Driving in Germany

When many people think about Germany, they picture driving on the Autobahn and no speed limits. The highways in Germany are essentially the same as in the State, except there are places where there are no speed limits. There are two primary reasons for speed limits on the autobahn, construction zones and urban areas.
The A5 runs past Heidelberg, north to south. The speed limit on the A5 changes from unrestricted to 120 KPH to 100 KPH and then back to unlimited 4 exits later south of town. This is fairly common in urban areas.

The Autobahn is also frequently under construction which creates speed restrictions. The German Gov’t believes in good roads and when you are driving at 200KPH you will appreciate good roads also. This means that road construction can literally start up over night. One day you drive down the Autobahn with no construction then the next day, there is road construction.

Drivers in Germany tend to abide by the rules more. The left lane is for passing only. You will frequently see someone traveling at a high rate of speed go past and then move right across 4 lanes only to move to the left a short time later to pass someone. If there is someone traveling slowly in the left lane and the right lane is open, the faster car will not pass on the right, but will ride the bumper of the slower car until they move to the right.

Where there is no speed restriction you can drive as fast as your car will go. Although, legally and for insurance purposes, if you are involved in an accident and you are driving over 120 KPH (75MPH) you are partially responsible. Other issues affecting your safety at high speeds are other drivers and trucks. Slower drivers in the right lane can be dangerous. If they come upon an even slower vehicle, they may move over to the left lane in front of you and this can be quite harrowing as I believe that many times they do not look in the mirror before doing this.

Trucks. In Germany, trucks can travel at a maximum speed of 100KPH (62MPH) and in many places that speed may be less. Momentum is important for a truck. Any tap on the brake can slow a truck down for a long time. So when a slightly faster truck approaches a slightly slower truck they will move left and pass. There are times when a truck can take many kilometers to pass another truck and if there are hills, even longer. If the Autobahn is two lanes, the trucks will block the whole road, backing up traffic. The Germans have a phrase for this, Elephants Running.

Signage in Germany is different. If you enter I-95 in Philadelphia, you have a choice between North or South and New York or Chester. In Germany when you enter the Autobahn you have a choice between Frankfurt and Basal. There is never a direction indicator on any of the Highways even though the A5 and all the even numbered Autobahns travel North-South and the odd numbered travel East-West. If you don’t know what town/city you are traveling towards you can easily get lost. In Heidelberg it is easy for us, but on the road are we headed towards Kassal or Düsseldorf?

In counter point to the autobahn is driving on the little streets of Germany. We live on a little street and our street is in a neighborhood of little streets. On these little streets traffic moves in both directions, but there is usually not enough room for two cars and many times there are cars parked on one or both sides (legally or illegally). This means that one car has to stop and pull to the side to let the other car pass by. The other interesting aspect of driving on the little streets is that the intersections do not have stop signs. Essentially, each intersection is an all way stop and the car to your right has the right of way.

