Although our initial approach to the summer was heavily structured and organized, by August 19th any sense of order was gone. We had written into our itinerary, then removed major cities such as Verona, Split, Rome, Dubrovnik, Barcelona, and Paris, (the plan being to visit as many regions which required a car as possible, assuming we could fly back to major cities easily in the future), but three days before our departure, the end of the summer loomed like a funeral, and deep down we feared that we may never make it back, or have this much time together again.
I mentioned before that we didn't hit our "travel groove" until a month into our trip, and after that we fought the urge to stop and stay in any town where we felt at home. But that Sunday marked exactly two months since we left The States, and it was making less and less sense to leave beautiful places when we assumed we had already seen the best of Europe. Luckily, there was a lot more beauty to see.
So, against our best judgement, we left our room filled with light, fresh air and the sound of bells tolling periodically from the nearby cathedral, and we walked to our car parked on the main street, trying not to make eye contact with the children who had silently decided that this two month anniversary would mark the official limit to their nomadic spirit.
Child Aside:
Strangely enough, children are not as portable as they appear. I can't remember if I have mentioned this before, but it was poignant to see how eagerly the children sought friends and attempted to establish roots in most of the places we stopped whether for a day or a few hours. The girl introduced herself to children easily, even when there was no common language. She also longed to wear local clothing and buy local toys to more easily fit in and establish a link with each new place. The boy didn't try to fit in at all, but he did reach out to pet most passing dogs--with and without their owners' approval and appreciation--and we found that his positive feelings toward any location tracked a line parallel to his access to kind animals and tolerant owners.
However, by the second month, the children made fewer and fewer attempts to hold on to the places we visited. The girl's "Can I buy..." questions, as well as the boy's "That looks like my dog!" declarations became fewer and fewer which saddened their parents even while it made their behavior more tolerable.
Now, I don't want to go on the record as saying the kids no longer wanted to experience Europe. The truth is I believe they would have been happy to stay until we ran out of money, but this was the moment where we needed to settle down, find an apartment, and meet the neighbors because, at 8 and 11 years old, the kids were either too old or too young to walk to the car and leave a perfectly good town without resembling an inmate on death row.
Driving to Strasbourg:
From the moment Americans receive our drivers licenses (10 minutes after our 16th birthday) to the moment we die, most travel conversations center around how many hours (or states) we can drive without stopping for gas, food, sleep, or bathroom breaks. So, most Americans would openly scoff at any complaint of a six hour trip from Bayeux to Strasbourg. In my defense, in North America I can drive 6-8 hours straight if I don't begin consuming liquids before the gas tank is half empty. (This is very important since stopping to use the bathroom before the gas tank is under a quarter full is in bad form....especially when driving 14 hours from the East Coast to the Midwest.) Now, I used to think eight hours was a pretty good record until my coworker declared that Wisconsin is where he stops for gas since it's half way to Colorado....which he can reach before sleeping. So, luckily, I didn't consider my driving record a competitive one when our friend Rob--who is from Baltimore--told us that his driving record to college--which is in Alaska--is seven days. Yes, seven days. We know this because my husband and I yelled versions of "What?" and "Seven days?!" before he replied, "Yeah, I was speeding."
So, my humiliation aside, my personal driving record is still good enough to reach Strasbourg without a bathroom break, however, European roads are not the same as North American ones. They look the same, but they have force fields and worm holes that zap the energy from its drivers....or maybe it's the foreign language signs, radio broadcasts, and highway paint that do this. For whatever reason, don't expect to drive longer than five hours without stopping the car, jumping in place, slapping your face, and drinking a Coca-Cola.
If you're North American, you're probably skeptical, so I'll give you a few fatigue-inducing examples:
1) North Americans identify yellow lines as those separating opposing traffic while white lines separate lanes moving in the same direction. In much of Europe, white lines denote both types of traffic with periodic signs indicating on which type of road you are traveling. This system is fine when you are in an urban area with Jersey barriers between opposing traffic, or when you are in a rural area and you're not tired. However, when you are both tired and traveling in a rural area, and you cannot see the lanes of opposing traffic, you can easily convince yourself that you are in the opposing lane and you must jump to the right before reaching the top of the hill.
2) Signs such as "Do Not Enter" are not absolute...at least not in France. For example, you may exit the road only to see what you believe to be a "Do Not Enter" sign (either a red circle with a white horizontal line, or a white circle with a red outline), however, this sign only means you can't enter the road IF the word "Sauf" (except) is not under it or you do not meet the exceptions listed after "Sauf". So, you'll have to park the car and think hard before you continue. For example, our hotel in the Loire Valley seemed completely unreachable at the end of lane marked with a "Do Not Enter" sign until we translated "Sauf Riverains" which means "except residents". Now, we have exceptions to "Do Not Enter" signs in the US too, denoting time of day or day of week, but the reasons are generally obvious and they're always written in English. By the way, we didn't see any exceptions to German-speaking "Do Not Enter" signs, but one wouldn't expect them.
