A new set of wheels

Well, we took the plunge here in Switzerland and bought a car. It was no easy feat, with about a three month processing time after we ordered the car and all kinds of financial what-not involved, but we are now the proud owners of a new Volvo.

Now, if you know BK well, you may be thinking that never in a million years would you see him own a Volvo; it's just so sensible. I never thought I would see the day either. And plenty of the guys at work have given him such a hard time about this purchase.

But in the end, practicality outweighed everything else. Volvo has a special deal for expats, making purchasing a Volvo more attractive than other cars in Switzerland. Cars are very expensive here in general, so any break you can get is beneficial. The primary thing it's being used for is for BK to commute to work, so it needed to get good gas mileage and to be safe. Don't worry though, I think he added every possible feature available. He hasn't completely lost touch with his old self.

I kept the car last Friday so I could do some running around, including getting some bigger items that are not so easily handled with Baby K in tow, either in the stroller or being carried on me. BK was eager to hear what I thought about it and how it went. I really like the car, and it has all kinds of great features, but the best one for me is probably the parking sensors.

I say the parking sensors because parking is not my best skill in life. In my past two cars I never had a fender bender, but I did have some unfortunate run-ins with our garage. The bumpers nearly always had a black scrape on them from me coming and going out of the garage. In my defense, we did have a garage that had two separate doors, and since I had the smaller car I had to use the one that required a bit of a turn to get in.

Here's how our new car fits in the garage.

Okay, so it doesn't look like such a tight fit here, but I swear I feel like I have to hold my breath while I'm pulling in. I also told BK that the parking sensors don't really help in this situation because it's just one constant beep at me when I'm parking. He laughed at this and let me know that they did not do that when he was parking. Let's just say we apparently have different methods. I try my hardest to let BK drive as much as possible, and you better believe I won't be parking with him in the car. No one wins in that situation, trust me.

So we're off and running! It has been kind of fun to have a car on the weekends so that we can explore around the area and up and down the mountain. If you come visit us we might even come pick you up from the airport too.

BK drives like the Swiss do

I apparently decided to take the weekend off from posting. We had a fairly uneventful weekend that included BK returning from the US, eating at home both nights (a huge accomplishment for us), running errands on Saturday and BK driving for the first time in Switzerland. I also started tracking my steps, but more on that later.

We don't own a car here, but are part of the Mobility program- a car-sharing service run by the Swiss transportation company (same people who do the trains). I believe Mobility is throughout Switzerland and has places to pick up shared cars all over the cities. Basel has numerous places you can pick up, including random parking spots that are about a block over from our apartment.

I reserved a "combi" car for us (i.e. wagon) so that we could go purchase some rugs from Ikea and have room to put them in the back of the car. I didn't reserve early enough for us to have an automatic, so BK was the only one driving that day. Not that I have any desire to drive in Switzerland, but Saturday it wasn't even an option, as I can't drive a standard.

BK's first driving experience started off really well. He downloaded a navigation app before leaving the apartment, although he didn't download Germany for some reason. Not sure why, as the border is less than five minutes from our house. Oh well, we managed to find our way around.We found our car and were able to unlock it with the Mobility card, and were on our way.

Of course I'm usually petrified to have to be the navigator, as it never goes exactly how it's supposed to. We got to Ikea just fine, purchased two rugs and were on the road again. As we had finished much quicker than expected, BK decided that we should do something else productive while we had the car, so we headed into Germany to do some grocery shopping.

To make a long story short, groceries and lunch took a little longer than expected, we got caught in a mini traffic jam, and my iPhone pretty much went dead. We barely made it back to Basel before we had to turn our car back in. And we missed a step in there too...oh yeah, all the stuff that was in the car hadn't even been dropped off at our apartment yet.

This is when things started to unravel just a bit. We took the Mobility car back to the parking lot, unloaded all of the stuff, then I sat with everything (in the parking lot) until BK could go get another combi car from a different location. He took my phone so he could find his way back to where I was, but not before he couldn't figure out how to get out of the parking garage at the other location. My understanding is that he had to back down the parking garage ramp and get out and walk back to surface level so he could call Mobility and figure out how to get the car out of there. I'm just glad I wasn't there for that part.

He did find his way back, we loaded everything back in the car and made our way to the apartment. Thankfully, we had already done this journey once that day so we didn't need the navigation. BK was such a good sport on Saturday. After he returned our second Mobility car he helped me install the new rugs, measuring down to the centimeter how much of the rug should be on each side of the table/bed/etc.

We're always up for an adventure, and this one did not disappoint. Also, for those of you who plan to come visit, we will not be driving with you. We will be taking the bus, tram or train. As far as I'm concerned, driving is only for purchasing things you can't haul onto the bus, tram or train, and I plan to keep it that way.