The Car Story

We try to get to Germany every couple of years. It is a place that we love. We feel like we are going home when we go there. Our family roots are there. My husband was born there (he's an Army brat). It is just a comfortable holiday place for us. And one thing we always do is splurge on a premiere car for hire while we are there. My husband loves to drive, and autobahns scream out to be driven, really driven. So we splurge on a car. This year my husband had hired a Mercedes E-class with Satellite Navigation System. He could not wait to get to Germany to drive his Merc. It was to be a fun-filled week of seeing how fast he could drive. He talked about it and dreamed about it and salivated over it. We had the paperwork to prove that a Mercedes E-class was reserved. And we arrived...and this is the car we received.

Now you may not be car enthusiasts, but you should be able to immediately determine that this...is...not...a...Mercedes...E-class. It's not even a Mercedes. It is a Volvo. A Volvo Station Wagon. The sweet man behind the counter said to my husband, we have no Mercedes at all today. To his credit, my husband never said a word. He just accepted the keys. Accepted the keys with a dejected puppy dog look that would melt your heart. We could have taken a smaller Beemer, but it wasn't one with a power engine. (I'm sure they had seen an order for a car and two child seats and assumed we would love a Volvo Station Wagon. They were mostly wrong).
It turned out to be a great car. It had incredible power. It had great get up and go. It was comfortable. (It had a lousy Sat-Nav system but that is for another post). Our first autobahn experience in the car was trying to get to church on time. And when the traffic and road construction cooperated this car valiently tried. We just ran out of road. DH had not even started really pushing it when road restrictions were back in place. We didn't make it to church. But we had fun trying.

And, I looked at my husband and said, "I know it's not the Mercedes, but, really, how many people can say they've driven a station wagon at a cruising speed of 135MPH?" He just grinned. Not many.