Tourist Delivery - Day 1

OK, so it's finally here. The day I've been waiting for for months. I could barely sleep last night, anxious with anticipation, dying from 9 hours of jet lag caused by a back to back trip from San Diego to Hartford to Stuttgart. But that's all irrelevant. I feel like I am dead on my feet and dying to sleep, but the anticipation is too much. I was up every couple of hours last night looking at the clock like a kid on Christmas eve. The morning finally arrives.

I wake up long before the alarm clock, which was set at 6:15. I jump in the shower and start working the details of the day out in my head. It's an important one for me. I wake up Ina, who is quite slow and a tiny bit grumpy in the morning, and who is suffering from half the jet lag I am feeling, so she feels like death has struck. But she's a great girl and knows how important this day is to me so she slowly works her way back to life.

The morning flies by and before you know it, we've finished breakfast and are looking for a cab to take us to Zuffenhausen, home of Porsche, where my Cayman S is waiting for me. It's about a 20 minute ride, it's about 8:00am and the temperature is already brutal. It's 27 degrees C, which is 80 for us American folk. That's hot for early morning. It's going to be another scorcher like yesterday when it hit the high 90's. But that's OK. The air conditioning in the Cayman's is supposed to be top notch.

As we approach the factory, I see the first Porsche sign and my chest gets tight. Holy cr*p, we're here. A sudden shot of adrenaline enters my blood stream. We take a right and come to a stop near a security gate. We jump out and start unloading our pile of luggage, which we were not certain would fit in the car. Then I see a sign on the wall that says, "Neuwagenabholung" which means "New Car Delivery" in English. I point to it and call to Ina, "Hey look at this. We made it. Woo, hooooo......"



Moments later, a nicely dressed gentlemen walks up to us to see what we are doing and Ina instantly starts talking German at a mile a second. Suddenly I hear, "Ya, Ya, sure, right this way.....", he is pointing up up the steps, he grabs one of my bags like I'm a family member and leads the way. Up a few steps we go, through a door, and we are in the reception area. A very friendly woman greets us and she can't help but smile feeling the excitement obviously oozing from me. She knows why were are here, and she knows what this means to me. She leads us to a locker room where we can store our luggage and bags.



After stuffing all of our luggage into locker number 5 and taking the key, she escorts us to the 'New Car Delivery Area' where Peter greets us and asks if he can fix us some espresso, cappuccino, etc.... I take a coffee, and Ina takes an espresso. What nice people. All of them. Peter asks us to make our selves comfortable while we wait for a representative to come by. We did.

A few moments later, while I'm checking out the magazines and display cabinets full of Porsche-phile contra-ban, I hear another couple enter the room speaking American English. Yup, they are here for the same reason we are. Their picking up their car too, only theirs is a Black on Black Boxster S. Nice pick.

Once Peter has greeted them and given them the same instructions and beverages he gave us, I wander over and say in a fabricated German to English accent, 'Mehr craZy AmerIcans coming to drive ze vonderful German countryside, ya...?'. This guy looks at me like he doesn't know what to say, then I break into my American English and introduce myself. "I couldn't help but over hear your conversation with Peter. We too are Americans here for tourist delivery. My name is Mike, and this is my girlfriend Ina........" And the conversation is off to a great start. This guy is a real car fanatic. Very nice fellow, and his wife Elana is super nice too. We all hit it off.

Then a representative comes in to talk to Jim and Elena. He starts doing the paperwork and explaining the whole delivery process to them. Moments later, a represenetative show up for us. But instead of going over paperwork, he takes us up to the delivery center where I see this waiting for us:



Oh man, I can't believe my eyes. The car looks amazing. More beautiful than I could imagine. Harald demonstrates the car to me and then does the paperwork, after which he returns me to the delivery center where we meet back up with Jim and Elana and take a factory tour. Very very cool tour. I loved it.