Beginner Tips for Rome

I do not claim to be an expert on Rome after one visit. However, I know how many blog posts and articles I read during the months before our trip, and I thought I'd let you all know what we learned during our five days there in case it can be of use to anyone.

Let me lay out a couple of financial facts so you can decide now if you want to read what I have to say or not.

1. We stayed in a hotel for four nights. Total cost: €408 including Rome City Tax.
2. We spent €128 on entrance fees for all the attractions we visited.
3. We booked tickets to the Colosseum, Roman Forum, and Palatino as well as the Vatican online. The Vatican charges an online booking fee of €4 per person.
4. We spent €34 total on transportation, including to and from the airport.
5. We spent €210 on meals, snacks, and beverages during the five days, (four days, really, since days 1 and 5 were only partial days), so roughly €26 per person per day.
6. We did not do any shopping beyond popping into 2 or 3 touristy shops. 
7. We did not participate in the night life of Rome. After dinner we went to bed!
8. Our total expenses for the two of us for five days, not including the hotel or flights, came to €395.
9. The attractions we saw which required a fee to enter were: the Colosseum, Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, Vatican Museum & Sistine Chapel, Keats - Shelley House Museum, Capitoline Museums, Mamartine Prison, and the Protestant Cemetery (donation requested). 
10. For us, room and board came to €77 ($95) per person, per day. Rick Steves says one can get by comfortably in Rome for €116 ($145) per person per day for R&B, and "students and tightwads can enjoy Rome for as little as €52 ($65) a day" - so I think we did pretty well.

Ok, so if all that sounds reasonable enough to you that you think we might be able to offer some good tips, read on.

Guide Books

Get yourself two good guide books! Honestly, I think Rick Steves became my new best friend during those days in Rome. We opted not to buy the audio guide for the Vatican Museum but read his chapter on it as we went through. He encourages travelers to browse beyond his comments, but he focuses on the highlights, which is really enough for the average tourist. We also downloaded his free audio guides for the Colosseum, Roman Forum, Sistine Chapel, and the Pantheon, which we found very good! He's rather dorky at times, but truly helpful. It was Rick who recommended the restaurant where we had our best meal in Rome, not far from our hotel - Ristorante da Giovanni.

Our other one was perfect for us because we did so much of Rome on foot. It's pictured above: National Geographic's Walking Rome, the Best of the City: a Step-by-Step Guide. That book is divided by neighborhood and directs readers from one highlight to the next within each area. Both books give helpful general travel tips and included maps and guides to buses, trams, and the Metro.

Getting to and from the Airport

Unless you have money to burn or are very short on time, take the Terravision Bus. It costs €8 per person round trip and it takes an hour from Fiumicino airport to Termini Station even in crazy, heavy traffic. We bought a one-way ticket to the City Center for €5 because we weren't sure about our return trip, then ended up paying €6 for the return trip, buying the ticket at Termini Station. Taking the Leonardo Express train saves you half an hour but costs €14 per person per trip.

Hotel

We stayed at the Bailey's Hotel on Via Flavia, which is an easy  10- to15-minute walk to the Spanish Steps and the same to or from Termini Station. It was a modest hotel with very friendly personnel, an absolutely fine breakfast buffet, a nice room, an elevator if you need that, and it was quiet. I read that some rooms don't have windows or windows that don't open, but ours did. We stayed in a twin deluxe room, to which we had been upgraded for free by booking directly with the hotel and simply asking if they had any special offers when we booked a few months ago. 

On the day we left there was a transportation strike which pushed our flight later, and the concierge on duty early in the morning was very helpful in making some phone calls for me and helping assure me that we would be able to get to the airport in time. They also stored our suitcases after check-out so that we could do some more exploring without having to drag them around with us.

Bailey's is located far enough away from main attractions that the price is reasonable (but close enough that walking is totally manageable) and it's quiet enough, there are several decent restaurants and pizzerias nearby, and the neighborhood felt safe to me.

