Jason is finally ready to let someone else have some fun on the autobahn! LOL. I get to take my turn driving as we have a 5-ish hour drive back down to Munich. But first, a shopping spree at the chocolate shop to get some gifts and an early lunch at the Donair shop. Now we are all set.
Getting out of Berlin was pretty straight forward, although I will admit that one of the roundabouts was pretty intimidating. So many lanes of traffic. So many exits. Traffic lights, bike lanes, local drivers and inexperienced drivers all rolled into one complicated set of directions. Phew…I was a little bit sweaty.
All is good though once I hit the highway. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to become comfortable driving at 170km/hour. On average. Just to keep up with the traffic. The car wasn’t shaking, my heart wasn’t pounding, it didn’t even feel like we were zooming along. It just felt right. So when we had to slow down to 120km/hr, it felt like we were in a school zone. Ha!
What I couldn’t understand was why my arrival time kept getting further and further away the faster I drove. Was there major traffic in Munich? What was happening? I should be shaving time off my route, not adding to it! Wait a second…why are all those cars stopped ahead?
*slams on the breaks*
The next 2.5 hours were spent creeping ahead about 8km until we finally got to an exit ramp the police were having us take. There was an 8 car pileup that had just happened. About a dozen ambulances whizzed past us as we were all creeping ahead. There were helicopters, police cars, police motorcycles and so many ambulances. Yikes. It can happen so fast and at the speeds we are going, the devastation would be huge.
We thought we were on our way once we got off the ramp, but nope. Now we were in a traffic jam consisting of one lane instead of four. After 30 minutes of not moving more than a couple of feet, I drove over the meridian and headed in a different direction. Sure, it took us an hour out of our, but at least we were moving.
Now we need to stop for something to eat. Jason found us a Tex Mex restaurant – margaritas and nachos were exactly what we needed. It took my 6.5 hours to get 3.25 hours away from Berlin. I had no problem handing the keys over to Jason so he could drive the last 3 hours to our friends’ house in Munich.
They were kind enough to wait up for us as we pulled into their driveway at 11:00pm, instead of 6:00pm like we had planned.
It wasn’t the day we had exactly planned, but we made it safely and we had friendly faces greeting us at our destination. And I got to drive at speeds I’ve never reached before. Yep. Good day.
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