Soest - Ulm part 2: European Driving Experience

After making a short inspection to the overall electronic car functions such as lamps, indicator, heater and sat nav, I made my first driving experience on Germany by driving the car back to the hotel which was just about 15 minutes drive, then later on the very late night, I would drive more than 500 kilometers all the way to Ulm since I had to show myself in the office at 8.30 am. So on this basis, I would rather rest myself for a couple of hours before I set off. However, as the serotonin hormone of driving experience seemed to be out of nowhere injected to the bloodstream, I just couldn’t drawn myself to an oblivion of sleep, so I grabbed the car key, roadmaps (just in case if the GPS navigated me to Warsaw instead of Ulm), some bottles of orange juice and decided to hit the road early. Exactly 11.17 pm as what the onboard computer of the car shown and without any supplement of energy drink to conquer the drowsiness which might have attacked, I rolled the car onto the street. At first, it would obviously feel odd since you were not used to be in a left-hand-drive car. However, after spending about 5 minutes or so on the road, you will be able to adapt with the German traffic system and it was particularly because the Germans value the principal of safety driving highly. They enjoy speeding and driving in a fast pace, but they know where and when they are allowed to do so. Nevertheless, the phrase of “Rules are made to be broken” was also valid here and there was a very good example of it. I started from Hotel Böhm in Bad Sassendorf around 11.15 pm and made my way to Bundeslandstrasse B55 Paderborn which was spookily dark and empty. The B-roads were some sort of inter state roads which connect one province to the others and they were normally restricted a speed limit of 70 kph and it is not allowed to stop along this road unless for an emergency situation. Naturally, I respected the rules because I was a good foreigner, but then I found it absolutely irrelevant after some German who drove behind me in a hideous Mercedes estate dimmed me constantly! I then increased the speed steadily up until 140kph and yet, he overtook me and went faster than that! It was quite unbelievable and I was amazed that Germans could also be a rule breaker on the road.

I eventually left the B55 as I joined the Autobahn A44 direction Kassel and this was the first time as I drove along and I actually felt awake, partly because after seeing the distance information board on the right side of the lanes. It said that Kassel was “just” about 100km and I started to remember how tiring is the journey I took every week from Jakarta to Siemens Cilegon which has almost the similar distance. After a while, I started to feel hypnotized by the straightness of the road, even though the Autobahn surface was not as smooth as I thought. So I turned on the radio which played some odd-sounding traditional tunes and blasted the car up until 160kph. Even on this speed I still had to stay on the right lane, because based on the information I got from my friend who had lived in Germany for almost one year, all cars must always direct to the right lane and you only shift to the left lane to overtake other cars. After that, you should return to the right lane again. The speed limit in A44 was divided into several sections with a limit of 80kph and 120 kph. However, I still saw several drivers ignored the rules and drove faster, so I kept along with them. Mind you, it was a careless decision which moments later proved to be horribly wrong! Several kilometers just before I reached Kassel autobahn intersection and along with the fact that I had been quite in a drowsy state, I was suddenly surprised by a post emitting a blitz on the side of the road. It must have been the hateful speed camera and so after being alarmed, I stamped on the brake pedal to reduce the speed down to around 80kph and I was so disorientated that I hadn’t had the chance to take a quick look at the speedometer, so I didn’t how fast I was actually going. The thing that frightened me more was that when the camera emitted the blitz, I switched on the reading lamp in the cabin and I was not paying attention to the road, I took my eyes off the road to glance on the road map, looking for the next location of service station. If that thing ever generated an image, it would be a clear picture of me because the cabin was bright enough and a picture of I took my eyes of the road.

"This proved to be the finest and purest excitement which I ever had on the road."

