Droid Lady...Where are You When I Need You????

"This weekend we're going to drive,"  Steve declared.  Two weeks ago we took a trip out to the 'burbs to hunt for light fixtures and other home furnishings via public transportation.  The public transportation here is terrific - except it's just hard to carry your new floor lamp home on the train...or walk with it the 1 km from the store to the train station.  Some things are just easier with your own car... Anyhow...we had purchased our lovely 2001 BMW X5 from Steve's predescesor - perfect car for a city with narrow streets and limited parking!  However, it has quite the lineage within the firm, and what the heck... a bargain by Swiss standards!  But the purchase price was just the beginning of the fun...

The car we have...

The car Swiss people have...

• 
  
• 
  
• Insurance - When Steve called to sign up for car insurance, they wanted to know the date he got his driver's license...year?  No, not good enough...month?  No, still not good enough...What day did you receive your license?  Really?...so he gave them some random date in July 1976 (probably not the 4th...too much Bicentennial action going on :)...but how would they ever figure it out!  Are they really going to check with the Appleton, WI DMV???  More power to them if they can figure out that he gave them the wrong date!
• Where can you drive on the roads?  Although they drive on the "right" side of the road here in Switzerland, the appropriate driving lanes are a little complicated by the ever-present tram lines... Some lanes are tram only, and some are for trams and cars...always best to be following another car so you know which lanes you are allowed to be in.  Or maybe just take a better read through the book of rules...
• Service - Once again our apartment location works out well - the BMW service center is just down the road, less than 10 minute walk away.  The car has two sets of tires - one for winter, and one for summer - so Steve called to make an appointment to get the tires changed.  The costs to get the tires changed and re-balanced, etc. were not that significantly different from that in Summit.  But then he asked for an oil change...that will be 500 francs...almost $600!!!  Are you kidding me??  Where is the Jiffy Lube when you need one?  No wonder they recommend service only every couple of years when the car is "light use."  Just to be sure, Steve checked with other people at work to see if this was reasonable...they said they pay up to 800 francs...guess we're getting a bargain :)
•  License Plates - So we were finally about to set off on our adventure and I noticed he hadn't put the new license plates on.  Apparently he was told by the former owner that he had them put on at the dealership - he didn't know how to do it - so we'd just wait until we took it in to get the tires changed.  Almost as soon as we left the house some guy was beeping at us like crazy.  Finally he was able to pull up next to us and I think he was trying to tell us we better get our plates on or we're going to be in BIG trouble.  Fortunately they were in the car...so we got to our first destination, pulled them out, and what do you know...they pop right in!  No tools or anything needed...maybe it was too easy to figure out for us Americans!
• GPS - As with any self-respecting luxury car in the early 2000's, the old X5 has a built in GPS (and car phone!).  In English (a step above our old Japanese GPS in Tokyo...), but unfortunately 11 years old.  Our second destination (the above mentioned 'burbs) is in an area that wasn't built up 10 years ago...so we needed to add in the non-speaking GPS from the iPhone (what's with that?  I need to figure out how to make it talk like good old "Droid Lady"!)  to try to navigate.  Took a little bit of missed on-ramps and going around in circles, but we eventually made it and got some more needed purchases made.  Fortunately our 200+ year old apartment building WAS on the map in 2001, so we had no problems getting home!  In any event, at least for now...driving is a two person adventure!

We should probably take a better look at these before our next trip....