Five hundred miles

Well, we were close to 500 miles on our way to San Antonio and back. Just a little tour to visit the – as we were told – most beautiful city in Texas and a little taste of the roadtrip we have to expect when transferring ourselves to Minnesota. However, heading straight west, we were driving into the sunset …

While Alex was driving all the way to San Antonio because I am used to be a little dizzy after torturing my adult pupils with German articles and plural forms, I was allowed to be the one behind the wheel on the quite empty highway I-10 on our way back. We allowed me to do so despite the lack of insurance with me driving (a German DL and twelve years of driving means nothing for our insurance company) – now heading east through the middle of nowhere and some German sounding towns and villages along the highway. We mostly passed trucks and surprisingly, the splendid speed limit was 75 mph = 120km/h, my favourite pace even on German highways.

In spite of being eight years old, our car has a feature called cruise control – which even works! But not being used to it, it was really an odd feeling when the car itself takes over controlling the speed, especially when accelerating. But I got used to it quite fast and would not want to miss it again – above all on our way to Minnesota! Well, you always have to be prepared for hitting the brakes, but being able to move or even cross your legs while driving is definitely a huge plus!

My first highway experience showed a lot of similarities to Germany. Some truck drivers being in a hurry and passing every other vehicle on the road. Or what we call “Elefantenrennen” (literally: elephants’ race) when two trucks are kind of dueling while one overtakes the other and you get stuck behind them for miles … Refreshingly, there was the big difference that no(!) car overtakes at high speed on the left lane. Really: no one! Nothing like in Germany as Tom Hanks reported his experience in an interview: “No matter how fast you go on the Autobahn, someone is always faster – and passing as a lightning!” On I-10 everybody seems content with chugging along at 70 to 75 mph – or is afraid of the fines …

However, the biggest and most confusing difference was that only orange signs of Road Work Ahead and „left lane closing“ were the only thing announcing – well: road work. In Germany, the speed limit would step by step have been put down to around 40 mph ahead of the lane closure – but nothing like that happened here. Nothing. Nada. I spend half an hour(!) after passing the roadwork making jokes about coming to terms with the – in my opinion – missing regulation of the speed limit. Well, the road work was about renewing the blacktop; one could see that easily for three reasons:

1. Our lane had already been beveled and driving was quite noisy;
2. The left lane was currently being fixed by mills and coned off – with single cones standing dangerously close or in our lane;
3. The shoulder on our right had already been renewed causing a two inch high edge on the lane.

I was driving through this continuously talking to myself how surreal the lack of a speed limit was in this situation. Imagine someone driving through this at the speed of 75 mph … But somehow in this case the US relies on common sense to drive carefully.

This leads me to the question if we Germans lack common sense …