No Speed Limits.

In a silly sort of way,  one of the things I used to look forward to when we lived in the Netherlands  was driving in Germany where,   for the most part there are "keine Geschwindigkeitsgrenzen".    That is to say,  "no speed limits".
You have to understand that that's not just everywhere on the Autobahn,  since there are posted limits in certain sections,  usually at 120 kph,  which can seem like being nearly stopped.
 There's some talk at the moment of increasing the state speed limit in Texas to 85 mph,  which comes in at around 137 kph.  That's pretty quick I suppose,  but the thing about there being sections of highway with no limit at all, is that much less time is spent checking the speedometer and instead it's more prudent to know where you are in relation to others on the road, and when it's safe to pull out to pass.  Awareness of other vehicles and their relative speed is critical.  AND,  the left lane IS the passing lane. 
One does not dawdle in the left lane.

Gawd this scheme would so NOT work in Canada!    But let's not get off on a rant here about my frustration with driving on the 400 series highways!

 Anyway,  I wasn't going to go on too much about the philosophy of no speed limits.   What I wanted to mention is that one does tend to drive at whatever speed is comfortable,  and I was surprised when I actually did check,  that we were cruising at between 160 and 165 kph.   I thought we were doing about 140.
Whatever.
I think that's one of those excuses that you try to use in North America when you do get pulled over?    In Europe they tend to just mail the ticket to your house,  or in our case to the leasing company and they then track us down.  There are no cruisers running up and down the roads burning fuel here.
That would just be wasteful.
So the trick is,  when it's posted 100 say?  you'd best be doing that,  or they'll nail you.
This would be experience talking.

The flight to Düsseldorf was uneventful.   As as matter of fact,  I was pleasantly surprised that we were on an Airbus A319,  which had proper ventilation!  I figured I could tolerate being stuffy for the hour and a half or so that it takes to get there,  but this was even better!

Not this kind....

 And not one of these.

Hey,  I take these pictures,  I have to do something with them!



When we got to the car rental counter,  we actually had a few choices,  and this is what we chose!

I took a couple pictures inside the parking garage,  but with less than stellar results.    This is outside our hotel in Hengelo.

 Of course,  in typical fashion,  renting a car at any airport usually involves walking for what seems like forever,  which is also the case in Düsseldorf.

Looking back at the terminal.

Hey!  There's a monorail!

The rental car is in that parking garage somewhere.

Long term parking?

 So the car was quite fun to drive,   and it's always neat to try some brand or other that you might never ever actually own.   The jury is out on this one.   It was comfortable,  and since it's built by BMW it had plenty of guts.   I only had some slight issues with overhead visibility when it came to traffic lights.   Just the design of the car in relation to where the wind-shield ends.   Probably if my legs were shorter and I could tuck the seat up under the steering wheel it would be fine.

We took a couple minutes to figure out the gps,  since it can be a little tricky to get through the maze of highways in that section of Germany.  We selected "UK English",  which was a little amusing from time to time considering the computerised phonetic pronunciation of the German and Dutch locations.  You'll just have to take my word for it.  It was a good thing that we had made this road trip a few times,  and only needed the gps to be sure of the various exits. 


That's it for today....

I'm going to add a few things tomorrow,  since we have company coming tomorrow night and I got "stuff"  to do.   So I need to get off the computer and get busy.




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