Karin's Adventures

Eleven days ago my motorcycle suffered considerable damage due to no fault of my own. I was on my way to work, stopped at a traffic light, when some guy in a burgundy car rear-ended me.

The bike jumped forward a foot, then fell over onto the left side. As I crawled out from underneath, the driver got out of his car to see what he'd done. He asked if I was OK, said he was sorry, and helped me pick up the bike.

When I inspected the rear end and realized, that this was not going to be cheap, the man told me he didn't have insurance (!?). There was a traffic jam forming around us, so I agreed when he suggested that we pull over, onto this parking lot, out of danger, to negotiate how to proceed.

He got in his car - while I realized my clutch lever was bent from the fall, so I couldn't drive. It took me a minute to bend the lever straight to make it operable again. That was enough time for my opponent to drive away.

I don't fully remember how I rode to work after that.

After I had filed a police report, called my husband, and contacted my insurance company to start a claim, it dawned on me that I had made at least three mistakes in handling this incident:

• I should have called 9-1-1 immediately
• I should have taken a picture with my cellphone
• I should have wrote down the car's license plate number

Surprisingly enough, despite all these mistakes, the whole thing went really well after all!

I was just a little sore for a few days; my insurance company handed me a check for the repairs (minus my deductible) within six days; and the repair shop had my bike fixed today. 

You wouldn't be able to tell that anything ever happened!

Elections are coming up in Germany and I am signed up to cast my vote, via an absentee ballot in the mail.

There are a lot of choices, which makes it hard to decide which party will most closely represent my interests.

That is where the Wahl-O-Mat comes in handy! You answer 38 questions about current political points of interest. Your answers will be compared to the answers collected from 28 different parties participating in the election. After you go through the entire questionnaire, you will see how closely the different parties match your own opinions - and then go from there.

According to my results, I should vote for Piraten (the Pirates) and Grüne (the Green Party).