Wednesday, October 24th - Drive back to Hamburg
Bob: We used the new GPS to calculate a route back to Heinke and Gustl's home in Hamburg, and that turned out to be a blessing (except at the end). Starting right after breakfast at 9:00, we drove a little over 6 hours on the German Autobahns before we finally parked the car in their spare parking space. It could have been a lot longer, however, because our GPS was informed of a traffic jam on the Autobahn from Koblenz to Hanover (as I recall), and it then automatically re-routed us up past Cologne and North to Bremen before turning East toward Hamburg. By doing that we avoided any serious traffic jam, and I was impressed with the efficiency of the whole thing. You can get the same service on GPSs in the U.S., but you have to pay for it whereas in Germany the government broadcasts the traffic jam (and road construction) information on a special frequency that can be received by any of the newer car radios. To be used by the GPS, of course, that information has to be in text form in a packet that includes longitude and latitude information, because the information showed up on the GPS screen in little "bubbles" at the exact location of the traffic problem. It certainly made on-the-fly route corrections possible even to the extent that the GPS itself could detect a blockage when it occurred on the route and redirect us. Monika remarked that although the traffic was fast and furious whenever it was not slowed down by congestion or stretches of road construction, the Germans drove in a very predictable and disciplined manner. They absolutely refuse to pass on the right, for example, and that is critical in knowing when it is safe to duck back into the right lane after passing on the left. In the U.S. in contrast, people are passing left, right, middle, or wherever they please and you have to be much more careful about changing lanes as a result. The corollary discipline, however, is that German drivers keep right except to pass and that is adhered to rather rigorously. We just never encountered the "left lane dawdlers" that plague U.S. Interstates and force everyone to pass on the right to get around them. The Germans are infuriated by slow drivers in the left lane and blinking of lights plus blowing horns at slow moving left lane traffic is an accepted method of sanctioning such folks so that they learn to pull over to the right lane to drive slowly. We both found driving the Autobahns stressful, however, as you do have to be extremely careful of very fast overtaking traffic whenever we would pull out to pass. We both typically drove at 130 kph when we had the chance, which translates to about 80 miles per hour. That was faster than the trucks going 100 kph or about 60 mph in the right lane, so we were forced to pass quite frequently. But we were considerably slower than the 200 kph (120 miles per hour) racers in the left lane, so we had to be extremely carefully each time we pulled out to pass. We compensated by changing drivers when we were tired, and that helped. The Autobahn ended for the final stretch through Hamburg, however, and I had to contend with the city traffic while Monika contended with two GPSs and a map plus the (confusing) street signs. We were both driven to distraction by the turn-by-turn vocalized guidance of the Aldi GPS because it was coming at us fast and furiously, so she finally switched the thing off and I only had to listen to her directions from then on. (Note to GPS users: it is easier to mute a GPS than it is to mute a wife! Probably a lot safer, too.) We arrived safely at Heinke and Gust's place, parked in their spare space, and dragged all our stuff upstairs. Heinke fixed Kaffeetrinken and Abendessen, and after describing all we had done and seen on the trip we just relaxed and unwound for the rest of the evening. |
Monika: We were sad to leave, but it was time. After one more nice breakfast, we packed the car, paid our bill, bought two bottles of wine for Gustl, and set off. I had programmed Heinke and Gustl's address into our new GPS and we decided to have it calculate the route. It turned out it wanted us to go a different route then we had thought we would go, but it was all interstate so we followed the instructions. A very English sounding female gave us instructions, including such tidbits as, "stay on the motorway until further instructions. At one point, she came back on to tell us that there was a traffic jam on the planned route, and that we should take a slightly different route. The GPS is hooked up to the traffic information that every region broadcasts. Gustl, for instance, has his car radio set so that it only broadcasts the traffic information. But that is audio. The information must also come in bundles that can be interpreted by the GPS and is also displayed on the screen. But that the GPS also had enough intelligence, to take the information and reroute us according to it, I found astounding. There must be some type of algorithm that decides, whether the traffic jam is bad enough to justify the re-route. In any case, we got into Hamburg around 3:00 and at this point, the GPS started to be annoying. Whoever has driven in Hamburg, knows there is not a straight street to be found and definitely no streets intersect at right angles. So the GPS start to mention every little turn, like in "Turn left and then an immediate right and after that a half left, etc..." I just turned the thing off and used the very good Hamburg map, that we had. We did get back to Heinke and Gustl without a problem and were there a lot earlier than I had thought we would be. So after "Kaffeetrinken" we had still time to unpack the car. However, we left the cleaning for the next day and instead chatted with out hosts. Heinke and Gustl teased us unmercifully about all the things we had bought, especially Bob's "yet-another-GPS" and my 5 dolls. |
| Prolog | Germany Map | Cruise Map | Epilog |
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||