Covered with a sense of drowsiness and being terrified by the speed camera, I continued my way to join the longest German Autobahn and the longest national motorway in the entire Europe, the astonishing 946km long Autobahn A7. Firstly built in 1937, the A7 stretches all the way from north to south Germany and it splits the country almost evenly on both sides, it starts at the border to Denmark as an extension of Danish’s motorway and it ends up just about 18km from the Austria border. This is therefore the most important Autobahn in Germany since it connects with some other important cities in Germany such as Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Berlin, Stuttgart and Munich. What makes it more interesting to me, the A7 also has the longest stretch of no-speed-limit section compared to the other Autobahns. However, due to the previous incident and fatigue body, I preferred to set the cruise control at speed around 100 to 120 kph and it was also for a good reason of economical drive other than burning more fuel for speeding. The view of A7 at night was presumably quite amazing, apart from the fact that the there were no road lights or any form illumination, mainly because several sections of A7 are built on a surface which is much higher than the connecting cities, so you could actually see the radiant city lights as you drove along. Additionally, the A7 was built by crossing mountain areas and you would therefore drive through some tunnels, meanwhile several sections of A7 are also connected by bridges across beautiful slopes and valleys. Bottom line is, I reckon that it would present a beautiful view as you drive along during day time, it was such a shame that I was on the A7 when the sky was still dark. However, the beauty of A7 was not enough to retain my severe drowsiness, so after just about 150km on the road, I decided to pullover to a service station and welcome myself to a very brief oblivion of sleep.

30 minutes later, I rejoined the A7 and found myself still had around 200km to go before I drove through another Autobahn intersection. I believed that was the shortest sleep I ever had in my life and yet, it gave me quite an enough power to maintain my concentration on the road until about the next 150km, then two massive disasters came along: I nearly crashed a car which was unmistakably driven by someone who had no idea at all about the function of turning indicator, meanwhile the other one was I lost my cell-phone temporarily, well… sort of and these would be explained in the VW Golf Plus review page because it has no relation at all to this posting. Nevertheless, after another hour of driving I was approaching another Autobahn intersection and took the exit as the sat nav had instructed. However, since the Autobahn has no proper illumination even on the exit lane, I made an error by taking the wrong exit ramp which is divided into two directions. Knowing that I had taken the wrong way, I bravely stopped the car after entering the wrong lane about couple meters and drove backwards, and then I took the right exit ramp. This was preposterously an insane thing to do because the next day as I looked in the internet http://www.bmvbs.de/Verkehr-,1405.1494/Bussgeldkatalog.htm , I could have been fined up to 75 Euro for driving in the opposite direction of the Autobahn. Soon after this minute joke, I made the last change of Autobahn intersection by joining the A8 direction Stuttgart. Since I still had a lot of time to spare meanwhile I had reached the outside border of Ulm, I intentionally took the earlier Autobahn exit rather than I supposed to. I did it just to enjoy the driving excitement in the Bundeslandstrasse again because 4 hours in the Autobahn had turned out to be the dullest moment I had in the entire road trip. Amusingly, the sat nav knew that I had taken the wrong exit and it cleverly recalculated the route by finding another local road alternative. I just had to follow the instruction of the sat nav until I reach the destination.

The rest of the journey took place in the city of Ulm and my watch ticked to exactly 5.40am as I parked the car in front of the company building. I had arrived in one piece and yet I still had almost 3 hours before the scheduled time which was 8.30am. To sum up the, the overall trip had been filled with a fantastic view of Germany’s country side roads, some terrifying incidents, a heavy cobweb of drowsiness and they were packed altogether as the first driving experience in Europe. Of course, the overall route was not a petrol heads’ heaven considering the car itself was pathetic and I spent most of the time in the Autobahn; however this proved to be the finest and purest excitement which I ever had on the road and this note is therefore dedicated to remember those unforgettable moments. Until the next posting, enjoy!

Dedication. Modules. Boredom.

