France and Germany: Driving, the autobahn, and rest stops

We rented a car for eight days. We picked it up in Paris, spent several days in Normandy, then drove to central Germany, then to Berlin. We drove just over 2100 kilometers (1325 miles). Dave drove 99% of those miles. That sounds like he did most of the work, but many of those miles involved intensive navigating, which I found exhausting because of the concentration involved. In many cases, the road signs were not exactly easy to decipher because they gave the names of mysterious towns rather than route numbers. We didn't have a GPS, but we had pretty good maps.

We were given a Renault diesel with manual transmission. What a great car. We averaged 46 miles per gallon over three tanks of gas. (Yes, I had to convert the kilometers to miles and the liters to gallons, but I have a spreadsheet set up to do just that for our car in New Zealand.) Gas ranged from $7.30 to $7.80 per gallon for diesel (another spreadsheet calculation). Here's a picture of our wonderful car on the seventh day after it had gotten very dirty.

In France, I loved the speed limit signs, which indicated with a cute little graphic that a lower speed was mandated when the roads were wet. Note that 130 km equals 80 mph. (The words on the sign say, "for your safety, speed is limited . . . frequent controls." The latter seemed a bit amusing, because in our hundreds of miles, we never once saw a cop car on a freeway. Nor, on the one rainy morning when we drove to Mount Saint Michel, did we see anyone going 110 because of the rain. They were all buzzing along at 130.)

Another amusing aspect of driving in France was the rest stops. The bathrooms didn't have doors, which is fine if you're using a stall, but in the case of urinals, anyone passing by could see men using them. In the one I photographed, the urinal is on the wall opposite from the opening, so all a person can see is the back of the man using it, but in another case (which I didn't photograph only because I didn't have the camera on me), I could see Dave standing sideways to the opening and using the urinal. No further details will be supplied about that moment, and perhaps it's a good thing I didn't have the camera.

Another amusing aspect about driving in Europe is the autobahns in Germany. When we entered Germany, the first freeway we were on had a speed limit of 130 km, so we thought perhaps the days of unlimited speed were over. However, when we drove between Frankfurt and Berlin, there were only a few stretches with speed limits ranging from 100 to 130 km, and most of the way there were no speed limits at all. This works fine in the sections with three lanes, like you'll see below. The trucks stay in the right lane, and more conservative drivers like Dave who might be going 130 to 160 km (80 or 90 mph) are in the middle, and the people on the left whiz by so quickly you can feel the suction of their cars going by. They have to be driving well over 100 mph.

But in many places there are only two lanes. The trucks go into the left lane occasionally to pass other trucks. People like Dave had to move between the right and left lanes constantly. Trucks in the right lane are too slow, and the people driving really fast come up behind you in the left lane and want to get by. Since lane changes are one of the most dangerous aspects of driving, it seemed to me that driving on the two-lane-each way stretches of the autobahn has to be pretty hazardous. But Dave found it highly entertaining to be driving between 80 and 90 mph in a fun car. And I have to say, most of the roads are in really good repair. In France we paid tolls, but in Germany all the autobahns were free from tolls.

One other note about driving in France and Germany. Dave loves cars and pays attention to models, and on this trip he saw many, many car models he had never seen before: Renaults, Peugeots, BMWs, Audis and Mercedes.