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!