Quite often if you are a student and find yourself being accepted as an intern in an acceptably well-known, international company after a long search of one, I found that there are at least two responses coming along: the first response is undoubtedly sheer happyness, because if you aren't, you might need to look for a therapist whom you could consult about and deal with that oddness; meanwhile the second one is worry, worry of stepping into an unfamiliar environment, worry of upcoming problematic assignments, worry of balistic and cold-blooded superiors, worry of unwelcoming and unsympathetic co-workers, worry of doing something terribly wrong which might end up ruining your whole internship semester then so on. On the other hand, a heroic speech about dedication, responsibility and motivation has always tagged along with someone who is associated with a certain company, we always have the believe that working hard is the key to obtain career success and in fact it is true, because those who own multi billion industries today with immensely daily traded shares and bonds never build their business empire over a night. More often than not, they build it apparently with some sort of secret ingredients besides several positive human characters which I have mentioned above: tears, sweat and blood. Well, it might sound unnecessarily poetic and lame, however this is merely a description about someone who is constantly seeking an opportunity, in such way that he could improve and if possible, make a breakthrough through his works. Judging by the fact that I am still no more than a student which lives on my parent's money, I should suppose that it would be the exaggeration of the century if I gab too much about a billionare success story. Anyway, what I want to point out is that this sense of hard working and the eagerness to learn have proven to be essential if you want to be success. Factually, as a student who performs an internship semester, I would apply this value too during my internship period. Sadly, there is a slight problem coming along and it seems that I'm not the only one who experiences this little issue.. as I would explain in this note further.

Of course, I would apply the principal of hard working during my internship program as far as I could without making myself some sort of role model or a posh benchmark for other co-workers, showing that uhh look at that new intern! Constantly come first and go home last. Well there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, in fact, it is actually fine by me as long as it is the true value of yours and you highly respect it, partly because you set your own standard of hard working and that makes you different from others. Meanwhile, the good things is that you don't have to be that way if you are not into it. Factually, I haven't been an outstanding intern in the house because I just spent two weeks out of five months here and currently on the progress of studying work details. However, after spending two weeks in my cubicle, I started to find that something has slowly killed my interest of company dedication, however please don't think that I am so ready to be fired, mainly because I'm not. Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce you the new contender to my hard working spirit: Boredom! Unlike the workers here who currently might be demotivated because of work time reduction from 160 hours per month down to 112 hours due to financial crisis, I am demotivated by a small activity which sparks a massive boredom. Apart from being a fresh intern, this thing does exist and also happens to some of my colleagues. I have been awfully thinking that you might have a ridicolous question like this: How could it be in the damn (Excuse me!) realms of possibility, working in an international company with lots of.. lots of stuff to learn and yet still finding yourself bored? The answer is presumably very simple, because things don't go as I expected. Naturally will not everything go according our initial expectations and it is plainly obvious to me, it goes without saying. Basically, I am not suggesting that I have made a wrong judgment about what kind of company would ever provide an interesting program for its intern, because I do have an assignment which needs to be analyzed, but I just can't see the point of being an intern if I don't learn something new everyday!

"I just can't see the point of being an intern if I don't learn something new everyday!"

To address my opinion in a more comprehensible way and frightfully not being smug to my previous achievement, I would describe it with a factual experience which I had when I worked as a mechanic assistant in a BMW Workshop four years ago. Unlike my position now as an intern in the department of system development and sitting with a group of well experienced engineers, being a mechanic assistant obviously won't give you a sense of pride or prestige. You can tell from the way they both looked so apart, engineers will dip themselves in a nice and clean cut shirt from Brook's Brother suit as they sign a work order with their Mont Blanc pen, meanwhile the mechanics will frequently be associated with oil smudge and overalls sewn by some cheap tailor behind a traditional market. Anyway, what I have learned so far is that being a mechanic assistant is much more fun than sitting in a room with a bunch of engineers. Firstly, please don't get me wrong, not that I don't have the sense to move forward or an expression of I-want-to-be-a-mechanic-assistant-for-the-rest-of-my-life, it's just the sheer learning experience that I had always enjoyed and I absolutely adore it! Back then, I only stopped working during lunch time or when in fact there was no car at all to be repaired, which happened very rarely. What's more, I had almost everyday something new to learn and cars to fiddle with. Well I'm not saying that BMW cars break down a lot with various types of problem or they are simply a metal workpiece of reparation bills, but the sheer fun just dominated everything and it was undilutedly a good motivation for me to keep improving. Moreover, the experience had been so thrilling to me that I actually applied again in the next year and it still felt exactly the same way. So, what is it about sitting in a room with engineers? Well, things always start with a reading session of theory modules and that means, your eyes will most of the time glued to the PC screen. I have always found that reading modules is a boring activity because it runs for weeks and truth be told, this note is even written during the work hour because I am currently in the anti-modules mode. The point is, reading modules generates an odd feeling and "Boredom" is the only word that could explain this feeling best. I believe once and for all that reading modules is essential, but it doesn't have to take for weeks long and I am saying it actually for an extremely good reason: I am sure that no one will ever have the intention to memorize the contents of the module at all. Why can't we just study them for couple days and head straight to work? Since as an intern, we would eventually returned to the work modules by ourselves if we face problems during our assignments.