Rome City Tax

As I understand it, this is a tax charged to all hotel guests staying in Rome ("to help pay for repairs and maintenance to the city" - see link below) and is NOT included on the prices hotels list on their websites although they collect it when you check out. When I booked the hotel a few months ago, the tax was €3 per person per night. On  September 1st, apparently, the tax doubled to €6 per person per night. So €48 of the €408 we paid was this Rome City Tax. It's not the hotel's fault that this tax exists, so don't get upset with them when you check out. You want to figure that in to your anticipated expenses, though, and perhaps ask when you check in what the current tax is in case it has increased again.

a view from the Gianicolo Hill

Roma Pass

We opted not to get the 3-day Roma Pass for €36, and with that decision we nearly broke even. We paid an additional €12 for bus/metro tickets, but we visited none of the attractions covered by the Roma Pass beyond the Colosseum and the Capitoline Museums (which, according to the terms of the Roma Pass, would have been free for us). The Vatican is not included in the Roma Pass, nor is transportation to and from the airport.

By no means am I poo-pooing the Roma Pass! Just make sure you check into what attractions it covers and make sure those are on your list of things you want to see before buying it thinking you'll save money on entrance fees. If you plan to do most of your in-city traveling by overcrowded buses, trams, and trains, it may also be worth it. We took four rides - one bus ride from which we fled at the second stop and gladly walked the rest of the way to where we were going - and three Metro rides (passing on two trains and waiting for the next because they were just too full). Yes, we were tired from miles and miles of walking, but so what? We saw more on foot than we would have on buses and the Metro.

Circus Maximo (Ben Hur!) and the Palatine Hill

Getting around in Rome

Explore  Rome on foot. You will see more, and there is something to enjoy and/or photograph around every corner and down every street. To get to the main attractions at the time when you have an appointment, take the Metro. A ticket costs €1,50 for buses, trams, and the Metro for as many transfers as you need within 90 minutes from validating, and you can buy these tickets in most tobacco shops and kiosks. Always validate your ticket by sticking it into a machine (on entering the Metro station, on every bus - and probably on every tram as well, though we didn't take any trams). Avoid Bus # 64 like the plague - it's a touristy bus which Rick Steves warns is also a haven for pickpockets, and it's so crowded you will never stand as close to strangers anywhere else in your life.

Road signs (identifying which road you're standing on) are stone plaques on the corners of buildings at about first-floor level. It took us an embarrassing four hours or so to figure this out.

Being a Pedestrian in Rome

Mopeds don't have to obey any traffic lights, signs or rules that I am aware of. Pedestrians who wait for the light indicating it's safe to cross are visitors. Cars and buses will usually stop for pedestrians crossing streets to avoid messing up their cars and delaying their mad dash to wherever the hell it is they're going, but it's generally a good idea to cross at the pedestrian crossings (Zebrastreifen, in German). Don't wait for the vehicles to stop - just step into the crossing, make eye contact with the approaching drivers if possible (they're less likely to bash into people who look into their eyes), and stride confidently - and quickly - to the opposite sidewalk. 

Good luck and be careful.

Private Tours

In front of the main attractions you will find lots of tour guides vying for your attention and business, offering personal tours providing lots more information than you will want to read on the posted signs throughout the attractions. We did not bite, so I cannot speak to the quality of these tours. I can tell you that in the Vatican Museum, where we walked through rooms skipping some displays and stopping to read about others (on signs or in our Rick Steves book), one of these tour guides went zooming past us with a family stopping here and there to explain something and then saying, "Ok, can we move on now?" They went through even faster than we did, and we only looked at the highlights. My suspicion is that they want to go through quickly because that allows them to find another group to hire them. Logically, the more tours they do in a day, the more money they make.

