Viaţă în România --------- Life in Romania

some happy, sad, funny, frustrating, incredible, discouraging, wow, joyful and "what the heck is going on?" moments from the lives of kelsey (mama) and caleb (son) serving Jesus in romania. TOATE SUNT POSSIBLE CU ISUS! (all things are possible with Jesus!)

Monday, June 4, 2007

Buying Cars

It should be fun, you know? Buying a car that is. Except me buying a car as a missionary here in the country where you don't buy used cars because used cars here are used beyond repair...well, it's a little difficult.
I wish I could just pick up some extra hours at work to cover a car payment. Doesn't work that way now, I have to ask people to give money so I can buy a car. Although some people might look at this as a free deal, I don't. It's hard and humbling to have to ask for support to live every month and if I need to buy something, like a car, to have to ask for that too.
I found a good deal on a new car in the city over an hour away. The deal is though I don't want to buy a brand new car. Me as a foreigner driving a brand new car around, no matter how good of a deal it was, is not worth it for me. It fits too many of the stereotypes that I don't want to have here but automatically am placed with simply because I am a foreigner.
Then, there's the used car market here. The problem with used cars here are the roads. The roads are awful and cars wear down and break so much more quickly than they ever should. So although a used car here could be a good deal price-wise it never will be worth it once I start driving it - because I won't be driving it for long.
So where to look for a car then? Well, Sweden - Germany are two options. The problem with Sweden is that I will have to put it in someone else's name, a Swedish person's name, pay hefty taxes and car insurance yearly and have to make a trip to Sweden every year to have a strict inspection done and repairs made, if necessary. The cost of the yearly trip and their taxes/insurance don't make a good deal on a car worth it anymore.
I talked with my boss today and he said Germany is my only option. I can get a great used car at a great price. So what's the problem with Germany then, you might ask me?
Say I find a car on
http://www.mobile.de/ that I am really interested in. Can I go visit it? No, I can't. If I go and visit it then I will have spent a big chunk of money out of my car fund that I am attempting to raise. That means I have to get in contact with the seller and decide whether or not I'm going to believe what they are telling me about the car. Say I decide to buy it - I fly out to Germany and pay for the car. Then, I drive it the 15-20 hours back to Romania where I have to register it. To register this German car here I have to report everything about it and then Romania decides how much they will charge me to get the Romanian plates on it. A great brand new car is about 1700 Euro just to be registered. So, a fourth of my car budget goes just to registering the car here in Romania. Money that could be spent on buying a better car.
Isn't this fun so far?
There is 1 maybe option though aside from these. There is a company in the city that goes and finds cars in Germany, then drives them back to Romania and sells them. They do this on a request basis. For instance, FCE is buying a new van so they are going through this guy in order to do so. Before buying the guy will send pictures, details and price of the car to make sure it's what was asked for. My boss wasn't sure if this guy would do it for me since I'm not interested in spending 15000 Euro on a van. But, he's going to ask him if he would be willing/interested. The guy would go to Germany, find a car similar to what I'm looking for and in my price range, then drive it back for me. I think that the price he would give for the car would include their fee.
So, we see. Much more complicated than at home - that's for sure.
If I wasn't so sure that God was telling me to buy a car I definitely would not be going through this process just for the fun of it!

1 Comments:

Blogger Lindsey Wolfe said...

And here I thought our car buying experience was going to be tough... you win!!

June 4, 2007 at 10:39 PM  

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