No Lights

it is dark along the A6 as I head for home. The rain helps obscure the road leaving me little doubt that the speed limit in round red lights overhead of 130 is a bit excessive. Neither the trucks nor I are going anywhere near that fast as we head in the direction of Mannheim hoping for as little problem on the journey as possible.

Certainly we don’t want the current issue of the A66 near Wiesbaden where someone is driving down the wrong side of the road. But I can see how it could happen, in the dark where there is no traffic and the road is pitch black. There are certainly no lights along the autobahn to give you an idea of direction. Nothing. Not like in Belgium or the Netherlands where the gleam of yellow energy saving lights reflect like cat’s eyes from over the road. Nor is there the orangish glare common to some of the other major roads elsewhere on the continent.

No, Germany can remain proud of its decision to not waste energy on lighting major roads which normally do not have speed limits. Those same roads, when it is dark and the fog swirls up from the fields covering the roads and obscuring that place, just a soccer field ahead of you where there was (wasn’t there?) a rather large tanker just a minute ago.

The drive was long, dark and I arrived home exhausted from a day of teaching ATLS in Landstuhl.

I have a full tank of gas and a promise that I don’t need to be there before 0900 in the morning which is good because I am more than brain fried having left home at 0530 this morning.