Driving in Germany is exponentially harder than in America. In America, the sun is shining, the cars are expensive, the roads are forty feet wide. Now imagine
-- every street is paved with cobblestones, and a tram zigzags down the middle;
-- poor people drive rust buckets, young people ride bicycles, and eccentric old men buzz around on modified vacuum cleaners;
-- some lanes are actually NARROWER THAN THE AVERAGE CAR, which means if another car passes you will both lose your rear-view mirrors, if not your lunch. Of course, there will be a sign at the side of the road to warn you, assuming that when you are in a life-threatening situation you are relaxed enough to check out the scene elsewhere; and
-- there are the occasional horse-drawn carriages, which could be particularly problematic except the official German position is, "Why should animals get special treatment just because they have primitive undersized brains, they can crush a human with a misplaced step, and they're barely controlled by skinny leather straps while pulling rickety carriages full of tourists?"
Even ignoring these obstacles, driving in America is easier. If you're supposed to stop, there's a red light or a STOP sign. In Germany, you know what means you might have to stop at an intersection? NOTHING. Here, unmarked intersections are governed by the "right before left" rule, which means if there's a car coming from the right, then you have to stop for them. When clueless Americans get German licenses, then, you can picture a conversation like this:
GERMAN CIVIL SERVANT: "So glad you moved here from Oklahoma! You know what a zebra crossing is? What a street sign with a red circle on it means? And you're totally clear on right-before-left?"
NEW AMERICAN TRANSPLANT: "No! Are they important?"
GERMAN CIVIL SERVANT: "Just life or death! Here's your license. Great photo! Have fun!"
And that's just one of a dozen weirdnesses here. I remember the first time I saw a traffic light with a STOP sign attached: I'm pretty sure that's how Spock got heads to explode in that early episode of Star Trek. Here's a commonsense rule about logical, practical Germany:
You know those bright-red signs with the giant letters on them spelling STOP? Eh, sometimes you can ignore them.
And then there's road construction, which is 24/7 on the autobahn, with completion projected for eight years after chickens colonize Mars. Lanes are diverted into completely different paths which are, naturally, demarcated by new lines. The road now looks like a Jackson Pollock painting, but you have to ignore the old white lines and follow the new yellow ones. It's vitally important to know this, or like the Arkansas driver before he was pushed off a cliff by a truck ferrying pigs from Poland, you too will be screaming, "WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH ALL THESE LINES?"
Germany is a beautiful green country crisscrossed by eisenbahnstrassen, or railroads, and famed for the particularly gorgeous Eisenbahn-Romantik. Now imagine you and your sweetie are driving through a 14-century town and you see a sign that says, "EINBAHNSTRASSE." Wouldn't that be a lovely detour? An old steam railway, still ferrying tourists up and down Alps, through vast forests, past castles and mirror lakes. Sounds like a don't-miss to me!
Wait. I think I got it wrong. Yup, that's a different word. "Einbahnstrasse" actually means "one-way street."
YOU: "Look, honey! This is a romantic railroad road! Get the camera ready! That reminds me, have I told you recently that I love you very, very -- AIEEEEEEEEEE!"
If your hands aren't already shaking when you're taking your driving test, here's another easy way to fail it. Let's say a road bends either right or left, and you're warned by a traffic sign with a curved arrow painted on it. The entire road turns. Both directions. All lanes. You will fail your driving test if you go around this curve WITHOUT USING YOUR TURN SIGNAL.
Why? Because Germans are logical. What if the guy in front of you sees the turn ahead, sees the sign, and thinks, "Fuck it! I'm fed up with this relentless government intrusion into my private life. For once I'm bucking the system and driving straight ahead"? Your concentration might be affected as you see his car fly off the road, plunge into the forest, and send the whole countryside up in flames. If everybody else uses their turn signal, then, you will get that vital three seconds of warning.
(Actually, I have no idea why this is required. My driving instructor might have had an explanation, but I tended not to ask him questions where the answer might be, "WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT FOR YOU TO FOLLOW GERMAN RULES?")
