The Buying Game

I'd love to give all you travelers who are, or ever will be, contemplating buying a car in Germany some helpful words of advice. Only I can't think of any. There really is no easy way. You could start by doing what we did, buy a German/English dictionary and translate the Want Ads. We don't speak a word of German, but with this handy tool we were able to understand about 70%. We were still confused by most of the abbreviations, and a lot of the mile-long words had no translation that we could comprehend. But we were able to select five vans, and, armed with handfuls of ten pfennig coins, set off to a phone booth.

The first question weeded out about a third of the potential vans. "Do you speak English?" German answering machines weeded out another 30%. With the remaining few we were able to get a general idea about the van, although no one seemed to understood the word "rust" nor that we needed detailed directions on where we could see it. I would have been happy with the proper spelling of their street name; but even that was hard to convey.

We made it to the home of one person who had said "no rust". But he might have just been repeating our words. The van was breaking out from head to toe. The mileage too was a bit higher than what he'd claimed in the ad (145K km vs the actual 280K km).

Most of the vans we looked at came from wandering the streets of Frankfurt. I usually wouldn't recommend this approach, but it did seem to turn up the most options. We saw four vans in two days either by taking the trolley and hopping off whenever we saw a van with a For Sale sign or by walking around dealerships and auto garages. But this method left us with tired feet and the frustration of seemingly aimless wandering.

We wanted to buy a van quickly. Accommodations, even the youth hostels, aren't cheap here. We didn't expect Nepalese prices but $50 per night for a bunk bed was a shock. The Frankfurt Youth hostel was where we spent our first three nights. We knew about it only by talking to Arlene on the plane from Kathmandu. Eleven hours in the air left us a lot of time to get to know each other and read her Europe Lonely Planet. (We'd searched every book shop in Kathmandu for a copy but came up empty). We arrived at the hostel at 8:30 in the evening German time, somewhere past 11:00 by the clock in our heads. We were brain numb while trying to figure out the German rail system to get us there. We owe thanks to the Israeli gentlemen who, as long as I smiled for him, showed us how to buy a rail ticket and to the German who, returning from a week-long stint running away to join an English circus, helped us carry our bag of Tibetan carpets. (We were still lugging those around - priority was to find a post office).

Staying in the Frankfurt Youth Hostel was about as far from our Nepalese hotels as we could get, not just in miles. In Nepal we spent $25 and were treated like kings; in Germany $50 got us bunk beds in a hospital-like, antiseptic room with a loudspeaker indicating when it was time to sleep, when it was time to wake, when we should eat and when, at 8:30 sharp each morning, it was time to check out.

And on day four we did check out (although it felt more like an evacuation), but only because we had too; there was already a full house for the weekend. So, now, in addition to hunting for a van, we had to hunt for a new place to stay. I suppose if we didn't already have ten months of traveling behind us, we would have felt quite helpless. It struck me as we headed off toward the bahnhof (for lack of any better place) that the amount of sleep we'd been getting lately was well below the human average.

The days that followed turned up several more vans, none of them potential candidates. They were too old, too rusty, had so many kilometers that we worried that they wouldn't last another 20,000, or they cost too much or had engine problems. To say we were frustrated would be an understatement.

The van that showed the most promise was actually one that we saw on day one of our hunt. It was being inspected at the Renault dealership on the outskirts of Frankfurt. We only stopped there to ask directions to the VW dealership. Looking back had we bought it when first we saw it, we could have saved ourselves a lot of running around and the expense of four more nights in hostels. (As ever, hindsight is 20/20). But being the first van that looked like a real possibility, we couldn't just take it. One can't take the first option, can he? Shop around; that's what we had to do and that's what we did ..... endlessly. We visited dealerships and used-car lots; we went on wild goose chases checking out tips from people we met. We spent hours in the phone booth outside the post office (we needed to stay close so we could keep buying new phone cards) and poured over foreign ads and city maps. At one point we spent 45 minutes on a train to another city and another 45 minutes waiting for a bus before we finally gave up that option.

We dragged our packs from one hostel to another (2 km up one hill, 2 km down another). Eventually we went back and looked at that first van again. It looked even better than we remembered. We were ready to buy. But there was a hold up. The day we chose to finally buy was a German holiday. The banks were closed and they would be the next day too. Then it would be Saturday. Monday seemed like a long way off. Wiring money and transferring paperwork would have to wait. Alas, that meant three more nights in a hostel somewhere, three more nights to consider whether we'd made the right choice.

But the running around we did looking for a van was nothing compared to the running around we did trying to wire money, get insurance and find out how to register the beast. And the people we were buying from had an outstanding loan, so that meant an extra step in the process to get the title. Nothing is ever easy.

The upshot was that on May 21st at 4:35 in the afternoon, we were handed the title to our new home. The End. Right? Wrong! It was too late to register the van. Naturally the registry is only open until 11 am, so there was another nights delay. We couldn't leave the city, so we slept in the van where it was parked. We cleaned it up a bit with glass cleaner and paper toweling, ate some muesli and yogurt and prayed that all would go smoothly in the morning.

"You are Americans? You want to register a car in Germany? This is impossible."

"No, two days ago we came here to the registry, to this building and the man we spoke with said there would be no problem as long as we had all the necessary paperwork. Here."

Who did you speak with?"

"That man right over..." I poked my head around the corner and pointed to the desk with the big number '2' hanging above it. A blond woman lifted her head and looked at me. "Oh, I guess he's not working today."

"Mmmm."

I didn't like "Mmmm". It wasn't the "Mmmm" of a man who was suddenly going to apologize and tell me he would have my registration ready in a jiffy. "Mmmm" was accompanied by a scratch of the chin, a shake of the head and some rapid German to someone else who in turn scratched his chin and shook his head. I could tell this was going to take some time.

"You are tourists?" The second man asked with a smile.

Ah, now he understood. "Yes, we are tourists from America. We have bought a car and wish to register in it Germany."

"No, this is not possible."

Apparently we were missing the necessary residents VISA stamps in our passports. But we weren't interested in becoming residents, just in registering our van. Persistence pays off. We didn't budge. Eventually, after several phone calls and more rapid-fire German, we were ushered to the waiting area and given a number.

The woman who processed our registration card treated us like she would anyone else. We didn't open our mouths; perhaps she thought us bonafide Germans. She pointed us to the payment counter where we parted with 35 DM, to another counter where we were given our stamped registration card and we left quietly. "Yippee!!"