Cars

Why is looking for a car so hard? We have been looking on line and looking at car yards! It was weird - yesterday we biked down to a car yard (not having a car makes looking for a car even more difficult). So we are trying to work out the car yard - which ones are second-hand and where to find all the details about them (price, etc) - and there is no one to be seen! Now in NZ, the minute you set foot on a car yard, you are assaulted by someone trying to sell you something. Well it appears that the exact opposite works here - not a soul to be seen - not in the office, not wandering around - nowhere! I never thought I would be wandering around a car yard looking for someone to try and sell us a car! More cultural stuff to deal with!

And just to make matters worse - apparently a recent survey has been conducted and it turns out that Germany is the most expensive place in the world to by a car!!! Seems weird seeing that so many of the world's cars are actually made here.

We were also perplexed that a similar car to one we have seen on a car sale website, costs about 2-3,000 euros more on a car yard. So a car that is about 5 years old and has about 60,000kms on the clock costs about 7,000 euros online and at a car yard is about 10,000 euros (oops - I misled you - only 9,999 euros)!! It really hurts to think we could buy that same car in NZ (right hand drive of course) for about 5,000 euros!

So we have to do more research into buying a car in France or Poland - although checking out cars in these countries is difficult without a car to get there to check out the cars! But we have heard about taxes etc when you bring a car into the country so we are not holding our breath.

What I want to know is how does the average German family afford to keep buying brand new cars (which most Germans do)? I guess that is why so few of them own their own homes.

Anyway - watch this space! We are hoping to have a car within the next 2 weeks. We'll see!