Things I Said While Driving

“How do you put this thing in reverse?”
“Is that a yield sign? It looks like a yield sign…”
“I wonder what those triangles across the road mean…”

My rental car is a little diesel Volkswagon Golf, which I must say shoots around like a German V1 rocket. Does golf also mean wave in German as it does in Dutch? I like the thought of driving a little wave around. Of course, it does kind of look like a golf cart… Euro diesel cars are awesome.

“Why are there two lanes in the circle thingie anyway…”
“Damn it, where is reverse?”
“Weird, why is that light blinking?”

The key is strange, quite unlike the typical jagged edged key used in the U.S. It is a thin, flat bar of metal with a squiggly groove carved in either side of it, though it is used pretty much the same way. And it pops out of a plastic holder like a switch blade knife, which is kind of cool. I thought it was unusual.

“Maybe I should have figured out how to use the wipers before it started to rain…”
“I guess I’ll need to learn how to turn on the defogger about now, too. Fast.”
“Oh yeah… headlights.”

My adjustment to the scale of the city size was broken when I began driving in Kortrijk, as the narrower streets and hairpin turns presented themselves. There are a lot of “T” intersections in the city, since not everything here is built on a perfect Cartesian grid, and there aren’t many traffic control lights which as you’ll see isn’t a problem. Blocks come in several shapes and sizes, and there are quite a few slithering avenues as well. Also, there are droves of cyclists and pedestrians meandering about, particularly in the afternoon. Oddly, they sort of serve a purpose in traffic control. If you needed to turn left at a “T”, it would be very difficult to execute during the busier times of day due to the chute of tiny Eurocars zipping by. However, pedestrians stop the traffic fairly frequently in the crosswalk on your right, enabling you to turn left. Human stoplights! Ingenious! And whenever there is traffic there are a lot of pedestrians as well, so it all works together.

“Maybe they don’t have a reverse in Belgium...”
“How do you know what the direction is of the lane you’re in if they are all the same color?”
“I guess people don’t use turn signals here either.”

The roundabouts are fun, and so is driving on the sidewalk which can be done in some places here. Because of the roundabouts, one can drive for miles without stopping (so I guess this is in trade for the lack of many freeways here). They do keep traffic moving. It also seems drivers are a shave more polite, and more conscientious of pedestrians.