I asked one tour guide in front of the Vatican Museum what the cost was, and he said €20 (I assume per person, but didn't ask). If you don't have a good guide book, don't want to buy the cheaper audio guide provided by the museum, and/or want a more personal tour with someone who can answer your questions, then give them a try. I don't like pushy salespeople and I don't like people getting in my face when I've decided for myself how I'm going to do something. Just know that there will be tour guides trying to get your business, and they can smell hesitance. If you make eye contact and sound unsure with your "No, thanks," you'll have a hard time shaking them.

inside the Pantheon

Peddlers

Here's my daughter's advice about the peddlers on every street and piazza selling whatever is currently hot - this year selfie sticks, portable chargers, and scarves: Do not make eye contact, and do not answer them in any way if you do not want to buy what they are selling. Have a stern (or downright nasty) look on your face, and if they don't go away continue to ignore them and do not, for the love of all that's holy, smile politely. I sucked at all of that, though I did wonder what went through their heads as they approached me while I was taking a photo with my Canon DSLR. Uh...this camera won't fit on that stick. I actually said that to one of them, which elicited a reproachful "MOM!" from my daughter.

What to See

Of course you want to see the main attractions on your first visit. But don't miss the free stuff and the lesser-known churches. That's where your guidebooks will help you. And here's something I wish I had done - when you go into a church (and I swear, every one is beautiful inside), make sure you know what it's called before you leave, and write it down including the time when you were there (to compare with your camera's data). Then you won't have pictures later on with captions like "a pretty church in Rome." There are more churches in Rome than days of the year, and you probably won't be able to find out after your trip the name of the churches you took pictures of if you don't make note of them right away.

a pretty church in Rome
(See what I mean?)

Meals

As I wrote above, we spent €210 on food and drinks during those five days (call it four because we only needed dinner on the first day and lunch on the last). On the first day we bought a six-pack of water bottles and took one with us each day. We were able to sit outside during the day and even one evening, which was nice for us in December! 

We always looked for a restaurant at least a few blocks away from tourist attractions, and went in where we saw & heard locals. Per a tip I read, we avoided places with lots of English outside and especially with pictures of menu items displayed near the door. We found the prices reasonable. My daughter stuck to Coca-Cola, and I had one or two glasses of wine in a day plus sparkling water.

We were not blown away by the deliciousness of the food, but we tried all the dishes we'd intended to - Spaghetti Pomodoro, Gnocchi, Pizza, Calzone, Spaghetti Carbonara, Tortellini, and Tiramisu - and the meals were good. My favorite meal, at Ristorante da Giovanni, was Abbacchio romano arrosto (roast lamb), my daughter had Saltimbocca ala Roma (veal with prosciutto and sage), and we shared a piece of Tiramisu. With drinks that bill still only came to €38 ($47). It is definitely possible to eat good and filling meals in Rome without breaking your wallet.

Neopolitan-style Pizza
with tomatoes, mozzarella and basil

Abbacchio romano arrosto
Food noises were heard...

Tipping

You'll read in most tour books that Italians don't tip and it's not expected in restaurants in Rome. We found this to be true. Several times we were able to give an extra Euro, but most often, even when I handed the waiter the check and the money, smiled and said "Grazie!", he gave back the extra Euro or two. We always strove to avoid the touristy restaurants and find ones off the beaten path with local-sounding people in them, so it's possible the ones that lure tourists expect tips.

I think that covers what I would tell first-time visitors to Rome based on our experience. If I think of anything else, I'll post an addendum.

The trouble with planning ahead

I've been traveling overseas since 1986, though my trips only became relatively frequent in 2000. The first time I flew internationally (that was back when there was still a smoking section in the back of the plane!) I thought air travel was FABULOUS! The feeling of taking off, landing in a different country just nine hours later, soaring above the clouds... It was like magic. I've hated flying just a little bit more each time after that, aided by several airplane disaster movies and some article I read that explained that the two most dangerous times during a flight are...you guessed it - take off and landing. Now I hold my breath and squeeze my arm rests into squishy limpness during both phases, trying to convince myself of what everyone else says - that I have a better chance of surviving this flight than the drive from the airport to my parents' house.

