Driving in Germany
When my family was here, we traveled around in a car that they had rented. This was my first time in a car since I had been here in Germany. I have been on plenty of busses, but I have never paid any attention to driving or traffic when I am riding one. I am usually to busy staring at my phone scrolling through memes. Time is precious, you must use it well. Since I was in a small hatchback, seemingly the most common type of car here, I notice quite a bit of difference in German driving culture. So, for this post I am going to discuss that a bit and give some advice on the topic. I know a few other American students who rented a van to take a trip earlier in the semester, and were a bit taken aback at German driving style. Consider this fair warning.
Firstly, getting a rental car around here can be a bit of a challenge if you can not drive a stick shift. Germans, for some reason that I can not fathom, almost exclusively drive stick shift cars. This means that getting an automatic can be a bit pricey, if you can even find one to rent. For this reason, I did not drive on this trip because, to my shame, I can not drive stick shift. When some people I know rented a van to drive to Liechtenstein, they did not know that it would be stick shift, so they were quite surprised. None of them was very skilled at driving stick, but they manage to muddle their way through it, all the way there and back. I would not advise this however, because this could be really dangerous. Especially if you decided to go on the autobahn. If you stalled out while trying to pass somebody, you could be rear ended by an SUV going 110 miles an hour. Not good. So if you plan to do driving over here, learn how to drive stick shift first.
Secondly, Germans like to drive FAST. Everybody knows that most of the autobahn does not have a speed limit. This does not mean that everyone is driving a million miles an hour, however. There are still semi trucks and other slow moving vehicles, so the slow lane goes about the same speed as on a US interstate. The fast lane,l however, is FAST! Cars often go in excess of 100 miles an hour in this lane, and they expect that you will get out of there way. Not in a rude way, most of the time, it is just how things are done here. When a car passes another in the slow lane, they are expected to rapidly speed up and then get back in the slow lane as soon as they have passed the car ahead. This would be considered rude in the US, but this excellent lane discipline is actually what makes the lack of a speed limit on the autobahn possible. Accidents are rare, because people strictly follow the rules and stay in there lanes.
Thirdly, German driving is a lot more abrupt than American driving. I mentioned the way to pass a car is by quickly accelerating and pulling back into your original lane as quick as possible. This same abruptness is found throughout German driving culture. The speed limit on the autobahn will go from nonexistent to 80 kilometers per hour with no warning. And you better believe that people slow down quite quickly. This often happens to the frequent tunnels found on Southern Germany’s autobahn. The speed limit will then disappear as soon as you leave the tunnel, as people start to fly in the fast lane again. It works well for Germans, because they all know the way it is done and follow the rules of the road. Also note, exits from the Autobahn come up fat, are not well marked, and are very short.
Lastly, it is important to know the road signs. We did not think to look up German road signs before we set off. That was a mistake. They are quite different that US road signs and are often difficult to interpret. Save yourself some pain, and google then first!
The tiny blue Opal that we somhow put 4 people in.
Our GPS tried to make us drive through this! Thats not a road! But it actually is, and thats the really crazy part.