Well...since I last blogged, I had my BABY!!! He was 9 days late but worth every minute of the wait. I will blog soon about giving birth in Switzerland. I imagine it is mostly the same as the USA, except for all the German. More to come on that soon.
Back to the topic at hand.
When we first moved to Basel, we rented a car. It was a silver Mercedes SUV-type car that I had never seen in the States. It was really nothing fancy (even the garbage trucks here are Mercedes). We rented the car for a month and on this particular weekend, we were scheduled to return it to the airport on Sunday. The Wednesday before, my hubby was traveling and I had been out running errands and parked the car on the street. That was the last day I drove the car that week since I mostly take the tram around town.
Michael came home on Saturday and we had a cultural training taking place at our home. This woman was American and so great. We talked all morning about cultural values and customs in Switzerland and then decided to walk to the corner restaurant for lunch. On our way home, we walked by where I had parked the car...but there was no car. I did a double take and then kept looking over my shoulder back at where I thought I had parked the car. Finally I said something to the effect of "I think I parked the car there on Wednesday but it's gone." This led to my hubby asking me a million times if I was sure. Now, at this point I'm 36 weeks pregnant so I was pretty sure but the pregnant brain being what it is, I began to doubt myself.
Michael walked all over the neighborhood looking for the car and even checked our parking space in the garage. No car. The cultural trainer looked at where I parked and said it was perfectly legal to leave the car there and so there would be no reason to tow it. Finally, Michael hopped on the tram and went to the Police station to report the car missing. They made him drive around with them for 2 hours in the neighborhood looking for the car. Finally they received a call that there had been a bad accident that morning and the car was hit!!! The car was totaled and towed. So crazy. I was just thankful that I didn't lose the car. :-)
That was accident #1.
So, we got a new rental car (we're still waiting for our car to be ready) and yesterday I grab the baby (hah hah. It took an hour to get out of the house) and head to the bordering town in France to pick up my hubby's dry cleaning (it's cheaper there). I am parked in a space on the street. I put the dry cleaning on the left side of the car (facing the street) and go around to the other side and strap baby J in his car seat. On the way to the driver's seat I notice that the dry cleaning was not hanging straight and I, not wanting it to get wrinkled, open the door to straighten it. As I am halfway in the car straightening this dry cleaning, A CAR HITS MY DOOR!!!! Come on people. This is killing me.
Of course I am in France where no one speaks English and I am 2 weeks postpartum. I will skip all the drama but let's just say there were a lot of tears, a realization that I left my cell phone at the dry cleaners, a tearful call to my husband and another realization that my car key fell off my key chain while I was getting the baby situated. It was not the best hour of my life.
That was accident #2
The most amazing part of this all is in both accidents the car was parked!! I was not even driving. My friend joked that I am safer behind the wheel than parked on the street. It sounds crazy but at this rate, it's true. Today I just have to laugh about it and be thankful no one was hurt. I hope we have better luck with rental car #3!