Yep, I hate flying. It's not the crying babies (I'd cry too, if it wouldn't make me look like a dork), it's not the food (I've cooked and eaten worse at home than what I've been served in coach), it's not the incredibly annoying other passengers ("Can I put my Bloody Mary on your tray during this turbulence since my tray is filled up with my laptop?"), it's not the horrific ick in the bathrooms or the fact that I can't sleep on planes (not even in business class). It's mainly that I never took physics in school and can't wrap my brain around how this steel beast can actually defy logic and fly rather than plummeting to the earth or ocean floor because the wind shifted.

I unpried my fists from my armrests long enough to shoot a picture of clouds
during one of my favorite moves - the sharp turn.

But hey, when you're an expat, you gotta go back every now and then. This June while I was chatting with a friend in Wisconsin about the World Cup soccer game going on, I decided on a whim to consider booking a trip back to Wisconsin to see my friends and family. The last time I was there was August 2013. I got the green light from M - though believe it or not he is not the type who gets fired up about his wife being gone for a stretch of time (and it's not just about having to fold his own laundry) - and booked a two-week trip for November.

I chose November to avoid this.
(That's my daughter's car in my parents' driveway, Feb. 2013)

I always book trips months - even up to a year -  in advance because I like to get my plans in the calendar and I think prices are usually cheaper months in advance rather than last minute. I suck at spontaneity anyway. I always have.

In June there was not much talk about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and there were no major strikes going on in the train and plane world in Germany. Fast forward to today, and I'm starting to think that maybe I should embrace last-minute travel after all. My mom asked me yesterday if I'm going to wear a mask on the plane. I probably won't, since doing so won't keep the plane in flight anyway. And doesn't everyone have to remove the masks to eat? So...during those 20 minutes of dinner, do the spores or droplets just hang out in the bathrooms waiting for us all to put our masks back on?  We are exposed to all kinds of deadly filth on planes, and I have to say I'm not more worried about Ebola than other diseases people bring on board. As I understand it, this strain of Ebola is not yet airborne anyway, which makes masks useless.

And then there are the strikes in Germany. I haven't actually been keeping track, but I think the train engineers have striked (struck?) three times in the last 3 weeks and Lufthansa pilots have been on strike twice in two weeks, including right now. They started with the short-stretch flights, but I read last night that the long-haul pilots will walk out today. Of course each individual strike is short term and won't last until November, but since the engineers and pilots seem to be playing leap-frog with their strikes (Thursday pilots, Friday through Sunday engineers, Monday short-flight pilots, Tuesday long-flight pilots...), heaven knows whose turn it will be when it's my time to fly back or return. When I fly home, I'll be flying from Chicago to Frankfurt with my daughter and then we're taking the train from there to Stuttgart. So I'm already wondering whether hitch-hiking is a viable option.

If I could have foreseen what is going on these days I would not have booked a trip back to Wisconsin in November. But this trip is about spending time with friends and family without any other obligations, stocking up on affordable clothes (everything except for Nutella and Gummibärchen is cheaper in the U.S.), and getting my hair trimmed (for a "trim" I pay at least €40/$50 here, and that's just not ok). It will be nice to be in Wisconsin to visit my kids and family and have some girlfriend time, but I'm already dreading the actual travel. 

Here's hoping the flights will be tolerable, the pilots will be well-rested, and the unions will schedule their strikes around my travel plans.

Public Transportation in Germany: the good and the bad

Having lived in Smalltown, Wisconsin until moving to Germany, I don't have much experience with public transportation in the U.S.. In three of the four Smalltowns I lived in there were city buses, but they didn't connect neighboring towns and I don't know anyone who ever rode the city buses as an adult.

There is a train that cuts through Wisconsin, but you need a car to get to the train stop (it was an hour's drive [72 km] from my town). We have taken several groups of German exchange students by train to Chicago, but that requires first a one-hour drive from Sheboygan to downtown Milwaukee to get the train.

