Volvo: Roll On!

8/30/10 - Monday

After a night of absolutely no sleep, we left our hotel at 9:00am and headed to the Volvo Factory. When we got there we took a look around and then met with a man named Michael. He went over a packet of information and Mom had to sign multiple papers. As we were waiting for Michael to bring the car around to the show room, we overheard another couple talking who were from Minneapolis. We talked to them for awhile and ran into them periodically throughout the day. After that we went over to the showroom where we saw our C70 convertible drive in the door. It looked so good! After test driving all the cars at the Volvo dealer, it was crazy that this was our actual car. It was so clean and nice. Even though Mom seemed crazy when she told us it had cranberry interior I have to say it is my favorite part! It looks a lot better when you actually see the car than in the brochure. Michael showed us everything around the car and then we took it out on the “test track”. The track was literally one road that you could drive down and back. It wasn’t helpful at all but I was excited because I got to drive it for a little while. We of course had the top down. It wasn’t too warm but the sun was out at least. Afterwards we had lunch at the factory. Anyone know what we had for lunch? Swedish meatballs of course! The meal wasn’t too good. Haha! We had some time to kill so we loaded up our luggage in the car and tried to figure out how everything worked. Then, at 1:00pm we had a tour of the factory. They took us through the factory in a little train and the man behind us had a Twins hat on. It turned out they were from Minneapolis too. It is quite a small world. The tour was really interesting but we were all so tired we might have zoned out at some parts. ;) The one thing we did find out is that Volvo is a foreign word that meant “roll on” (hence the blog title). The tour lasted about an hour and after it was done we headed to the streets! I think Dad was a little nervous but in the end everything turned out fine! We decided to get to the fairy early so we headed straight there. Well, at least we tried to…What was supposed to be a 10 minute drive ended up taking us 30 minutes. We got a little twisted. The GPS would tell us which road to take and all of a sudden it would say “Recalculating route”. We never really saw a road sign that matched the road the GPS was saying. It was kind of a mess but eventually we got to where we needed to be.

We were 2 hours early for the ferry so we walked around a little bit. It was nice because we really didn’t have time to see Gothenburg much. As we were waiting for the ferry, a man started staring at our car. Of course we started talking to him and it turns out he was from Holland. He was quite a character. Then something funny happened and of course it happened to Mom. A woman came up to her and started speaking Swedish. Mom’s response was “I don’t speak Swedish”. The lady looked really confused so Mom added “Ich kann Deutsch sprechen” (I can speak German). Well that was a mistake!!! The lady started going off in German. It was the craziest thing. Mom’s response to her response was “Nur ein bisschen” (Only a little bit). We didn’t realize how funny it was until later but it was hilarious! The lady just kind of walked away. We have decided Mom looks too approachable because it seems like everyone comes up to her. Next we boarded the ferry, which is more like a small cruise ship. Our room has two beds and two bunks. Mom and I were instantly reminded of our New York cruise when Kristin said “We just yanked”. It was nice sitting on the upper deck to watch the boat pull out and the sunset. It got a little chilly so we went down and got some food. Now we are just resting in our room and will hopefully get more sleep than we did the previous night!

Quote of the Day: Dad- “Whoa, either that guy smelled really bad or he just tooted!”