A Series of Unfortunate Events

What a day! We started out our day at 9:00 AM at the ABN AMBRO Bank ready to finalize out car loan. Much to our dismay, the loan officer we had done all the preliminary work with had injured his knee in a hockey game and was out for the week…he would not be able to make it to our scheduled appointment. His colleague, Christian, would be right with us. An hour and a half later, we sat down with him. He got the loan processed and we were good to go to the car dealer. UHHH, Ruurd, at the Volvo dealership wasn’t expecting us until Thursday and couldn’t possibly have the car ready today. After much cajoling, massaging and alternate possibility suggesting, we made an appointment for 1:00. Our next task, find someone who will loan us their Dutch drivers license for a few hours. Evidentially you have to have a Dutch driver’s license to register a car in Holland (despite the fact it takes close to 4 months to get one). Debbie Lands (our RS president from El Paso was nice enough to oblige). We get the car dealer and drive off with the car. Now to return the rental car…we pick up kids at the school at three different times and head to The Hague. We drop off the car and head home (my head is throbbing by this point as I have only had three crackers and a roll to eat all day). We get all the way home in rush hour traffic and realize our only house key was on the key ring for the rental car. We drive all the way back to The Hague to get our house key. Ahhh…home at last. But wait, we still have to drive back to the car dealer to return one last piece of paper. Twelve hours later, Helmut returns home and the purchase/exchange of our car is complete. I am beginning to understand why Holland is such a slow paced laid back society and it is driving me nuts!