From Calais to Mongolia- An amazing story!
My name is Chase Berenson, and I want to tell you a great story about an experience I had at the Calais Wine Superstore this summer.
This July and August, my girlfriend and I had the crazy idea to participate in the Mongol Rally, which is a driving event that consists of driving a comically small car from England all the way to Mongolia to raise heaps of money for charity; once we finally arrived in Ulaanbaatar, the car was then auctioned off to raise even more money for charity. The Rally has a starting line in England and a finish line in Mongolia, but there are no set routes or set dates, and it is a completely unsupported rally. It was also an amazing experience.
We were driving a 1.1-liter 2004 Fiat Panda which we had purchased in England for the Rally. Our route took us from England through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, back into Kazakhstan, back into Russia, and finally onto Mongolia.
As you might have guessed, to leave England we rode the ferry from Dover to Calais. While we were in the Dover ferry terminal waiting for our ship we had picked up a brochure for the Calais Wine Superstore, because it’s never a bad idea to know where to get some wine.
While on the ferry we met to New Zealanders who were also in the Rally, and we decided to convoy together from Calais on to Luxembourg and camp the night somewhere in Luxembourg. The only problem was that we didn’t know where they were parked on the ferry, and we had no way to meet up again once the ferry made it to Calais.
Luckily, we had the Calais Wine Superstore brochure! The New Zealanders took a picture of the map on the brochure, and we decided to meet at the store. Brilliant!
Despite having a photo of the map, somehow the Kiwis got lost driving to the store and that allowed my girlfriend and me ample time to explore the store and to speak to the employees who were on staff. We spoke to Ross and Craig for a while, and they were really excited about our adventure. They thought the Mongol Rally was a great idea! They liked it so much they gave us a Calais Wine Superstore bumper sticker for our car to show off on our journey.
For the next forty days we had multiple people ask us about the Calais Wine Superstore, and we told everyone about how amazing the store (and Ross and Craig) were. The bumper sticker received a surprising amount of attention on the Rally, and we got to speak to a lot of people about it. Unfortunately, by the time we got to Kazakhstan the car was so dirty the sticker wasn’t legible anymore. However, in Ulaanbaatar we started talking about your store again.
We had two bottles of Jacobs Creek from the store that we were saving for a special occasion, and we drank them at the most special of all the occasions on the rally: the finish line. Admittedly, they’d spent 40 days crossing deserts and mountain ranges, and were far from ideal condition, but we enjoyed them. They had traveled with us from the first day to the last, and had seen all of the adventures (and misadventures) that we had happened upon across Europe and Asia.
Those bottles of wine helped cement memories of our experience, and honestly, the happiness that comes from drinking the wine is much more important than the quality of the wine when it’s drunk.
We will be doing the Mongol Rally again in 2015, and are already planning the Calais Wine Superstore as our first stop off the ferry.
Thank you for everything!
Check out Chase's website www.TeamTurnagain.weebly.com,www.TeamTurnagain.weebly.com/blog and Facebook pagewww.facebook.com/TeamTurnagain to find out more about the adventure and about the wild trip that those two bottles of Jacobs Creek accompanied us upon.
All photos supplied by Chase
