Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Bremerhaven

A week ago Sunday, Jeff and I drove up to Bremerhaven to pick up my new car, a Jeep Patriot. They would have delivered the car to us but it would have been a two week wait and need my own transportation to look for work and run errands while Jeff's at work. We shopped around for some used cars but then we figured it was worth buying a new car, with full warranty, for the three years while we're here and then sell it before we return to the states.

Bremerhaven is about a six hour drive from our home here in Weilerbach, Germany. Bremerhaven is a port city on the North Sea. They handle a lot of the new car shipping in and out of Germany. Our Sunday drive up to Bremerhaven was quite interesting. Lots of traffic from all over Europe. August is the vacation month here so we saw lots of travel trailers and license plates from across Europe. No big, long haul trucks though. Germany is very noise conscious and those big trucks are not allowed on the Germany autobahns on Sundays for that reason.

Germany is a very forested and hilly country until you get within about 200 miles of Bremerhaven. Then, quite dramatically, the terrain flattens and northern Germany becomes very flat and open, similar to Holland,

Jeff and I spent Sunday night in Bremerhaven at a small, quaint gasthaus. Walked around the harbor, really cool masted sailing ships on display and a WW II U-boat, the Wilhelm Bauer, pictured above with Jeff.

Monday morning we drove over to the pickup point for the new car, a huge holding area for all the vehicles arriving there. It took us about an hour to do the paperwork, check out the car and clear customs. Then started the drive back south. The drive was a bit painful. We drove up on Sunday at 120 mph as much as possible, however, now with the new car in its break in period, we could do a maximum of 70. That seemed like a snail's pace. Here's a picture of me with my new car before we drove it away.

Made it home safe and sound after a drive that took almost the same amount of time going up at 120 mph as driving home at 70mph.

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