Euro 2008

The Euro2008 Fußbol championship took place from 6/7-31. Leading up to the event we were asked numerous times if we planned on watching. Before being asked we had no idea this was even taking place, so of course we watched. We watched all of the Germany games and several other games.
We have 250 cable channels and we watch less than 10 of those channels. The first challenge was to find the channel that was carrying the games. We selected a Swiss provider, which was fine as Switzerland and Austria were the co-sponsor countries of the tournament.
Sixteen teams qualified for the tourney and they were broken down into 4 groups. You play each team in your group and the best two teams move to the Quarter final round. Germany won 2 and tied 1 and moved to the Quarters as the second team in their group. Sitting in our living room with the windows open, we could hear the people at the outside at the Hendesee Bier Garden reacting to the came.
In the Quarter final Germany played Portugal. Portugal had the better record coming out of the first round and it was a close game until the very end and Germany won 3-2. Also in the QFs, Turkey beat Croatia with Penalty kicks after two overtime periods, Russia beat the Netherlands and Spain beat Italy on penalty kicks. Samantha had arrived and watched the Spain-Italy game with us and she is now a Fußbol fan. I am not sure whether she actually likes the game or just thinks the players are cute, either way we enjoyed her watching with us.
We were hoping both Germany and Spain would make it to the finals as we would be in Barcelona for the finals and wouldn’t that be fun!
Throughout the tourney, Turkey had won most of its games either on penalty kicks or on very late goals and in fact had only had the lead for all of their games for about 10 minutes. In the semi final game against Germany, Turkey took an early lead and but with 5 minutes to go, the score was 2-2 and looked likely to go into overtime. Then the seconds ticking away, Lahm (Germany) took the ball to the net for a Goal and Germany’s win.
We watched Spain’s semi the first evening in Barcelona Sitting in a Tapas bar on the Ramblas. Spain easily handled Russia for a 3-0 win. Spain looked very impressive in their win. They made nice crisp passes and there was some terrific ball handling and the goalie kept Russia of the scoreboard with some impressive saves.
Sunday night we went back to the same Tapas bar to watched the Spain-Russia game on Thursday. Germany came out fast and for the first 10 minutes most of the play was in Germany’s offensive zone. Unfortunately, there was never a player in front of the net at the same time as the ball or a Spanish player would intercept the pass. Spain scored mid-way through the first half and that proved to be the only score of the game. The German team played hard, but not well enough and the Spanish team proved to be the better team that evening and took home the championship.
The Spanish fans were in the street and cheering, but the German fans in Heidelberg celebrated more when Germany won their quarter final game. We were on the Ramblas, which is Main Street Barcelona. I really expected to see wall-to-wall people cheering. On CNN we saw a woman in her 20’s interviewed about how wonderful this all was and how she was going to party, but she had to go to work the next day. If the Phillies win the World Series this year (or even the NL Championship) that is not a comment I would expect to hear.

