We're almost official

Having the Hansons visit us from Milwaukee wasn't the only excitement in our household last week. On Wednesday we became the proud owners of Swiss license plates for our car! It has been quite a process... and it's not quite over yet. In preparation for our inspection which was scheduled for last Wednesday, we took the car to the dealer on Tuesday for a last minute engine cleaning (at their suggestion). This is in addition to the preliminary visit to the dealer in November during which we got the emissions certificate that allowed us to schedule an inspection. Apparently the dealer did a good job of helping to make sure our car was in good shape for the inspection because we passed! After spending about an hour last Wednesday at the Motorfahrzeug-Prufstation watching the Swiss car inspectors check out every inch of our car, I received the papers which allowed me to go to another office on the other side of town to pick up the plates. Now we face an unanticipated obstacle... the plates are a totally different size and shape than our Virginia tags, and there doesn't appear to be anyway to attach the plates to the car. UGH! I may have to make another trip back to the dealer to see if they can help. I can't tell you how much I look forward to going for a drive with our new Swiss plates. Hopefully that means the end of the staring and pointing at our car, and most importantly, it should be the end of the trouble and questions we currently face when crossing the border into Germany and France.