One of the more
exciting tasks I've had as intern in the International Office was to drive two
guest professors along with my boss Baldur Veit from Reutlingen to Heidelberg.
One day Herr Veit asked me if I had a driver's license and if I could drive
stick-shift. Luckily, my Illinois driver's license is valid in Germany and,
thanks to my parents affinity to manual transmission, I learned how to drive
with a stick shift from the very beginning. He asked me because a couple of
guest professors from Kettering University in Flint, Michigan were going to be
on campus and he thought he might need me to drive them to the airport or
something. So, in the meantime I did some research on traffic laws in Germany.
I had noticed in my travels in other peoples' cars that the road signs here are
slightly different and I didn't want to be caught by surprise or break any
rules in ignorance.
Then one day Herr
Veit finally told me the plan. We were to pick up the professors at their hotel
in Reutlingen, drive to Heidelberg (ca. 3 hours), leave the professors at their
hotel in Frankfurt because they were flying home the next morning, and then return
ourselves to Reutlingen.
All in all the trip
was a great success. I didn't get us in any accidents and, as far as I know, I
didn't break any traffic laws. We drove one of the school's cars: a Mercedes B
class. It was a very smooth ride and I was able to quickly adjust to the clutch.
A lot of people have asked me in the past if you really can drive as fast as
you want to on the German Autobahn. I can now knowledgeably answer yes, but not
everywhere. On most of the Autobahn there is a loosely enforced speed limit of
120kmh, but when you see a sign like the one below, it means there is no speed limit until further notice. There were
a couple such areas on our route. I think I missed the sign the first couple of
times, it being so inconspicuous. But on the way home I saw it and noticed that
immediately afterwards, we were passed by a number of Porsches. I only went a
maximum of 140kmh. I mean, my boss was in the car, so I didn't want to go too
crazy.
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End speed limit sign |
That was also my
first time driving in a car with an integrated navigation system. It was really
cool because the turn-by-turn instructions were spoken over the car speakers
and the distance-to-next-turn was displayed along with an arrow on a small LCD
between the speedometer and tachometer. Another design feature that I
appreciated was on the external rear-view mirrors, a section of the mirror
furthest from the driver was more convex. This effectively eliminated any blind
spots you'd otherwise suffer from with a standard mirror. I've seen these types
of mirrors on a bunch of cars here and I hope that it gets adopted in the
States.
For more info on how to drive in Germany, see "Brian's Guide to Getting Around Germany"
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