German/Samba Festival

The shopping continues: part 3







OTHER NEWS:

Saturday was quite eventful. I set up three car appointments for Renee and I, according to our relocation agent, man can't just show up at a dealership and ask for a test drive, man must make an appointment for a probefahrt.



Back to the story, Renee and I went to our first appointment early to scope out the place, a used car salesman is a used car salesman in any country, and by the looks of their shop, their places can speak a thousand words. Besides Renee hasn't been very receptive towards the smaller dealers and honestly neither have I, something about the ponytails, gold rings and necklaces. Although in some cultures that might be a good thing, you know, like an indicator that business is good and a solid promise of good customer satisfaction.


Still, even Renee's friend told us to be leery of used car salesman if the car we are looking at is not from a dealership.


He was right, as we found out, dealerships are government regulated, a dealership can't just sell man a car, it needs to go through a rigorous inspection. Believe me, I seen some of the vehicles after inspection, the "inspector" takes some kind of chalk and marks ever ding, scratch and writes a detailed report about the handling. Thus in the end you get a full inspection of the car and history report supplied by the dealer. Not so much in the states, I believe one has to ask for the cars serial number then go through a bunch of hoops before a report is located, if the local DMV has been keeping records of your car.


Back to the story, well we show up at this dealership and the car isn't even on the lot. Perhaps it sold, perhaps it was just some bait to get us out to his dealership, and it was kind of sad because it was a vehicle that both of us like, the Mazda 3. So we returned home and I mentioned to Renee another vehicle I found during the week, a 2005 2.0 Toyota Corolla, 4 door, diesel, and also cute which is a plus. So we headed to Erlangen to look at this Toyota and lo' and behold, it was like the shining sword of King Arthur, Renee was in gear monkey land. Guess what...we asked for a probefahrt and we got one. We drove the car for about thirty minutes, they really allow you to bond with the vehicle here, oh yeah...the place was also an official Toyota Dealership. The star were aligning, this car had the muscle and the brains I tell you.


We got back to the dealership and being unsure we told the gentlemen at the dealership. "We have to think about it." We left and as we were driving back, Renee and I got to talking and decided we liked this vehicle, we called our relocation agent asked her what needed to be done, since we are waiting for some mulla and she said we could do a hand shake agreement with the dealer with small fees if we decided to back out of the deal, but nothing big.


Long story short, we turned around, drove back and entered into negotiations for the new "Lady Car."


And that was just the morning. Later we drove about an hour north to an awesome city called, Coburg, to check their yearly SAMBA Festival. One of Renee's coworkers performers with a samba group, which happen to be performing that evening. It was wild and tame at the same time. The Festival is all weekend and there were three gigantic stages and three smaller stages, plus each platz had a samba band, with dancers performing. Quite a sight!


I complained about not having my camera the whole day. Lately my rechargeable batteries aren't so rechargeable.


I'm also gonna start adding pictures to my flickr site as soon as get batteries



THE BEER

This weeks pick:

This is a beer from the local brewery, well to the region. It is by far one of the best "Pils" like beer I have had. It is a Helles Vollbier from Die Franfen Halbe, The Half Franfen meaning? I'm not sure and I forgot to ask a local, I will find out, maybe K and L would know, and helles meaning bright, in this case like a pils and not a Dunkel which is darker. Next time I'll take a picture of the beer in the glass so you get to see the color and such. I'm still tring to figure out how to describe German beer.

To many more moons,

-M