Judy's visit and Berlin - August 2008

Pam’s Aunt Judy came to Europe for two weeks. She came to stay with us for a week and was then traveling to France for the wedding of a friend’s daughter. She flew in Tuesday to Frankfurt via Paris and arrived with no problems. Sparing the details, we showed Judy around Heidelberg and she was very impressed and loved Heidelberg.
On Thursday we took the train to Berlin which she was interested in visiting. The weather did not look promising for the weekend, calling for rain on Friday and Saturday. We took the train from Mannheim to Berlin and arrived in Berlin after about a five hour trip. We stayed at the NH Hotel – Friedrichstraße which is very nicely located and is close to the Friedrichstraße train station.
The three of us enjoy spending time walking around getting to know a city and we did a lot of walking. Berlin is a city of about 3.5 million people and is physically the same size as the 5 burroughs of NYC without all the water to break it up. The city sits along the river Spree and also has a few canals. Before 1871, Berlin was a minor Prussian city, but after the Franco-Prussian War, Wilhem I decided to make Berlin his capital (Hauptstadt). This changed everything. After defeating the French, Germany, as part of the treaty, was awarded the provinces/states of Alsace and Lorraine as well as a boatload of money. In a very short while, Berlin morphed from a sleepy small city to the largest city in the newly united Germany.
We were in no hurry getting started Friday morning. After breakfast, Pam and Judy headed out for some tourist locations, the Brandenburg Gate, The Holocaust Memorial and Museum and then some shopping on Friedrichstraße. I was going to use Friday to do some family research at the Zentrum und Landesbibliothek Berlin (ZLB). Upon arriving there, I quickly determined that the best they could do for me was to show me the on-line address database which I had already found and used. They did though lead me to the Berlin Landes Archiv. Berlin Zentrum is in the middle of town (Mitte) while the Landes Archive is near the Tegel airport. At this point I was under a little bit of a time constraint as the archive closes at 3pm on Fridays so I took a taxi.
The taxi driver was an East German and we chatted along the way. I asked him if and what he misses about the old GDR. He responded that he misses the subsidized rents, inexpensive mass transit and other social programs. I think for many old communist countries, those are the things which people have the hardest time letting go.
The Landes Archive is huge. I was directed to a desk where I could be helped. My inquiry is not unique and I filled out a form listing the people I wanted to research and returned the completed form and was told it would be several months before I would hear something.
After returning to town I met Pam and Judy in a shopping gallery on Friedrichstraße. It was rainy and nasty so we decided to head back to the hotel before dinner. Friday night’s dinner wound up being an inexpensive dinner at a Doner Kepab place. Pam had a nice salad while Judy and I had Doners . A Doner is similar to Greek Gyro and these were particularly good Doners.
Saturday morning dawned with bright sunshine and high clouds. We were up and out early so that we could go to the Reichstag early and beat the crowds. The Reichstag was built in the 1890 by Wilhelm I to house the Budestag (Paliment). The Reichstag was burnt down in February 1933 by a young Dane who did not have enough money to make to travel to the USSR. Hitler seized upon this as a Jewish conspiracy and forced force the Enabling Act and assumed dictatorial power in Germany. After German unification in 1991, the Reichstag was completely renovated and a dome returned to the top of the building.
After leaving the Reichstag, we took the S-Bahn to a flea market in another part of town. Here we met up with Mike Cullen. Mike was a friend of Pam’s Mother from High School. Pam’s Dad has recently been in touch with him and suggested we meet him. Mike has been in Berlin since 1962 and he is the world’s leading authority on the Reichstag and on the Brandenburg gate. He worked on the renovation of both buildings and was a major advocate of returning a dome to the Reichstag (but is not a big fan of the Glass and Metal Dome).
We all piled in to his car and we headed west out of town towards Wannsee. The Wannsee is a large lake west of Berlin near Potsdam and was identified as a place where many of the Prussian Aristocracy and Military leadership resided. At the Wannsee Conference in 1942, the Nazi’s laid out the plan for the extinction of Jews from Europe, starting in the west and moving to the East. The location of the conference has been preserved as a museum.
We had lunch at a Villa that looks on the Wannsee, it was a little windy and a little chilly, but the setting was gorgeous and we all enjoyed lunch. After lunch we continued around the lake to the location of the Potsdam Conference, the Schoß Ceciliahof. This location was chosen as it was one of the largest facilities available that was undamaged after the war. At the Potsdam conference, the US, UK and USSR divided post war Europe.
At this point the weather was getting worse and we headed back into town. On the way back we stopped at the Grunewald Bahnhof (train station). This is where the Jews of Berlin were put on trains and taken east to Camps in Poland (before 1941 they were taken to local camps in Spandau and Sachsenhausen). From the first train on April 14th 1942 with 67 people (destination Warsaw) to the last train on March 27, 1945 with 18 people (destination Theresienstadt) three weeks before the Russians entered Berlin. The siding on Track 17 is preserved and each train is represented by a steel plate on the siding indicating numbers. It is a quiet memorial that not many people know about, making it an all the more powerful. Grunewald is also home to a mountain of debris. Instead of going through the debris of the destroyed buildings and use the usable materials there, the Allies, dumped all of the material into a pile 120 meters high.
A former MRP colleague was also in Berlin this weekend (he spent two weeks in Croatia a week in Austria and then a week in Berlin). We had made tentative plans to meet Nathan for dinner. He took the U-Bahn (subway – Unter or Under) to Friedrichstraße and we met him in the lobby of the hotel. We walked over to Orienburgerstr and had a very nice dinner at an Indian restaurant. Nathan and I made tentative plans to get together Monday morning.
Sunday morning also dawned nicely and we were slow in getting started at there were no plans and no need to hit the streets quickly. During breakfast we decided on a plan, we would walk around. Judy has a friend whose family owned a building in Prenzlauerburg, not far from where my family also owned a building. After stopping by that building, we continued to walk around the neighborhood. We all agreed that we liked the area and that it has a little of the same feel as Greenwich Village – cute boutique shops, art galleries, nice little restaurants with people eating al fresco. The big difference being that the streets and sidewalks are much wider.
Sunday night we went to the Hotel Adlon for a drink. The Adlon was built in the 1880’s as a top of the line hotel for Berlin, because a major world capital needs lots of nice hotels. After opening, the hotel burnt down a month later, but was quickly rebuilt. The Adlon is on the Pariser Platz near the Brandenburg Gate and the British Embassy. The US Embassy had been around the corner but since 2001 has been moved for security reasons. The cost for three drinks was 45€. Judy also wanted to see Check Point Charlie. Check Point Charlie had been the checkpoint in the American Zone between East and West Berlin. We could not find anywhere satisfactory to eat on the way over so Judy spent time there and then we went to an Italian place around the corner.
Monday morning after breakfast, I called Nathan and we made a plan. I walked Judy to the bus stop where she would catch the bus to the Tegel Airport (the best way to get to the airport) and then I started walking around Berlin and made my way over to the Dunkin Donuts near the Sony Complex at the Potsdamer Platz. I found Nathan upstairs at the DD doing email. I wanted to go by Holsteiner Str. 6 which is shown in the address book at a piece of property my family owned. It sits near the North West corner of the Tiergarten right along the river. We took a Taxi there. What we found was a residential building that looks onto the Spree in a lovely residential neighborhood and new office building across the street.
Nathan wanted to see the Tiergarten, so we walked back through the Tiergarten and walked by the Reichstag and then up Wilhelmstr. It was getting on towards lunchtime and I was meeting Pam in the lobby of the hotel at 2pm. We found a nice Vietnamese Restaurant where to have our lunch and then we walked back to the hotel where Pam had just arrived (earlier than expected). We said our goodbyes to Nathan and made our way to the Hauptbahnhof.