To sum up then, I used to think that reading modules is a boring stuff for interns to do. Now though things have changed a bit and it gets worse, now I know that modules which have to be studied for weeks is the first thing that could have killed my work motivation. It is such a shame that people in the house has been welcoming and particularly my supervisor who have been so attentive and very nice to work with. Yet, the modules came along with no daily assignments and it had turned my blue days to dark grey. I just hope that the actual work will come in the third week and until then.. Enjoy!

Soest - Ulm part 1: Rent A Car

Deeply amused after knowing that I was accepted as an intern in a Japan headquarter based company which specializes itself in developing safety equipments such as seatbelt and airbag for passenger cars, I started to keep my self occupied by dealing with some official contracts, attending German class in the Fachhochschule and of course organizing a way how to transport myself and all my belongings to the city where I will work. To give you an idea about the whole journey, I will describe a bit about the city. So, this city is called Ulm and it is located in the province of Baden Württemberg. Separated to the well-known Stuttgart about 100km in south east direction, this city is quite special because this is also the city where the founder of relativity theory was born, I assume you know who he is and if you don’t, that is fine because he is not the limelight of this post. Additionally, you will also find here the tallest Gothic church ever built in the world, which is the Ulmer Münster. Please bear in mind that there is another higher historical religious establishment in Cologne, Kölner Dome and yet, it is a cathedral, not a church. So, back to the issue and as far as I was concerned, I had two choices on how I was going to reach this city: using standard public transport which is inevitably train again or I could spend a bit more money and trade it with a driving experience in Europe which I have never had before. The decision was actually quite simple to me because I had sorted some problems already if I took the train to Ulm: I had to drag my unbelievably heavy luggage along the way and it would be unpractical as well if I had to take a connecting train or maybe take a bus; there is also no special compartment in the train to place big suitcases which means I had to place my stuffs near the exit door of the train and it increased the possibility of criminal rip off; and foremost, I have always disliked public transport on land because they are somehow not convenient enough and a bit slow. Well, I supposed I would not say slow, but it is not as fast as driving a car. So the decision had been made: rent a car.

Basically, this was not the first attempt of mine to rent a car. Previously or about one month before this trip to be precise, I had reserved a car as well for a return trip from Ulm back to Soest after a job interview. I looked on-line to find a car rent company and there were some actually, but then I found one which seemed like an international car rent company and it is called Sixt. There are several reasons actually why I chose this company: it is not the cheapest and yet not the most expensive, so the price is presumably quite affordable, especially for a student like me; they provide cars based on your demand: how many days you would like to rent, what kind of car and where will you pick-up and drop-off the car; and lastly, the registration procedure was simple and quick, because it was done by on-line. Sadly, what I had described as simple and quick turned out to be an unpleasant disaster and a massive disappointment in which I was stumbled on the legality of my driving license. It was rejected and Sixt said that it was not an international driving license. Additionally, they said that if I still want to rent a car, I would be required to produce an official document which is the translation of my Indonesian driving license into English version.This was plainly ridiculous, even after I explained to them that my driver license was valid for 185 days after my arrival date in Germany and I did not make this up because I had actually confirmed the validity my driving license in the Soest Führerscheinstelle (some kind of local transport organization). What I found more annoying was that this translation can only be performed by ADAC (Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club e.V.) which is Europe's largest automobile club and mind this, I had to deliver my driver license to the center office of ADAC all the way to Berlin by myself, it can’t be posted because they might require your signature.. in which case I hope that there will be an invention one day how to transfer your hand signature real time and digitally. What’s more, this translation was biblically expensive, you will be charged for an administration and translation fee of 49 Euro, and that has not been included with transport cost to Berlin itself. Unhappily irritated by the complicated German paper works and the state of not-knowingness of the Sixt personnel, I therefore decided to call off the first car reservation.