My new instructor Q turned out to be a great guy. He was kind and patient and, when he realized my bill had passed the thousand-euro mark, let me ride around with other students for free. Unfortunately, my German isn't good and his English wasn't good, so I didn't understand much of what he said. Once when I pulled up next to a parked car, ready to back into a parking space, he pointed toward the other car and barked something at me.
"Am I too close?" I asked. "Or too far away?"
"Yes!" he agreed.
I took classes with him until my husband needed knee surgery and my driver's license became mandatory. Thoughtfully, Niepel understood and signed me up for a driving test. Q was in the front seat of the car, and the TUV guy in the back. Ten minutes in, the TUV guy directed me onto a road that was a nightmare. There were bikes and pedestrians and construction and signs on top of signs. There was everything short of unicyclists juggling flaming chihuahuas.
"Holy God," I thought, frantically snapping my head around, "I know I'm gonna miss something."
Q slammed on the brakes and tsk-tsked. I was right.
As I drove back to the TUV and four hundred more euros flew out the window, Q divulged my mistake. "You must stop at the STOP signs. You have to stop at the STOP signs. It is a violation not to stop at the STOP signs."
"I stop at STOP signs," I protested. "I'm American. There are STOP signs everywhere in America, and I always stop at them."
Q shook his head. "You have to stop at STOP signs," he repeated.
This was probably the last mistake I thought I'd make. STOP signs are pretty obvious, being big and red, and I'd never driven through any in America. But you know those "scientific" tv shows that demonstrate how weird the human brain is? In one I saw, the narrator said, "Watch this video, and concentrate on the two women sitting at the cafe table." I watched and concentrated and then the narrator came back. "Did you see the man in the giant chipmunk costume walk by?"
I thought, "What the fuck is he talking about?"
Then he said, "Let's replay the video, and this time watch all of the action." I did. And this time I saw a man in a giant chipmunk costume walking by. Concentrating on one thing, I totally missed something else.
All of this is to say, there was so much noise flying into my brain, I couldn't process it all. Could Germans really filter all this shit? I imagined they watched that "scientific" tv show, concentrated on the two women at the cafe table, and still, three seconds into the video, shouted, "WHY ARE THERE GIANT CHIPMUNKS WALKING AROUND AMERICA?"
But the testing guy confirmed it. "You have to stop for STOP signs," he said.
I didn't complain. Teenagers around me who'd failed their tests were crying, but I just said okay and walked home.
Over the next few weeks, my confidence evaporated. After the brake-slamming of my first instructor and then failing the test, I totally lost my nerve. Gone was the responsible guy who'd been driving since he was sixteen, who'd driven across America twice, who'd never gotten a ticket or caused an accident. I became fixated on my faults: I was a terrible driver, I had bad eyes, I couldn't be trusted, I'd never learn. I turned into an old lady, constantly wondering what was wrong with me and wondering if it would ever be safe for me to drive. I lay in bed second-guessing the possibilities:
1. There wasn't a STOP sign, and these two men were lying.
2. There was a STOP sign, I'd seen it, and I'd ignored it.
3. There was a STOP sign, and I hadn't seen it because I'm an incompetent driver who will very soon confuse the gas and the brake pedal and plow through the brick front of a nail salon, killing fourteen people whose gravestones will read things like, "JUST ONE MORE GODDAMN FINGERNAIL AND SHE WOULDA BEEN OUTSIDE!"
I'd pretty much decided (3) was true, but wanted to settle it once and for all. When I met Q for my next driving lesson, I said, "Can we drive to that crazy road where I failed the test?"
"Sure," he said. I drove and drove and drove, as Q repeated that in Germany you have to stop for STOP signs. Did I know that? You have to stop for STOP signs. And then the lesson was over and Q directed me back to the fahrschule. "Did we go to that street where I failed the test?" I asked.
"You never know what street the test will go to," he replied.
The second time I failed the test it was because I passed a bus. Whenever I mention this to a German, the conversation goes a little something like this:
THEM: "Were there flashing lights on the bus?"
ME: "No."
