravans, folding trailers, bike racks, surfboards – they all have to head home. A comforting thought for all participants: they aren’t the only ones for whom the sweet life is over. Everyone gets back to work on Monday.
Near the highway lies the Den Bosch business park De Herven, home to ANAC Carwash. Traffic jams loom here too, as cleaning the vehicle is a worthy conclusion to many a car holiday. Vans go to the right through an extra-high wash tunnel. Passenger cars are parked on the left until they get the signal from an employee that they can drive forward. Soon, a system drags the car through a downpour and a pampering program with giant brushes and drying cloths.
Afterwards, you can drive onto an ‘interior carousel’ where car wash employees clean the inside of the car. However, the true holidaymaker turns sharply to the left, onto the ‘vacuum plaza’. There, at your own pace, you can vacuum the car, beat the mats, and let all those holiday memories sink in one last time.
People of all kinds – sometimes entire families – crown their summer leave here with a thorough car valet. It’s as if they’re embarrassed that their vehicle got so dirty on the beaches of the Spanish Costa or in those dark Alpine tunnels. They are going to remove all the dust and dirt, because their faithful four-wheeler truly deserves it after those exciting holiday kilometers. “Bird droppings are the worst,” says owner Omar of a grey Volkswagen Golf GTI. He corrects himself. The official color of his sports car is called ‘Nardo Grey’. By the sea, there are always seagulls with the nasty habit of shitting on the bodywork. If a car like that is parked under pine trees somewhere by the Mediterranean, resin also drips onto the chassis. You don’t own a car like that just to let it get damaged. One after another, the shiny, freshly blow-dried cars emerge from the wash tunnel to park at one of the vacuum hoses.
To be safe, a young mother has put her two blonde toddlers in the trunk of the white Tesla, with the tailgate wide open. Her partner is diligently working on the front seats. The little boys are wide-eyed. “They find this exciting. A car wash like this makes an impression,” says their mother. The back seat is folded down to reach the difficult corners with the vacuum hose. The boys have extra room to play. One finds an old sandwich and starts chewing on it. This is holiday as holiday is meant to be: experiencing things and letting it all sink in while relaxed.
Mitchel and Jolanda are practically finished with their Volkswagen T-Cross and are now focusing on cleaning the child seats. Their children, aged 3 and 5, stand by as if they want to help, but don’t quite know how yet. Mitchel has an administrative role at a company that supplies vacuum pumps. Jolanda works in education and will be back in front of the class on Monday. Until now, they went on holiday by plane, but their children reached camping age. That’s why they camped in Oost-Kapelle in Zeeland. Especially their oldest son doesn’t want to go anywhere else anymore. Are there still things you find during the cleaning that trigger sweet holiday memories? “Shells. Lots of shells from the beach,” says Mitchel.
He just let them all be devoured by the meters-long hose of the vacuum system, but he speaks of them like the unforgettable wealth of a balmy summer by the sea. Next to him is the beige Nissan Qashqai belonging to museum employee Will (65) from Tilburg. He was in the German Sauerland with his wife. Lovely. Lots of walking too. “Did learn something, though,” he says seriously. The couple took a long hike through an unknown city. It was such a joy that by evening they no longer knew where they had parked their Qashqai. That will never happen to them again. Will dives into his spic-and-span vehicle, pops back up, and triumphantly shows a GPS tracker. While vacuuming, he had to be careful that the little thing didn’t suddenly disappear into the ANAC Carwash piping system, but at the same time, that beautiful walk and the whole holiday came back to him. And so: “That GPS tracker isn’t going anywhere!” Furthermore, you can muse about rewarding your car and get sentimental about the end of summer, but you also have to keep it practical. Will and his wife have already planned another trip to Bergen aan Zee. Plus: “A car just has to be clean. Period!”
Source: Eric Vrijsen, published on ReisBizz.nl and Reismedia.nl.