Cars & Driving

I've found that no matter where you go the one constant is traffic - every city no matter the size is faced with traffic jams. When people try to avoid the traffic it usually takes them twice as long to get to their final destination.

People that rely on GPS are just as likely to miss a turn than those driving the old fashioned way. I've actually noticed more often than not drivers tuning out the GPS system and missing turns.

However driving in Germany, or at least being a passenger, is a completely life altering experience. I have written about this in previous postings but my last visit confirmed my beliefs. It is not uncommon for cars to drive over 200 KM/hour. It really changes your perspective on life as you quickly barrel down the road towards the back of a car. Most people are smart enough to quickly get out of that lane if they are not driving quickly but once in a while you get the odd person on their cell phone that just doesn't realize that people are driving much faster than you.

It's interesting to see the cars people drive - in the US Mercedes, Porsche, Alfa Romeo, and BMW are considered higher end cars that you don't see a lot of. However here it seems that I run into them much more frequently, maybe I'm just hanging with a higher class of people. I think it has more to do with the fact that they are manufactured in Europe than the people.

On my trip back to the states last week I rented a car in Boston. Even though I don't drive here I managed to pull out of Hertz and start driving on the left hand side, a split second later I realized what I had done, luckily there was nobody around.