We left the Holiday Inn early this morning and made our way to the Mercedes dealer. We were there early so had to find a place to park and hang-out for about an hour before their opening time of 9:00am.
Once at the dealer the checkin process was a bit of a trial for all concerned. The service manager did not speak English and we needed to use the same receptionist as yesterday to translate. But eventually the truck was driven into the workshop and work started. By lunch time the service manager appeared and the work was done!! - sort of. I had asked them to rotate the tires (bringing the spare into service in the hope of getting to Istanbul on the current tires), and to fix an oil leak around the glass level indicator on the hydraulic oil tank. They had indeed rotated the tires, but had not fixed the oil leak. Infact they could not even top up the hydraulic tank with oil as they had no information on the type of oil that a U500 uses in the hydraulic system.
Next stop was a large super market and HomeDepot style hardware store just a bit south of the dealer. We parked in a street behind the shops as there was no chance we could fit in the parking lot and spent an hour shopping and drooling over the wide range of foods available. After packing the food away a heavy rain storm broke over the area so we stayed in the truck reading while the elements cooled the city down and turned the roadways into small lakes.
As night approached we moved a little further down the street to a wide almost empty parking lot and thought we had found a good place for the night; but we were wrong. Over the next few hours a number of cars and motocycles gathered in the parking lot and we were treated to a display of trick motorcycle riding (wheel stands both front and rear) and cars showing the drivers drifting skills. This later display completely freaked Nina out so at about 10:00pm we departed from the parking lot back to the quiet street where the Mercedes dealer was located and found an area to pull over and park for the night.