My white Volkswagen

Describe the most meaningful and/or important gift you’ve ever received.

When I was young the infrastructure in the area of Germany, where I come from, wasn’t great. The railroad from Hamburg to the island Westerland passes our little town and some of the smaller trains even stopped at our station, but only a handful every day and if you missed one you had to wait for hours for the next one.

Counted in kilometers my high school in Denmark wasn’t that far away from home, only about 100, but counted in hours of transportation… it was ridiculous. I had to take a bus from my school to the German border and pass it to the nearest big town, where there was a train station. There I took a train that was going towards Hamburg. Then I had to get off that train at another station and usually wait for an hour and a half to two hours before there was another train going in another direction, which took me to a third station, where I had to get off and wait for another hour or two, before I could get a train that could bring me home.

For the same reason I lived at the school; to commute every day would have been impossible. But then I still had a problem about going home during the weekends.

At that time my mom had a white Volkswagen she had had for years. It was safe and reliable enough, but she felt that it only was a matter of time before it would give up on her, and so she found herself a newer model of the same kind, a yellow one and gave the white one to me.

It really was the best gift I’ve ever got. All the sudden I was able to get around and go home when I wanted to, and I had that car for some years. I even drove through Germany and France in it and all the way over the Pyrenees and to Barcelona in Spain and back.

I guess it could have been a good car for many more years but in the end I had to get rid of it, because I decided to stay in Denmark, and the taxes I would have had to pay for it would have been gigantic, but I sure loved that car.