Germany Day 4 - Driving to Frankfurt

Hey - my street!

I've taken a train through Germany before, but I'm not really a train person. I think I learned more about the country by driving through it and seeing it the way I'm used to seeing the world. And what we're finding is that Germany looks a lot like Wisconsin, except when it doesn't. It's kind of like if you see your sister wearing somebody else's clothes.

Lit sign powered by
a solar panel and a windmill

We spent most of the day driving from Munich to Frankfurt, which took a lot longer than predicted because of all the road construction. (Yep – that seems familiar.) The Autobahn was mostly as described – three lanes of beautiful road, with the trucks and slower cars on the right, normal people like us, doing 80, in the middle, and well engineered cars moving like bullets on the left. Occasionally a truck would pull into the middle to pass a slower truck, so then normal people like us would pull into the left to go around the truck, and then a bullet would suddenly appear in the rear view mirror, scaring the crap out of us, until we pulled back into the middle. Sometimes the bullet car would veer in front of us to let an even faster bullet shoot by.

So even though it is all very smooth driving, and orderly, with everyone following traffic laws perfectly (OK – that's not all that familiar) it was still a little more stressful than usual when combined with the unfamiliar road and unfamiliar car. But not enough to make us regret the drive.

The landscape was mostly hilly like Wisconsin, and mostly rural or wooded. At some point, though, we realized that even when we weren't driving through woods, it often felt like we were, because the roads were lined pretty heavily with trees and vegetation. We assume this  was planted intentionally, whether for aesthetic reasons, or for sound-blocking, we aren't sure. For those most part, the highway doesn't pass through cities, just near them, and the view was usually blocked by the trees, with infrequent exits, giving the isolated feel of driving through northern Wisconsin. Seems like zoning controls are stronger in Germany than we're used to, given the lack of commercial development near the exits, which tends to spring up pretty rapidly in the U.S.

There are frequent little turn-offs for people to park, not exactly equivalent to our rest areas, because most don't have restrooms or vending machines, just places to get off the Autobahn and park, before pulling back on again. And they were all packed, mostly with semis. Paul remembered reading that, while the passenger train system in Germany is much more developed and used than in the U.S., the opposite is true with freight trains, and so most freight is transported by trucks in Germany, and there are a LOT of trucks.

We think this means
you should try to be friends
with people not like you

There are also periodic turn offs that are kind of like the oases on the Illinois toll-way, with a gas station, restrooms (put your 70 cents in the slot and push through the turnstyle to get in) and restaurants or vending. We bought dinner from the counter at a gas station, and while it was much more sophisticated than anything I've bought at a gas station in America, the best I can say about it is that it was adequate and filling.

Low-flying
exclamation points?

In the rural areas, some of the fields looked different than we were used to, and I'd always thought a hilly green field was a hilly green field. But sometimes the plowing patterns were different, and sometimes the plants were different. I'm no farmer, so I was surprised to notice that. We saw some fields with row after row of high, wire fences, with long vines attached – maybe some kind of bean? And other fields with plants on low fences – maybe grapes? We didn't see many wind turbines, which have become so common in Wisconsin, but sometimes we would see enormous fields of solar panels.

When we first started our drive, we were a little overwhelmed by all the road signs we couldn't understand. Until you start to figure out which shapes are for what, it's kind of confusing. Stop signs are the same, which is comforting. And I don't just mean the shape. The ones we've seen actually say "Stop" on them, instead of the German equivalent.

Yield to
aliens?

Yield signs are the same too. But then there are lots of signs that look like upside-down yield signs, with symbols in them. We saw one with an airplane, and wondered if a person driving a car actually has to be prompted to yield to an airplane. Eventually we figured out they warned of low-flying planes when we passed near small airports. Another replaced the airplane with an exclamation point, which made us wonder if we had to beware of low-flying exclamations. Eventually we figured out that it was the German way of saying, "Hey – Pay attention to this," which was usually something in German.

So - what do you think
the speed limit is here?

Some we figured out pretty quickly, although not immediately, like highway number signs and speed limits, things it would have been nice to know right away. Others we never did figure out, and so we simply had to disregard them, and hope they weren't important. Of course, you have to figure that someone thought it was important enough to make the big metal sign, and to send a crew out to post it next to the road for everyone to see. Oh well.