Assumptions are B-A-D!

Assumptions Are B-A-D!

After several days with 4 people cooped up in a hotel room, we decided we needed to find a place for the kids to burn some energy. Luckily, there was a fabulous kid’s indoor play place called Kids Planet that had a large assortment of bouncy houses, trampolines, and jungle gyms in a town about 45 minutes away.

At this point, we still hadn’t figured out how to change our navigation system in the car to English (so it was useless) but fortunately I was able to access google maps from the hotel room and write down a very long list of directions to get there. We decided we would not huddle in our room and hide from this foreign place but instead face it head on and venture out – with minimal language skills and all!

First stop – gas station. 1.35 euros on the sign. My first thought was ‘wow, this is so cheap’. Until I quickly learned that it is 1.35 euro per liter is much less than a gallon. Our car is very small. I would compare it to Ben’s high school Geo Metro. NEVER did it cross my mind (or Ben’s) that this would take anything but normal gas. We filled it and were on our way to Kids Planet. We had a splendid time there and the kids were exhausted after about 3 hours of energy-burning fun. We packed ourselves back in the car only to find it wouldn’t start. We continued to try only to find the car start to smoke.

At this point, I have yet to start work and have met two people in this country – my boss and my HR leader. Lacking the ability to communicate in German, I was unable to call a car mechanic and describe our problem much less where we were located. I decided to call my HR leader (on a Saturday afternoon) to inform her that the Americans that just arrived are stranded 45 minutes away at a kids place because our car won’t start. Thank the LORD for her! While we waited for her to arrive, Ben and I brainstormed how this could have happened. The only thing we could deduct was we put gas in the car. We pulled out the manual only to find it was supposed to be DIESEL! Now back to the title of this post– assumptions are bad. In our simple American minds only large trucks that are very loud use diesel – bad assumption. Mechanic arrived and after a few diagnostics he smelled the gas cap and opening and spewed rapid German words that depicted the exact problem. I’m sure he said something to the effect of ‘these American idiots put the wrong gas in the car and ruined the engine’. To make a long story shorter, my HR leader took her first ride in a tow truck (really? I think I’ve been in 20+ in my life) and we received a loaner vehicle while ours was repaired. The irony is that it was the same make/model/color (Blue Volkswagon Golf) and yet this one took regular and not diesel. Not to confuse you or anything…..



This obvious?

 After this event, we decided to stay closer to home (Stade, pronounced sh-tada) and enjoy the local view.  Here are several pictures of the city centre.  It really is just breath-taking and quaint and much slower in pace than we have been used to.  Most everyone walks or rides bikes and there aren't really any one-stop shopping stores but instead a bakery/bread store, a meat store, a medicine store, etc. 

I'm working on figuring out how to make this blog make it vertical vs. horizontal.  A picture of the stores and cafes.



Picture of the center of the city where the bus/taxis services are located.