Day of Delivery

It is the end of Monday for us...it's about 10:30 pm as I type this.

This morning we awoke refreshed and ready to collect the new car.  I went in search of a Coke, of course, and walked across the way to the train station with what I thought was a prince's ransom to buy a coke.  I placed my morning wake up on the counter and proudly handed the lady 10 SEK to pay for it.  The coke costs about 3.50 US dollars.  She looked at me quizzically and I stammered out..."How much do i have?"  Ended up i had about .50 cents US money....so i had to trudge all the way back to the hotel and ended up drinking a coke out of the mini bar. 

This is very reminenscent of a story Shannon has when she was trying to pay off the "clean your horse trailor police" in Mexico....she was trying to pay her 'bill' with about 50 cents worth of US money too!

Any whoo....i got my coke and was a better person for it!   We then went down to eat breakfast at the buffet.  They had some interesting choices for breakfast...smoked salmon, sauteed mushrooms, variety of cheeses, baked beans, breads, cereal and a few other things that were just strange.  Missy ate Coco Krispies, shannon ate some mushrooms, sausage like substance and potatoes.  It was ok.

We then collected our luggage and went down stairs to wait for our ride to the Volvo Factory Delivery Center. 

Low and behold our 'ride' was a Volvo Limo....we shared the ride with a couple of nice ladies from Cincinatti - they were a hoot - Dorothy (in picture with me) and her friend Tina.  This was Dorothy's 5th Volvo and first to get through the Overseas Delivery Program. 

So now, we are in the building...yeah!!!  Shan and I met with our Volvo person, who reviewed the paperwork and then went and retrieved "the car".  We weren't able to video the grand entrance to the car, but here are a few pictures that Shannon took....

So off we went to test drive the new car on their 'track' - - - really its just a short road that you u-turn on, nothing special like the Daytona track.  So back to the parking lot where we parked my branny new car next to about 6-10 other cars that  were delivered today.  There were actually 2 other cars identical to mine in color, but i was the only one with the 2 tone interior and dark wood accents....one of the other people told me that their volvo person was talking about mine and how nice it was.

Then we were whisked (herded actually) to the employee cafeteria for our buffet lunch.  Lunch consisted of Swedish meatballs (fantastic!!) boiled potatoes, salad, and bread.  Nice little spread if i say so myself.  And again those meatballs were really really good.

We then had a few minutes to waste before we all were taken on the Factory tour.  There were about 30 people on the tour (and our tour only consisted of folks there to pick up their factory deliver)...Sorry there will be no pictures from this part of our day as Volvo has to protect their trade secrets.  The factory was fascinating...all the robots doing the welding and all....Must include our tour guy was oriental and every time he said "robots" it sounded like he was saying "rowboats".

After the tour we were ready to hit the road...but not before I got the all-season weather mats put in the car (thank you lady from North Carolina....I had forgotten about getting these in all of the excitment, but she was telling me that they got them, so off I went to get them put in so that we would mess up the other ones)  Good thing we did and it has rained most of the day here.

Shan and I left the Factory Delivery Center and headed over to the Volvo Museum.  Also need to add that the FDC let us borrow a GPS unit...thank god we had the GPS or we would still be driving around Gothenburg trying to find a way to Vaxjo!!!

The scenery was lovely, nice farmhouses, barns, and even an old church...

Then disaster hit......

we got a flat tire, can you believe it??  i was so, excuse the language, pissed!   Shannon said she was glad she wasn't driving when that happened.  So after a couple of phone calls we had a tow service at our side within 20 minutes.  So the big tow truck pulls up in the rain.  We are expecting this huge, sexy, muscle bound swedish god....what we got, was a 5 foot 1 blond haired blue eyed swedish godess.  She had that tire off and the spare on in no time.  Shan and I of course felt silly - as this petite lady changed our tire.  she didn't even use those fancy dancy air hose things....she just muscled it off.  needless to say, we were impressed.

Shan says we could have done it, but it was dark and rainy and we didn't have a flashlight.  Shannon was quite prepared as we waited for the tow service....she had her camera out waiting for a moose to cross the road...there is a joke in there somewhere, but i can't think of it...

So we then limped to our Hostel....had a hard time finding (as the lady told us) the box by the door as that is where our room key would be.  Finally found it (after the 4th building) and have settled nicely into our Bunkbeds for the night.

We are excited to see what this place looks like in the daytime...there is some water close by.  But also, it could be the perfect setting for a scary movie - something like Jason XXXXXVI

So here we are exhausted and tired.  Its now 11:00 pm and we have to spend the morning fixing/finding a new tire for my branny new car.

Good night and we love you all!  Shannon and Missy