Finally our bus has been ‘eingebürgert’ and is now a fully registered Swiss Büssli. After the fun and games we had importing him, he spent nearly three months in the garage being swissified. The biggest problem was a very slight oil leak. The inspectors over here won’t even look at a vehicle if there is any oil to soil there white cotton gloves. Not being quite original he had to have a number of tests and certificates purchased. Our new (and now much richer) friend at the garage worked wonders in finding engine codes hiding right under his lettered stamps… He even managed to get the non-original exhaust through, which I’d been told was impossible. Also, just taking the tow bar ball off was good enough to convince them it didn’t have a tow bar. They also didn’t seem to notice that whilst the speedo says kmh, the odometer reads miles. They have an excellent system of registration plates here. The plates are issued to me, and I can use them with two cars. You only pay road tax and insurance on the most expensive, which is our old Citroen C4 GP. Of course you can only have one vehicle on the road at a time, and you have to present papers at the local MFK office in person for both vehicles. So off I went with all the papers, but, computer says “no”. The online insurance documentation was out of date. The insurers update the records and I go back a couple of days later. This time there is a zero in a box where a one should be. This is rectified and the next week I try again, this time it works and I can go and collect ‘Barney Büssli’ from the garage with our plates. 100 miles later he’s back in Basel and the obligatory bunting is installed. So here he is in the foothills of the Jura looking chipper Look no wheels, I can float Trying to look a bit more 1973 There are a bunch of jobs to do, but he’s mechanically sound and just as importantly, legally on the road.
