Audi Centrum Amsterdam have been kind enough to arrange a loan car for us whilst we await the manufacture and administration of our own. I took two trams and the metro down to station Bijlmer today to pick it up. Ernst, the salesman I’ve been dealing with, came and picked me up from the station, served me coffee, then handed me the key to a very nice 4.2 litre 2005 A6 Avant in Mauritius blue. We’ll basically get to keep this until the delivery of our own car, which should take place somewhere around the end of February.
What a nice car it is, too. It has a number of options on board, such as satellite navigation, rear-parking assistance, left and right climate control, hands-free car telephone and who knows what else?
It’s a fast car, that’s for sure, but I’ve driven only a few kilometres in it so far. I drove straight over to PCH, the company to whom my part of Amsterdam has tendered out its issuing and administration of parking permits. Audi Centrum Amsterdam had written me a letter to hand over to PCH, explaining that this car, whose paperwork was obviously not in my name, was a loan car in advance of my own.
It was surprisingly easy to get the permit. Thankfully, there’s no waiting list in this part of Amsterdam, so I was in and out of PCH’s office within a few minutes.
Interestingly, I met a Surinamese woman working at PCH, whose surname is Macdonald. You don’t meet many Macdonalds in this country, much less black Surinamese ones.
Anyway, I came straight home after that. The satellite navigation was fun to use on the two legs of my trip. When I got home, I was able to park the car right in front of the door, something that’s easy to do around here. Parking in Amsterdam is so much grief, it’s nice to know we’ll be able to easily park in front of the house.
Later in the day, I went to Primafoon to obtain a SIM DuoCard for my mobile phone. This will enable me to have the same telephone number in my normal mobile phone as in the car phone. Unfortunately, you have to turn one phone off before turning the other one on (otherwise things can behave unpredictably), which gives you the issue of receiving SMS messages on one phone that you then try to recall in vain on the other, but that’s as far as the technology goes at present.
Interestingly once again, the girl who helped me in Primafoon turned out to have the same birthday as me. Another strange coincidence. Two in one day. Life is exciting.
Now I have to dream up some excuses to take this car out for a spin. I like it so much already, however, that I’m almost tempted to change our order for the 3.2 litre engine to the 4.2, but I can temper my boyish inclination with the knowledge that the 4.2 is expensive to run and environmentally harsher. In addition, it would almost certainly incur higher road tax and insurance costs. You see? I’ve talked myself out of it already.