Ryan's Graduation

On Thursday May 22nd I spoke with my mother who told me that after Ryan’s Graduation there was a dinner being planned with the family of, Tahra, Ryan’s girlfriend. I really felt that I should go. I checked out the cost of flying and found a good flight. I purchased my ticket and was to fly home on Wednesday May 28nd. I called Mom and made my reservation at che’ Mom. I also made arrangements to have dinner at my Uncle Pete’s that Thursday night.
I arrived in Philly Wednesday afternoon and Mom met me at the Airport. We took a taxi back into town as I had two suit cases, one which was completely empty and was so I could bring stuff back to Germany. I got settled in and relaxed and then walked up to the train to go to Pete’s where he would meet me at the station in Media.
We arrived at their house and was greeted by Ranger, the Puppy who I had met the once when he was only a few months old. Ranger did not remember me and started barking (which is about all a Lab will do) until Vader and Bruno came up to me sniffing and licking, obviously pleased to see me. We had a very nice dinner and a pleasant evening together and was returned to the station for the train back into town.
Sam, Mom and I got up early on Saturday and headed out to Delaware for Ryan’s graduation. As we ran into traffic exiting from I-95, Mom received a call from David (my Brother) asking where we were and telling us where he was sitting. When we arrived at the stadium, the Graduates were seated but none of the speeches had started yet. As were walking up the stairs to seats, David grabbed my arm and said, “Aren’t you in the wrong country?”
Following the main ceremony, Ryan went directly to his departmental ceremony. Mom, Sam and I walked over to the building where the graduates were already at their seats waiting for the signal to sit down. Ryan had obviously been one of the last graduates in line as he was sitting in the very last row on the aisle. Sam spotted him first and she and I walked towards him. His expression when he saw me was priceless.
After the graduation we went to dinner with the Silberstein’s and Tahra’s family. There were a lot of proud parents and grandparents around the table. I sat across from Tahra’s father,Tim and we had a very nice conversation.
It was quite a nice trip home. I got to see lots of people and do lots of things and totally surprised most of my family with my trip home.