Ciao Tony: The handover

The night in the huge hostel is quickly over, the alarm clock on the mobile phone goes off shortly after 7 o'clock. First at Thimo's, 10 minutes later at mine - extra minutes of sleep are damn important! 😴

Why so early? We're on vacation! Yes, but we still have a lot to do before the vacation is really a vacation.

Take our car, for example. That's why the alarm clock. Tony, the Malaysian hobby car dealer from Saturday, wanted to pick us up at the hostel and then drive with us to the airport, where he and the mute lady would then leave and finally hand us the car.

We get ready. No breakfast. Nothing. Everything we had bought to eat was still in the other hostel in the big backpacks. We would return there later for 2 nights.

So we wait hungrily. Tony is late. He says the traffic in Auckland is hell at this time, it took him half an hour longer than usual.

Tony, my dear naive Asian friend: you've never been in traffic in Cologne, I suppose.. 😐

I tell him directly. He laughs, finds it funny. I laugh too, I guess out of politeness. Traffic jams in Cologne are never funny.

On the way to the airport we stop at a post office. Does he want to send another postcard? Nope, this is where the official change of ownership takes place, that's how it works here. Tony is handed $3500, signs it and enters it as the new owner, stamps it, done.

We have a car. A sexy Honda Odyssey! If you don't know what kind of car that is, you have no idea! 🙄 In NZ, 90% of people drive Asian cars, and our Honda is practically a perfect fit in the street scene. 👌🏼

One last selfie with Tony and the mute lady (she probably said something like ciao at the end, maybe it was just a sneeze..) and then I get to drive the half-hour home to the hostel through the left-hand traffic for the first time. Or rather, creep. It's a bit more complicated than planned. Things just work differently at the other end of the world.

The day is otherwise rather calm. Shopping, 'cooking', taking advantage of the WLAN a bit, and that's it.