THEM: "Were the turn signals on?"
ME: "No."
THEM: "Were there any warning lights at all?"
ME: "No."
THEM: "Oh." [PAUSE] "You shouldn't pass a bus."
The bus had pulled over to a bus stop exactly where the road widened. In a skinny Volkswagen Golf, I thought there was enough room to drive by. The Land Rover behind me, and all the cars behind it, agreed, and they followed me. I was the only one directed back to the TUV. The tester and Q both said there wasn't room to pass the bus.
ME: "But all the other cars drove past the bus."
THEM: "If all the other cars were driving 70 kilometers per hour, would that make it okay?"
I realized my answer was, "Absolutely!" so I kept my mouth shut.
After this, I was a total wreck. My optimism at passing the tests had flipped around entirely: now I knew like Sisyphus that the task was impossible, and that I'd eternally fall prey to another nonsensical rule. Now I was just enduring the humiliation to see how many times I could completely fuck up. The more the merrier! I thought, because with each failure it showed how ridiculous the German rules were, how sadistic the system was, how incompetent the instruction was, and how stupid they were to hand over licenses to Americans who had no instruction at all.
I'd also gone from liking my instructor to absolutely despising him. Every few minutes while we were driving he'd flash back on my first failure and say, "Remember to stop at the STOP signs!" Over and over, "you have to stop at the STOP signs." At first I calmly replied that I knew that. The next time, I said he didn't have to keep repeating it. And the last time, I exploded.
"You know," I said, "I listened the first FOUR HUNDRED times you said it, but now it's just annoying, and I'm thinking maybe you should just SHUT THE HELL UP."
We sat silently for a second and I actually wondered if he'd terminate the lesson for abusiveness. It wasn't a lesson, though, so much as nonstop, undeserved humiliation, like if every time your high school teacher walked past your chair he said, "Remember not to poop your pants!" Even if, let's assume, at some point in time you had actually pooped your pants, I'm pretty sure you're not going to chirp, "Thanks for the hot tip, buddy!" for the rest of your life. At some point you are going to scream, "IT WAS TWENTY YEARS AGO AND I DIDN'T ACTUALLY POOP MY PANTS SO MAYBE IT'S TIME TO SHUT YOUR BITCH MOUTH?"
And so for the next few months, instead of sleeping, I wrestled with this conundrum at night. And finally, unexpectedly, like Sherlock Holmes, I had a blinding flash where suddenly appeared an explanation that made sense.
Q and I had a language problem. Could this be a symptom? Was he actually trying to tell me something more ... like, I didn't stop LONG ENOUGH at STOP signs?
I mimed the question at my next lesson and Q confirmed it. Americans stop at STOP signs for less than a second while Germans literally COUNT TO THREE. I'm not sure why, or what it accomplishes, but anything less and they will say you ran the STOP sign. I did this exaggerated stop at the next STOP sign and Q said, "Yes, that is good."
Was that it? I wondered. The entire problem?
I took the driving test a third time. The driving was a total asshole, barking instructions too fast, but when I politely advised him that my German was bad he replied something like, "So? What language am I supposed to speak?" I made mistakes, but this time he ignored them. He lectured me -- sternly, face to face -- but while I was giving him an "I am considering your words with the utmost gravity" look, I was thinking, "Why does he assume that I can suddenly understand him now?" Still, it was like he knew about my failing-forever plan and decided to nip it in the bud. I passed the test. A small part of me was happy, but the rest was fixated on a simple fact:
If either of my instructors had said, "You have to stop for three seconds at STOP signs," I'd have saved $800 and three months of my life.
Months later, I'd like to say I'm happily zipping around Europe. Instead, the fear still hasn't gone away. I'm hoping one of these days I will suddenly regain confidence and think, "Sure! I'll be fine in my giant, four-ton Mercedes maneuvering around bicyclists and trams and eccentric old men riding vacuum cleaners through cobblestone streets!" Every day I forget a little more about this whole debacle, and every day I get closer to picking up those keys.
If you're in Europe, then, maybe for the next few months, stay away from nail salons.
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