So wouldn't you know that after driving without incident in every single major snowstorm in Michigan last winter, I would get in my first ever car accident during a light snow in Germany? It's so bizarre that I'm going to go ahead and give you the blow-by-blow.
To set the stage: Brianne and I had gone to visit our friend Verena in Neustadt for her birthday. After a nice afternoon in Strasbourg, a party with a bunch of Germans where we confirmed cultural stereotypes by being the only dancers on the floor for about an hour and a half (until German songs about big red horses turning around and swishing flies with their tails came on, at which point everyone except us got Saturday Night Fever), and a lovely day with Verena's family, Verena was driving us from her parents' house to her place in the Black Forest. We had literally just finished telling her about how many of our friends have had crazy accidents in the past year, when all the sudden a huge station wagon flies around the corner in front of us turned completely sideways. I think my irrational thought was "Man...that was really close" right as the car actually hit us. The air bags fly out, and I crack my way too long legs on the dashboard.
Almost before we had come to a stop, Brianne snaps into action: "Is everyone o.k. the car is smoking GET OUT OF THE CAR!" Of course it was actually only the fibers flying out of the air bags, which were flopping about rather ineffectually, but since Brianne has had two cars spontaneously light on fire while she was driving them, I suppose I can understand her reaction. In any case, Brianne jumps out of the car and into the snow with no shoes on, runs to the passenger side door where I'm sitting and flings it open, ready to drag me bodily from the car if necessary. Meanwhile my thoughts are running approximately thus: "Ouch. Shit. If my kneecaps are broken, I don't know if I have insurance in Germany." And unbeknownst to me, Brianne is thinking: "Don't die, because our French insurance doesn't cover the repatriation of remains!"
So we get out of the car, Brianne throws her coat on the ground and makes me sit down, tons of German people show up from everywhere and start asking me if I haben schlecht, and the driver of the car who hit us has lit up a cigarette and is staring into space while Verena cries and yells at him. I ask Brianne to get my bag from the car, which was really important to me at the time, and since she was pretty sure the car was going to explode at any moment, it was an act of considerable bravery to comply.
And the best moment of all: when I started pulling up the leg of my jeans to see how my knees looked, Brianne asked me, in what seemed like a decent suggestion at the time: "Should we cut your pants off?" But since I was wearing the only pair of jeans I own that fit me, I declined.
Anyway, all that to say that even though poor Verena's car is totalled, all three of us are fine, apart from some whiplash and bruising. Brianne's coming down with a cold after running around with no shoes, and I've experienced an increase in the crazy nightmares I always have anyway. And we're both very glad that we didn't have to learn the limits of our insurance coverage.
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