"What I had described as simple and quick turned out to be an unpleasant disaster and a massive disappointment in which I was stumbled on the legality of my driving license."

Undoubtedly, the foregoing issue had killed my interest to rent a car from Sixt, but it would certainly not lessen my enthusiasm to drive a car in Germany, so this time I decided to have another go, except I was going native by having assistance from the Fachhochschule to deal with it. The next day I rang up the person in charge for student affair and explained my problems. A few days later, I was told that I could make an arrangement for the car rent company they had appointed and there should no problems at all since I just had to call the company to confirm my reservation. Thrilled by the positive news and loaded with positive thoughts, I went straight to the car rent office in Soest to ask what kind of car I would drive and boy.. I was somehow surprised after arriving at the office, partly because it was not bigger than a Kebab store near the Soest train station which I daily passed by. Meanwhile, there was also a small placated board with orange symbol which I was quite familiar with and it said: Sixt. Anyway, I would not give a damn on it because all I wanted to do was just drive and that was it, I shall put all administration things aside and let the professional in the FH dealt with it. Factually, it worked out! The reservation had been positive and no annoying squabbles or whatsoever about my driving license. On the reservation receipt, I would drive either an outdated Volkswagen Polo or a freshly introduced to the European market Ford Fiesta with an agreeable price of 39 Euro before 19% tax and I think that was quite well priced actually. The rest thing I was looking forward to do: just jammed my stuffs altogether and hit the road!

After a long and wasteful wait, then the day I was looking forward the most came: March, 31^st 2009 at 5 p.m., the pick-up time of the reserved car: the freshly released to the European market Ford Fiesta or the outdated Volkswagen Polo. With the debit card and driving license at the ready, I went on foot to the Sixt office which took about 30 minutes walk from the FH. However, I spotted something strange as I walked though the car park of Sixt: there was neither a Ford Fiesta nor a Volkswagen Polo. Covered with confused thought, I made my way into the office and asked about my reservation. I just had to hand my driving license and the reservation sheet (This will be obtained if the reservation is made directly in the Sixt office. If you make your reservation via internet, you might be required to print the reservation sheet which you will receive via your e-mail). After finishing the administration, then the bill came along. I was initially shocked since the rent had increased to a whopping 139 Euro instead of 46 Euro, but then things went clear because it was included with insurance deposit money in case you didn’t return the car in a proper condition. What I meant here with a proper condition is that the car must be returned in a clean state, I suppose there will be an extra charge if you also transport a dog, a cat or even a hamster along with you and it also must be returned with a full fuel tank, just as you take it on the first place. Having reviewed the rent contract instantly and with a careless sense since I wanted to take a look on the car immediately, I signed the contract. Then I was brought into two choices of cars and they were indeed not a Ford Fiesta or a Volkswagen Polo. Instead, they were a Volkswagen Golf Plus and a Smart Fortwo Coupe. Please be advised that changing ordered car seemed to be a natural habit of Sixt since some of my friends also experienced the same issue where the car they ordered was different with the car provided on the pick-up date. However, the good point was: the car had always come from an upper class or in other way, it was upgraded to a more expensive car. Back to my issue, I was particularly interested in Smart Fortwo since it was a unique and fun-to-drive car, it was also the diesel version and paired with pedal shift semi-automatic gearbox which made it more appealing for me. However, considering the massive size of my suitcase and a midsized handbag, Smart will just not be the perfect choice. So, I headed for the dark blue, dull-looking Golf Plus.