....well actually it was a LeSabre -92, we bought it for $6600 I think and 9000 miles later we got $5800 for it. So I think we got a pretty good deal, there. Not great but pretty good. but geeze insurance sure is expensive in the states! Even when using my step grandmother as a person the insurance company knew we still had to pay hmmm let me think, $800 I think. And that was with pretty low coverage. And they kept asking for more papers from us, concerning my insurance in sweden. It is slightly diffrent in sweden, insuring cars, it's not such a big deal since we are not so paranoid about people suing us left and right (sometimes you got that feeling in the states...), cause in sweden you just insure the car, and not the persons driving it. well something like that. And since the american system is diffrent, they thought that I had not been driving cars in sweden insured properly (or something like that), so they kept annoying us w/ letters for more proof. And even when we had cancelled the insurance and gotten back in sweden, they kept trying to get more money out of me... They wanted $300 more I think. ARGH f**k them.
Anyway, when we sold the car, we didn't get rid of it right away, partly since it was close to christmas and the holidays and all, so we left the car with some of my half-relatives in San Jose and they managed to sell the car for me. Worked out pretty nice.
But thanks to all the people we knew (and sometimes ppl we never met before) we stayed probably half the nights at peoples places, three times @ hotels and the rest at campsites.
Camping was good most of the time (we brought a small 2person tent) exept when down in the Florida keys, just in the beginning of the trip.. It was HOT! We had to have one fan blowing in the tent and one inside the tent going back and forth...
And the damn moskitos..
Anyway I loved it. I think it cost me $3000 all in all, the flight food the car, everything. I think that's pretty good for three months.
Concerning Sweden right now, it has not been this good for years, they still have some cutbacks in the healthsystem and in the schools, but otherwise the economy is (as always) very influenced by the states's. Inflation is down to almost nothing, can't remember but >2%, unemployment is somewhere around 5%. But yeah it was pretty bad not long ago.
As it is, we still have a pretty good social security, if you get unemployed, you money for a couple or months(years?), if you are poor, you get money for that. And you keep getting it. The medical system is still very highly sponsored by the government, you don't need such an expensive insurance at all as in the states. So even if you cannot afford (as is in the states) such an insurence, it is pretty much free anyway. The only thing that costs money really is dental care. So we don't have people getting really poor for taking chanses with that insurance and then getting into accidents.
Another thing that kind of shows how we are getting along is that we are next after Finland the country with most cell phones per person, the broadband expansion started slow but it's getting here, and car sales have gone up. Well all those materialistic things that shows how much money ppl have.
so I think we are coming along just fine.
Argh this was a long post I better end it
*end*
Asha'man
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