Ze Autobahn... Ze Baptism of Fire...

Alright!!!  Something I've been talking about for quite some time... my trip to the Nurburgring.  

First things first however: getting there.  Let me throw in a little disclaimer here...  I've never ever driven on the other side of the road before, which from those who have half a clue about anything, also means driving a left hand drive car.

This was the hire car I got... a lovely little VW Golf.  I was quite astounded to get a manual car without any questions as to whether or not I could actually drive a manual... lucky for them, it's my specialty!  I must say, as much of a pain in the ass as European cars are in Australia... for some reason (that I just can't put my finger on), they just make sense over here!!! =P  In all seriousness though, it's a very comfy car that was very well equipped.  Bluetooth, SatNav, rain sensing wipers, even headlights that moved based on where you turn.  Not bad VW, not bad.

Naturally, first thing I did was stall the car.  Whoops.

Moving on...  Given that this was my first time on the 'wrong' side of the road (depending on your preference), there were several things to get used to:

- Gear lever now on the other side.  You look like quite an idiot wanting to change gears, and whacking your left hand on the door card in an attempt to find the shifter.

- Head checks are now completely reversed.  It's a strange sensation looking over your other shoulder to see if it's safe to merge, or even to reverse!!  You look over your left shoulder (as you normally would in Aus) and all you see is B pillar.

- In Australia, when you turn, left turns are tight, right turns are loose.  Not overly easy now remembering you have to make left turns loose and right turns tight.  

I could keep listing difficulties that were faced, but long story short, instinct tends to override what you know and this can land you in some pretty interesting waters.

The hardest thing for me to get used to was adjusting my reference points.  In Australia, as a driver, you naturally line up with the rear-right light of the car in front of you.  Doing that over in Germany results in you using bugger all of your lane, and spending most of it where other cars normally reside.  I suppose the benefit of this is that everyone around me gave me plenty of room!  It was in a constant adjustment though, and I regularly found myself drifting into the lane next to me.

All shenanigans aside, I still had to get to where I needed to go, and that meant getting onto the one and only Autobahn :)  

If you click on the left photo, it will show a speed of ~130km/h.  This was the SLOW lane...  

For the majority of the trip, I was averaging the speed shown in the right photo... 160-170km/h.  The crazy thing is though, it doesn't feel fast, simply because everyone is doing it.  Granted, you have your crazy lunatics in the fast lane that are doing in excess of 250 km/h, but for most of the traffic, this is a normal and accepted speed.

I would've thought with no speed limit, it would've made the Autobahn very easy to drive, but no, that is far from the case.  If anything, it is MUCH more stressful to drive than Australian freeways.  The basic rules are as follows... if you're a truck, stay in the right hand lane.  If you need to overtake, go one lane to the left, and then the second you are done, return to where you were.  

Simple, right?  No.  Well, on the sections of the Autobahn where there were 3 lanes, yes, but on the 2 lane sections it was a nightmare.  Everyone except for the really slow vehicles seem to sit in the fast lane.  Then you get the idiot who thinks they should still be able to do whatever speed they want, so they sit right on your ass.  This results in the really slow vehicles doing whatever they want, and then a constant train of cars sitting in the fast lane, which I might add, once you get out of, it is very hard to get back into.

To a point, this works until a slow vehicle decides to overtake another slow vehicle, and there are a LOT of them.  Due to their lack of acceleration, they bring everyone down to their speed... selfish pricks.

Moral of the story, you end up spending most of your time watching every single car around you.  I must say, for once it's nice not having to watch my speedo like you do in Aus-land, but watching every car that's in front of you, behind you and on all sides, as well as trying to predict what said cars are going to do based on what is around THEM, it's far more stressful and exhausting.  Somehow though, it works, and when it works well, its an absolute treat :)

I must say, they do have some very nice looking tunnels!

The original forecast for weather was cloudy and (unofficially) dreary, but then it started raining.

Conditions got worse the further I drove on, and as night began to fell, visibility got worse...

And worse...

And worse.  FYI I had picked up Mark Chambers, who was joining me at the Nurburgring, and he was taking these photos.  Nice and safe :)  What made this a million times more difficult, is that Germans don't believe in cat's eyes... the little reflectors that I now take for granted.  

The above photo shows you literally all I could see - no more than 5 car lengths in front of me, with no idea where the other lanes around me were.  Keep in mind that on top of the terrible conditions, I'm also trying to remember that I'm on the other side of the road, and everything is reversed.

Now I'm sure that not all experiences on the Autobahn are this bad... but bloody hell, to say this was a baptism of fire is an understatement.  All I'll say is, you adapt really quickly to the situation when your life depends on it =P  You don't really have any other choice!  

I never envisaged my first experience on the Autobahn being this crazy... but what do you do hey?  5 hours of driving I eventually got to my destination in one piece... Here's to hoping the trip back is much better :)