TUV-ing it out

After arriving in Germany, we realized that Germany has implemented low emission zones in various cities and only vehicles which meet these emission standards are allowed to be driven into those cities. All vehicles thus had to obtain an Emission Disc/ Badge that states their particular emission and affix this disc/ badge onto the windscreen. No exceptions are made for foreign cars. Without the relevant disc/ badge, authorities could tow the car away even if its parked, so being the law-abiding Singaporeans that we are, we made sure we got one. And thus our adventure began…

While these discs/ badges can be obtained before arriving in Germany, we only knew that we had to obtain them after arrival. Apparently these discs/ badges are obtainable from car dealers, so off we went to Renault to get one, however the lady there informed us that we had to get it from TUV (the German equivalent of our LTA) instead. She didn’t just dismiss us though, she gave us the address, called them up to ensure that they were open, that they had the stickers and that it was indeed the right place to go. Really helpful and nice, I hardly think we would get the same treatment in Singapore. Thus, armed with the address and with the help of our trusty GPS, off we went again.

When we reached the address, we actually wound up in the wrong building since the address we had pointed us to what looked like a shopping centre. We eventually got there and it was a crazy long queue! What was weird was that almost everyone who was queuing had car plates with them. We just couldn’t figure out why though. We were the only 2 Asians in the queue and after getting our number from registration, we had nothing else to do other than wait. I felt like I was waiting to see the doctor at the polyclinic as there were so many people and they will flash the number outside the room when it is your turn to go in. After waiting for what seemed like forever, we finally made it in. We were served by this slightly eccentric German lady who seemed quite tickled by us and our requests for the disc/ badge. When we handed her our passports, she kept chuckling and muttered something to her colleague which we obviously didn’t understand. In any case, after waiting the whole morning we finally got our disc/ badge!! Now CS can zoom down the autobahn in peace, lol…

Our ride.. (eco certified on the corner of the windscreen, it's the green sticker in case in case you are still wondering where it is)

So after TUV-ing it out for one whole morning, you can say that we rewarded ourselves pretty well after by stopping over at Bonn…. Now you may think why would we go there and the reason is CS is a HUGE, and I mean HUGE fan of Haribo sweets and since we were in Germany, of course we had to go visit their flagship store in Bonn. We would have loved to do a factory tour but sadly they don’t conduct any so we had to satisfy ourselves with the flagship store instead. The store itself wasn’t exactly the biggest, but it had the largest variety of Haribo sweets ever and it was really busy! What was interesting was that there were the young, the middle aged and the elderly ALL buying sweets. I mean in Singapore, its mostly the kids and teenagers buying sweets, we hardly see grandmas and grandpas buying sweets for themselves. The lovely grandmas and grandpas were definitely buying it for themselves cos we saw them snacking on the sweets, haha...

Haribo museum and megastore

Unending rows of gummies, chewies, stripes and bears!

The Governator has his own Haribo gummy!

Suffice to say, we both went a little crazy at the store. We had a lot of fun deciding which sweets to buy and we bought so much, that even though we bought the sweets at the end of March, we are still eating the sweets now in August so you can just imagine the amount we bought. Well, if you can’t here are some photos to help you out, crazy huh?

As much as I can squeeze into the photo