Uncontrolled Intersections

Now, back to the story...

May 20th, Polizei/Ikea/Polizei

We were hoping that if we took back the rental car that was late first thing in the morning, that maybe we would get lucky and not get charged for an extra day. So as soon as we got up (the mattress wasn't actually that bad on the floor) we all headed to Budget - after meat and cheese and buns for breakfast of course. It seemed like we got off with the rental being late, although the guy didn't speak any English, but I had a good feeling that we wouldn't have to pay extra. We piled into the tiny little EuroFiesta and I had my first taste of the sweet ride that Jodi had been driving for the last couple of days. The thing was pretty tricky to drive. Now, Budget was only about ten blocks from our apartment, and on the drive home, we were talking about the "yield to the right at uncontrolled intersections" rule - which is used quite a bit in Freiburg, and an uncontrolled intersection happens about every five meters in our neighborhood. I thought I was finally starting to get the hang of it when we side-swiped a station wagon in the middle of the intersection. Of course, he came from the right. Oops. Everyone was Ok, and the guy was pretty nice and 'told' us (he knew no English) that the Polizei were on the way. We had rendered his car completely un-driveable, and I was already making plans of how we could pack up and get back to Canada. When the police showed up, they took some pictures and then took the guy off for questioning. I thought they were going to decide our fate without us even being involved. After about 15 minutes, they came and got us and we went and sat in their police van. After a couple of questions in broken English, the very nice police lady asked if we had any money. We both immediately clammed up and remembered stories a colleague of mine had told us about the police in central America, and how they coerce people to give them money in exchange for their freedom. Of course, this is not Mexico we are talking about, but we told a large fib and said we had no money. (I had about 1900 euros in my neck-man-purse-passport-carrier-thing: Jodi's idea). Immediately after I said that, I thought - we're finished, they are going to find the money and then we will be enjoying the inside of a German detention cell. Over the course of an hour and a half of questioning, we finally figured out that the officer just wanted us to pay the fine up front because we weren't from Freiburg, and then we finally conveyed that we were from Freiburg. The whole ordeal was tremendously confusing. I am still confused. Well, not really. We ended up not giving them any money, but we had to come down to the station later for a statement that night with our own personal translator. They let us go and we met up with the kids who were hanging out with Grandma at the park, and we were off to Ikea again. In our broken car. When we finished the showroom proper and headed into the self-serve area to pick up all the stuff we had written down, Jodi started to hyperventilate and became a walking zombie. What was supposed to be a fun, purchase-your-new-home-in-one-trip was turning out to be far too much to handle under the circumstances. Mom G. pulled out an earlier speech from May 17th (mental breakdown day) about having to just get through our problems as there is no other feasible option (framed in terms of labor/transition/delivery). In the end, we bought absolutely everything we could think of for our place including the kitchen, and hoped they would take Visa again - and they did. By now, we were on the preferred customer list with all the stuff we bought. Next, we drug all of our purchases over to the delivery place. Then the poo-poo hit the fan. The gal went through every item on our receipt, checking to make sure the numbers/quantity/price or something matched what we had on our skids. Makes sense of course, but we had a lot of stuff and it took a painfully long time. The original cashier made a couple of mistakes - we quadruple paid on one item, but missed paying on three, but this was not all discovered at the same time by the delivery worker, and Jodi/Mom made three trips back to cash to settle. Apparently, they couldn't deliver everything - we had to take some of the loose stuff like dishes, garbage cans, kitchen utensils, clock, and a neverending pile of small house stuff. When everything was done, we got the really bad news that none of the stuff could be delivered until next monday (6 days)! As upset as we were we didn't have time to be phased by it as we had to cap off the seven hour Ikea outing so we could get to the police station and meet our translator for the statement. We drove home, raced the stuff upstairs, left the kids with Mom and then went to the station. We each did separate interviews/interrogations with the officer and Martin, our translator (a colleague from the klinik, a.k.a. the guy who found our apartment). The officer was an incredibly nice lady, but the whole process was kind of scary - the statements were recorded on audio tape, and the proceedings were very formal. Turns out the fella was completely intoxicated - 0.21. We just thought he was a nice guy. Perhaps a little bit of the language/culture barrier seeped into this one for us. Well, we are crossing our fingers that his drunkeness might take some of the blame off of us. I'm sure we will have to pay the deductible for the rental car though. Big deal, just a cool 750 euro. Yikes. Pass the offering plate around... We topped the day off with some buns and meat and cheese, and relaxed and rejuvenated on our mattresses on the cement.

We promise these will start to get shorter. I think. See you tomorrow. Same Bat time. Same Bat channel.

Jodi and Jeff