We didn't leave Park Inn in Kastrup early enough, this might be a bad decision, which caused us not being able to get through the traffic collapse on Autobahn later. However, it didn't end up with a bad experience.
Leaving Copenhagen, we were on the road approaching the ferry carrying us to Germany. Had we driven through Odense on land, would we have avoided the traffic collapse? I don't know. Paying 700 Danish Krone at the booth, we drove to Line 8 as assigned to wait for boarding the boat.
After approximately half an hour, we started boarding. Parking in Deck four, I was kindly reminded by the driver in front of me that I could pull ahead much closer to the bumper of his car, which made sense because cars had to be parked as compacted as possible in order to have all the cars loaded.
Predicting not to have a lunch on the road, I bought some foods and drinks at the food stand on board the boat. Sitting outside to eat, we had to secure the plates and cups to prevent them from being blown away by strong ocean winds. The ocean in this part was wide open, you couldn't see any lands for quite a long period of time.
We were wearing the shorts but didn't feel chilly because the wind actually was a bit warm though very strong. We had been sitting in the very front of the Deck until the German side of the Ocean was visible.
We finally drove onto the road in Germany, last time driving in Germany was in 2012, we drove the car around Frankfurt for two days. This time, we would drive 600 to 700 kilometers back and forth on it.
Getting onto Autobahn, I became excited gradually. As you may know, many passages on Autobahn are not speed limited, this might be because Germans produce superior cars like Mercedes, BMW, Audi, even VW and Opel are great cars in their categories too, though Opel may not be owned by Germans any more, I can't remember but don't want to waste time to check online. Another reason might be Germans probably being very responsible drivers, for instance, in the last three days, I drove on Autobahn back and forth but didn't see any accidents. However, I did drive up to 150 kilometers per hour from time to time to surpass the others. Compared to many others with German license plates, I was still a young player though not a rookie, they might constantly drive at high speed as far as I could tell. I tried to upload a video clip I uploaded to Youtube but it said that it is a duplication of an earlier upload, however, I couldn't find the earlier uploaded clip either. I guess Germans don't want me to promote their Autobahn driving culture.
The next couple of hours became a disaster. First of all, we had been stuck in the traffic for more than three hours until we reach a point where three lanes became two lanes. I wished it would have been the only barrier for the traffic but it wouldn't be true. However, during the past three hours, I learned about the differences of license plate from different EU countries. Under EU logo on each license plate, one letter or two represents each country: Naturally, I saw most of the plates with letter "D", which represents Deutschland; A man in passenger seat glanced at me when their car passed at fast lane, I noticed the letter "PL" on their license plate, which I figured it Poland; I guessed the reason he looked at me interestingly was my car's license plate is with "S", which represents Sweden and I caught several cars surpassing mine at left were also from Sweden; I did see one car with letter "B", a car from Belgium.
Just watching the clip I am about to post next, I found that I had made the right assumption about the traffic collapse while being stuck in it: Construction work in weekends.
At one point of the freeway, we were directed to a local route by both signs and GPS instructions. We followed a truck of a Dutch logistic company and I learned Dutch license plate with the letter of "NL".
Following the truck to get back onto Autobahn A1, I immediately sensed a huge parking lot: many drivers already stood by their cars watching ahead, I believed that they were not able to see anything. It's definitely no way for us to get through in another three or four hours and it was already almost six o'clock, even we could have gone through, we would not have arrived in Tilburg until midnight. At that point of time, I decided to get out to drive to A1 East, the opposite direction to go to Berlin. I hadn't booked the room in advance for the dates from 12th to 16th to keep flexibilities until 11th when I booked the hotel room in Tilburg because I was pretty sure to get there in the evening on 12th. This collapse cost me 100 bucks because the payment for the room was non-refundable.
Berlin was still almost 300 kilometers away, so at one point of the time, I was thinking to stop by Lubeck for the night. After driving on East for 10 minutes, I started telling myself: "Buddy, be calm, though this is on vacation and you have flexed your schedule for the following 4 days, your plan is to go to Tilburg to have your son visiting the University the next day. Do you really want to change it because you are mad of losing 100 bucks?" Discussing with my son for a minute and seeing a hotel at the other side of the freeway, I decided to make a U-turn on a bridge over above the freeway to go back. Though that part of the freeway was not crowded, it was under construction as well. Due to the various signs in the rains, we missed the exit to the hotel and gas station we had targeted, which drove us to drive back on Autobahn A1 West for dozens kilometers until I decided to get out to a suburban town of Hamburg.
As soon as turning right to drive into the town, I saw an Esso gas station. My original plan was to pump the gas first, then decided where we should head next. As I shared before, last time I pumped gas in Germany was three years ago but totally forgot its process. Without thinking further, I just followed the practice of cash payment at some of the gas stations in US, I walked into the store to pay for 40 liters to the gal at the counter. She probably didn't catch what I meant, so accepted 57 Euros. When I went back to the pump #15 I parked my car at, I wasn't able to pump in first try because I didn't push hard enough. At that moment, I was thinking something must be wrong. The gal went out to shout to a person at Pump #5 because she assigned my payment to that number. It ended up that I was told I had to come back the next morning to have this resolved because the gal wasn't able to figure it out in their system. Now, I actually realize, at that moment of time, what I should have done was to pump the gas anyway, then left. The gas station wouldn't lose anything and I wouldn't lose 57 euros.
Getting the information earlier from that gal, we checked in "Myaparement Hotel" across the street. The woman at the front desk was very nice to show us everything in the room. The walk-in rate might be higher but wasn't horrible and the whole environment was great.
Getting the recommendation from that attractive woman, we walked to a Greek restaurant probably 50 meters away by the same street. I wasn't sure all of those services people are Greeks or not, they seemed all very happy. We ordered Greek Steak and another Greek specialty the waiter recommended to my son. In addition to beers, they served each of us a shot of Greek liquor but my son couldn't take the taste, so I drank both.
You might think it a really bad day for us: Stuck in the traffic for hours; Not able to go to Tilburg by the end of the day; Would lose 170 bucks. But as I had shared before, my personality is that I don't mind experiencing anything, good or bad. In my life so far, I have gone through a lot of bad things in addition to good ones, I have never treated them as loss or waste. At least, we stayed in a very convenient German local hotel and ate a very delicious Greek dinner. If the guy and two gals at that restaurant are Greeks as I guessed, we know Greeks aren't all sad nowadays. By the way, I love driving to travel, that is the most enjoyable part of any trips, I also love eating different cuisines, so does my son on both. After driving and eating, I generally have enough energies to enjoy visiting museums, watching performances and walking around but my son isn't able to, so I push him to workout regularly.
Germans are not always stereotypical efficient: Last time in August, 2012 when we were stuck in the parking lot at Commerzbank Arena in Frankfurt after watching International Friendly between Argentina and Germany until 1:00am the next early morning, I had learned it. This traffic collapse proved my perception again.
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