Down the Rabbit Hole

Early in December, we asked the kids what they wanted for Christmas.  Their ideas were relatively simple: Alva wanted a unicorn stuffed animal and pink rain boots and Oskar wanted a Trolley Lego set.  It seemed easy enough, especially since Ernst and Annegret had already purchased pink rain boots for Alva which also happened to have unicorns on them.

But the devil is in the details and not wanting to disappoint, I asked a few follow up questions. The unicorn stuffed animal was in fact Isa’s unicorn stuffed animal (Isa is a friend of Alva’s from school, who happened to bring her stuffed unicorn to school one day).  And the trolley Lego set was not a cable car, train or tram but rather one of the old fashion trolleys that Oskar sees on his was to school each morning.  

Thankfully, I had recently met Isa’s mom and we had connected a few weeks earlier so I was able to reach out to get a picture and the brand of said unicorn.  And while the exact same one was no longer available, after a quick google search, I was able to find one that was almost identical to Isa’s along with a unicorn coloring book. Alva’s present was set.  

I wasn’t so lucky with Oskar.  Turns out Lego doesn’t make a trolley set, although I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  They did make one that was close to a trolley a few years back which I could have bought off of eBay for $500 but that seemed a bit ridiculous.  They currently make two Lego sets that have trolleys/trains in them.  I bought the one with the train that had batteries and drove on a circular track, but upon further interrogation of Oskar I changed my mind, and opted for the Lego City set that included an S-Bahn like tram along with a city hall, burger shop, helicopter and limousine.

But even that didn’t seem right.  It wasn’t a trolley and it seemed like just a small part in the overall set. And so I went down the rabbit hole of trying to find a Lego set that looked similar to the street cars that run the F-Line in San Francisco.  Countless google searches and most likely the first layer of the dark web later, I settled on purchasing two different Lego instructions from eBay to build my own tram/trolley.  Along with the instructions, and most likely malware embedded in the downloaded files, I was given a list of pieces to buy on the unsanctioned Lego block website BrickLinks which connected me to local dealers for either new or used pieces (it all felt very shady, like buying drugs on the street corner or in a back alley, but turned out to be legit). Too much time and money later, I officially had instructions and pieces for back-up trolley (one that looked like a Lisbon Trolley) that would be a present from us in case the present from Santa wasn’t what Oskar had in mind. 

Turns out all of my fretting was for nothing.  The kids were super stoked with their presents from Santa Christmas morning and it seems like they would have been excited with anything.  Dana ended up getting Alva another unicorn stuffed animal that she loves just as much, if not more, than the one from Santa (which required the back channeling and called-in favors).  For Oskar, turns out the actual present mattered less than who brought it: when talking about the large Lego set from Santa that included not just the tram but all of the other city pieces, I called it a City Lego set for which Oskar remarked “No, it is a trolley Lego set, it has to be… Santa brought it for me and that is what I asked for.”

And as for that other trolley set I bought through the dark web that gave me a virus and a few extra grey hairs.  Oskar and I tried to build it together but he (or me, or both of us) got frustrated after 10 minutes of trying to work together and he went back to his shiny new Legos from Santa.  Unwilling to admit that my search was a waste of time, I spent the next 90 minutes of Christmas morning, sitting next to our Christmas tree, surrounded by opened presents and wrapping paper, in my Christmas jammies, building my own Lego trolley.

My fancy new trolley