Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Driving and Other Adventures


Today I tackled either the bravest or dumbest adventure yet.  I took two children 3.5 hours north via 2 trains, 1 U-Bahn, and 1 Bus to another town to pick up our new-to-us, manual-transmission car and drive it back solo (with two children) via both the autobahn & downtown driving...in Europe. Did I mention that it's a manual transmission?

My study materials this morning. 

Side Note: If you look closely in this picture, under "Special Signs", you see the first one means "Danger! Rabies!" ...What? This is actually a road sign? Does "Rabies" have an alternate meaning or did something get lost in translation?

The manual transmission actually turned out to be the least of my concerns and the autobahn was great!  I discovered our second train had been cancelled when we arrived at the transfer station 1.5 hours after initial departure.  We found an alternate route and continued on!  However, the 2nd train was 7 minutes late, so we missed our U-bahn connection.  But there was another 10 minutes later. And then our bus was delayed too, so we ended up taking a different bus.  BUT the end result was arriving prior to the dealership closing! Success!

The kids enjoying riding on the 1st train. This was B's first train ride in Germany!

On the U-bahn. I didn't get a pic of the 2nd train or the bus. Just imagine a city bus. They're pretty much the same. But cleaner here. :)

And here's our car!!  Safe & sound at home on Poppelsdorfer Allee!

Altogether, it wasn't a bad trip. We made it home a little around 8:30pm after a half-hour search for parking and one of the worst parallel parking jobs of my life.  Hopefully we can find a spot to rent nearby before too long. I am terrified of parking in the wrong place (either a no-parking zone or a zone other than our permit allows).  I double-checked this one.  And *may* have run out to check again after the kids were in bed, at which point I discovered the car behind me had left & now I would have had all the room in the world to park!  

Now we can venture out further than just the surrounding few km on foot and not be strictly tied to the train schedule.  Let the adventures begin!

Tschüss!



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