3) Endless corn fields in Iowa don't compete for your attention in the same way traveling through mountains, or past castles and quaint villages on distant hills do. In addition, there are areas of France--especially in Brittany and Normandy--where it looks as if the sky is a concave bowl that ends five miles away. It's a strange perspective and none of our pictures captured it, but I swear it's true...and very distracting.
4) You generally can't listen to the radio in Continental Europe. Period. Let me start by saying we had every intention of fully immersing ourselves in the culture of each country by listening to polka in the Alps, Mozart as we entered Salzburg and Vienna, and opera as we drove into Florence. In between, we imagined listening to each country's top hits list even though Techno didn't die a dignified death there in the 80s like it rightfully should have. But we found no Mozart on the radio in Austria and no opera in Italy. There was polka in Switzerland, but we also heard painful song mixes like a polka/country English/German version of "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)". I'm completely serious...and nothing says Swiss Alps like songs about Cajun cooking and Southern Louisiana topography. But the real reason you can't listen to the radio in Europe is because your kids speak English and there are no edited versions of any English songs anywhere, and even the songs you recognize as completely sweet and innocuous back home have a dark side in Europe which we didn't realize until we heard the boy yell, "Oh, yeah!" from the back seat during a sweet ballad that repeatedly dropped the "f" bomb.
Now, music isn't completely out of reach if your car has a USB connection like ours did, but make sure you like the songs on your IPOD well enough to listen to each one nearly 100 times. This fact would be far less painful if everyone liked the same music...and those who didn't like the music didn't mock the songs they didn't like while the rest of the car yelled for the mocker to be quiet. So, the girl yelled during Green Day and Eminem while the boy yelled during Adele and Lady Gaga. The only music everyone could agree on was U2, Weird Al, and the Black Eyed Peas. Disclaimer: when I say "everyone" I don't include my husband because he only likes the Beatles and Mozart, and he used both to punish bad behavior.
5) The TomTom lady either doesn't know the rules of the road or she doesn't care. For example, in Austria and Italy, she screamed at us to slow down even though the reduction in speed was required for trucks and RVs only. You may say that she might not know we were a car and not a truck except that the navigation system was built into the car. So, someone missed a setting somewhere and the system blinking a camera icon to tell you you just passed a highway speed camera while speeding, and therefore qualify for a ticket, is distracting and annoying.
When you think the TomTom lady couldn't be more annoying, hold on because she doesn't know where the French installed their speed cameras. So, concentrating on looking for the radar signs (see http://wirthsummer2012.blogspot.com/2012/09/driving-to-france-and-tollways.html) while making sure you're not in a lane designated for oncoming traffic, and your kids are fighting over music can be taxing.
Similar to the US, you also have toll plazas, traffic putting on their hazards and stopping suddenly for no apparent reason and sometimes all of the chaos seems a bit much. However, there is help on the roads and it comes in the form of the Dutch. Yes, the Dutch.
If you are in mainland Europe and you're confused about the speed limit, the location of speed cameras, or in which lane to travel, follow a car whose license plate includes an "NL" in the blue area. Now, we saw very skilled Swiss, Austrian, Slovenian, Croatian, German and French drivers while driving through those coutries, but they were not as consistently smart, yet daring, as the Dutch. We stayed a couple of car lengths behind any Dutch car going in our direction; we sped when the Dutch did; we slowed when the Dutch did; and we never received a ticket or came close to an accident. I don't know if safely pushing the envelope is a genetic trait or a product of training, but either way, we need to clone it.
In addition to pointing-out speed traps, the Dutch do their part to translate French culture. For example, at several French toll plazas we were perplexed by long lines for one or two open toll lanes while the lines for the automated lines were completely empty. We were afraid there was a problem with the empty lanes, so we stayed with the French until we saw a Dutch car escape the long lines and dart to an empty one. Soon after, we realized that the French were protesting the removal of manned booths by waiting only in the lines with a human being at the end. I must say we were moved by the French devotion to the employment of their people, which we noted as we followed the Dutch to the empty credit card pay lanes.
If you're afraid there won't be a Dutch car in front of you when you travel through Europe, fear not. The Dutch are everywhere! In fact, we are pretty sure there is no one left in the Netherlands between the middle of June and the end of August.
I don't have any pictures of Dutch drivers to share, but I'm pretty sure we are following a Dutch car below. We took this picture as a silent protest to our schedule not allowing us to stop as we raced past Paris at 135km per hour.
© 2013 Nicole Wirth
Author of: Letters to Salthill
