[Suggested music for listening to this blog is Frederica von Stade singing "The Distance Between Us" -- but I warn you it may make you cry if you listen to the words.]
I am now pretty much used to my normal commute to work, though I miss the 10 minute walking commute that I had in Chicago. The drive from home to about 1 kilometer from the office takes about 15 minutes. That last kilometer, though, can take anywhere from two minutes to 30 minutes, which is a bit frustrating. There is an on-ramp to the highway followed immediately by an offramp to Eschborn, so you have people trying to get across both lanes which is a mess. The traffic often backs up long before this point, so there are long lines of cars in both lanes waiting for the chance to enter this merger dance.
It gets better. Once you're on the off-ramp, there is a similar merge for the right hand turn lane. If you stay in the exit lane, it becomes a right turn only lane. So you have people trying to get out of that lane, and others who are already on this road trying to get into that right turn lane. So what happens in preparation for that right turn lane business is that cars form two lanes on the same single-lane exit ramp. And, of course, since this is backed up, it is often two lanes backed up to the first merge. It is a mess. Especially if you get in the wrong lane, though people are generally rather patient and good about letting people into the lanes if they signal. Proper etiquette dictates, as in many parts of the US, a simple wave in the rear view mirror as thanks for letting you in.
One of Bonnie's features, incidentally, is interruption for traffic reports. A week or so ago I found an input jack for an auxiliary audio device that is secreted in the center console. So I can hook up my iPod in there and let it play as the auxiliary. Imagine my surprise last week, though, when I was deep in the midst of the saddest, melancholy song by Frederica von Stade (today's suggested music, of course) and suddenly a hurried and somewhat harsh German voice took over the airwaves in my car. Uhhhhh???? It was the traffic report. As soon as it was over, audio on the iPod resumed. Interesting feature. Helpful, yet alarming in that particular instance as I wondered what kind of national emergency warranted taking over the airwaves!
I think I am actually starting to understand the traffic reports, but the references to a particular number of kilometers (generally 2-3 kilometers) was a bit confusing as it didn't seem to be referring to speed. I mean, if you're going 2 kilometers per hour, you're stopped, so there must be a better German reference for that, right? I asked my German language tutor and she said that it's a reference to how long the string of traffic is, like a traffic snake. Hmmm.... So essentially packed stop-and-go traffic for two kilometers or so. Interesting.
There is another important part of my commute -- my parking garage. To access the parking space in my building, I have to enter on a different street, use a credit card kind of thing to open a gate to what is otherwise a public parking garage for the grocery store adjacent to my building, and then use a remote control for a metal gate to a somewhat-secured parking area underneath my building. I say 'somewhat secured' because while cars can't get in without a remote control to open the gate, people can walk right through a gate that is never locked for security purposes and can then walk right into our building that isn't locked at that entrance (which strikes me as a security risk, which I intend to bring up with the building someday). The credit card part of this system is, to put it politely, not very good. There were several times when the gate simply would not go up, I'd have to take a ticket from the machine as if I were parking in the public area, but then it wouldn't let me out unless I paid €9 for the night. This, to put it mildly, did not please me. Particularly since there is no cell phone signal in said garage where you could call someone and rant, nor is there a control on the gate system where you can talk to an operator. Grrr.... The building's answer to my complaint was to hold the card over the reader for longer periods of time. I suspect this story may be a recurring one.
My building and those around it are still under construction (yet another reason I'm not wild about our building not being locked at one entrance), so one of the things I usually experience each morning at the credit card secured gate is the unloading of construction supplies down the ramp that I am trying to use to exit. Last week there were big heating ducts. Yesterday there were rolls of insulation cruising down the ramp. Today, it appeared to be a pallet full of drywall or perhaps insulation panels that left only a few inches on each side of the ramp as they were hauled down. I seem to always surprise them when I suddenly appear in the ramp. There are a lot of words in German (apologies, I assume) and I generally back up and let them finish. This is kind of interesting to watch because they don't have a way of getting the gate up either, so they have to duck or bend to get under the lowered gate and also drag their stuff under the gate. Anyway, then they help guide me out into the street where the truck they are unloading is pretty much illegally parked and blocking most of the street and pretty much all visibility. I suspect I will miss them when I can simply exit immediately with no smiles from cute German men to send me on my way.
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