Sunday, December 22, 2013

XBOX ONE (Germany)

The new XBOX ONE is finally out in Europe but it's not being sold in every country... what did this mean for us... it meant two trips to Germany before actually getting a hold of my husbands Christmas present!  And of course, the trips didn't go flawless, but inevitably worked out.  The first trip to Krefeld was a complete disappoint, we (inc. our daughter & dog) drove around an hour to get to a shop where a friend of ours had managed to get a hold of an XBOX ONE, just to find out they were sold out.  Of course they were sold out, they hadn't even been on the market for a week.  After the unsuccessful trip and couple other incidents with some people in Krefeld my daughter was done with Germany and never wanted to go back (keep in mind she is 4 yrs old, ha-ha!)  My husband claimed he was going to give up on the XBOX ONE until 2014, but considering he had the next week off work and his friend kept calling over Germany to find us one, the mission was far from over.  Out of nowhere on a half day of school we decided to load the family back into the car and return to Germany, this time headed for Monchengladbach (another hour drive).  Our friend swore he had reserved one for us, and since he can speak German we had to trust he made the right arrangements.  When we arrived, my husband picked a shady parking garage to leave his car (and dog).  See my husband does this often, randomly parks and then gets to listen to me complain about for a hour afterward.  The parking garage was clearly not a public lot, but we knew we were just running into the store and would be back in less than 30 minutes.  Everything went great, the XBOX ONE was waiting on us, they had the soccer game and the extra controller, and even our daughter found a Hello Kitty book.  Happily we all take the hilly walk back to the car, we didn't have long to get back home before our groceries would be delivered.  But uh oh, the garage door was now shut and there was no way to get back in the parking garage without a key.  We obviously didn't have key.  We called the number on the side of the building, Wico Modehaus, and the woman basically said it was our problem because she was in Dusseldorf and had no intentions of coming that way.  O.k., no problem, we remembered seeing an entrance to the garage through a shop on the other side.  We walked back along the hilly path and started checking out the shops, none of them looked like what we needed.  We stopped in a store and explained to the German in English of course that our car and dog were locked in a garage and we just needed to cut through the building, as you can imagine, no one was helpful.  Our daughter is starting to panic, I'm talking about calling the police, and my husband is considering breaking into the garage.  We called the Wico Modehaus one more time, and they sent us to voicemail, can you believe that, how rude!  (I really should send her a nasty email!)  We returned to the parking garage a little frazzled and contemplated our options.  My husband had just removed his jacket and was about to scale the wall when someone pulled up and opened the garage with a remote.  We grabbed out things and chased after him, everyone thankful.  I waited at the door holding the emergency stop button so the garage door wouldn't shut again and my husband and daughter rushed to get the car.  In the end, the dog and car were fine, we made it home in time for the delivery, and my husband has spent endless hours on his new XBOX ONE!  And I'm pretty sure our daughter never wants to go to Germany again, oops!

Bye! Dag! Adios! Namaste!
:) Danica

1 comment:

  1. Oh your poor daughter! I can see that happening though. Germans are very much about people getting their dues for doing things 'nicht in ordnung'. And they are crazy protective about their private parking spaces. :)

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