So, we are finally preparing to buy a car. Even though our Honda in the U.S. hasn't sold yet, we just can't go on without a car here. (Aside from the fact that we are spending a ridiculous amount of money on the occaisional car rental, buses, taxis, and strassenbahn; there is also the fact that it is dark by 5:15pm now and it's really cold in the early mornings and evenings. The 1.5 mile bike ride is lovely when the weather cooperates, but when it's 40 degrees Fahrenheit and raining, it just sucks.)
We went to about 6 different car dealers on Saturday. It was an all day adventure and Rowan earned lots and lots of "good boy points" by being a really good sport about spending his day this way! We are looking for a used car. We started out thinking we might get a year old VW Passat or something like that. HA! A year old VW Passat (basic 4-door sedan model with less than 30k miles) will run at least 16,000 euro. At today's exchage rate that's 23,600 US Dollars. That's more than we paid for our brand new Honda CR-V!! When we left the U.S. in October, we brought 9,000 USD in cash to convert and buy a car. [You can only bring up to 9,999 dollars out of the U.S. without declaring it... if you want to bring more than that, you have to give the US Gov advance notice of how much you are bringing. If you try and bring more than 10k out without declaring it, it can be confiscated (and never returned....)] Naturally, the dollar SANK against the Euro the week we returned, so we only netted about 6,000 Euro.
So, after a bit of shock, we revised (here meaning "downgraded") our expectations and are now looking for a 5-10 year old car. We went to a few big dealers (Toyota, Mazda, VW) and looked at their used car stock (very few cars in our price range...) so then we went to a few really scary dealers who looked like they set up shop last week and will be gone next week... LOTs of cars in our price range, but the oil spills everywhere, junk parts and spare parts lying everywhere kinda turned us off to shopping at one of those dealers... So, we basically gave up and were heading home and we decided to try one more place we knew we would pass on the way home. They actually had a decent selection of older cars, at decent prices (from 1,500 euro for a 12 year old VW to 15,000 euro for a 3 year old BMW.... and everything in between.) The fellow running the place was very nice, spoke very decent English and was attentive and informative without being even the slightest bit pushy. Not very used car salesman-like. We found a few we are interested in and we'll be going back tomorrow night to test drive them. One is a deisel wagon, about 6 years old; another is a 6 year old Honda minivan! Lots of room for visitors!!!
So, cross your fingers and hope that all goes well!