Basically if you don't have a car in the U.S. (except in the big cities - I have to assume public transportation is good enough there), you're stuck in the town where you live. My children attend college in Appleton, WI and Green Bay, and my parents live in Sheboygan. That is roughly 60 miles or 96 kilometers from either college and takes an hour or more by car, but there is no way for them to visit my parents without a car or hitching a ride with someone who has one.

I have mentioned many times that one of the wonderful things about life in Germany is that I can get anywhere I want to go by train or bus. I've been pondering the good and bad of train and bus travel for a while and decided that today would be the perfect day to write about it since the Deutsche Bahn engineers are going on strike tonight.

The executive summary of this post is that with public transportation, someone else does the driving, and there is not a single negative aspect of train and bus travel that can trump that one advantage (for me).

For those who want to read on, I'll start with the negatives so that I can end with the positives.

What's not so great about traveling by train and bus

1. You have to reckon with delays for various reasons - construction, accident, downed trees after a storm, stupid people pulling the emergency stop as a prank which causes a domino-effect of delays on multiple tracks, strikes... If you're lucky you find out about these delays before you travel, but sometimes you just get stuck in a station somewhere, on a train, or at a stop. It has not happened often to me, but it happens.


2. Travel by train takes longer than by car in many cases. Add the usual two to four traffic jams on the Autobahn, though, on a one-hour drive, and the difference really isn't that significant.


3. You spend time waiting, which is why I always have a book with me when I travel. You get off your train and then may have to wait 20 minutes for the bus to your neighborhood. If I have to wait longer than it would take me to walk home, I walk - 2.5 miles, uphill all the way; only takes about 45 minutes, 75 if the day is hot and I stop for a beer along the way.


4. You will, on occasion, encounter loud, obnoxious fellow passengers, which is something you don't have to deal with if you're driving alone in your car. I once had a guy opposite me sucking and slurping loudly on one piece of hard candy after another, and I was tempting to reach over and slap him repeatedly. I finally got up and changed cars.


5. The temperature is out of your control. It can get pretty stuffy on buses or train cars on hot days, though many have air conditioning.


6. Germs. Most people probably wouldn't think about this, but I can practically feel the filth climbing onto my skin when I have to touch anything on a train or bus, such as a bar to steady myself as the vehicle starts or stops. This probably comes partly from teaching high school students for 16 years and having to remind kids to cover their mouths when they sneeze. Seriously, kids, I have to tell you that??


7. Stinky passengers. Some people apparently don't feel the need to clean themselves or don't have the means to, and it's possible you'll have someone sit down next to you who smells unpleasant. You always have the option of pretending you're getting out at the next stop, and just picking a new seat in an adjoining car.


8. It is crowded at times, which may mean that you'll have to stand for a bit and wait for an open seat. This is really not the end of the world, but compared to the comfort of sitting in your own car, I have to acknowledge it as a drawback.

Then again, I once got on an empty S-Bahn headed to Herrenberg through Stuttgart.

What's GREAT about traveling by train and bus

1. As I've said, you can get pretty much everywhere in Germany by bus and/or train. If I want to visit and explore a town for a day, I check the schedule online, buy a ticket, and go. If I drive myself to the Bahnhof instead of taking the bus, it costs me only €1,50 to park in the Bahnhof lot for 24 hours (a benefit of living in a small community - in Esslingen I think parking is €1,50 per hour!).


2. NO STRESS! Driving here is terribly stressful (for me) at best. Parking is a royal pain in that you're unlikely to find a spot on a street, and the parking garages are tight and narrow for the kind of car we have (I think it would qualify as a mid-size car). When I take the train I don't have to worry about any of the things that make me panic while driving, and I'm not endangering others.


3. No winter weather worries! Even in Wisconsin I was nervous as hell whenever the roads were snowy or icy, which was pretty much all winter long. Snow or ice would mean a cancelled trip if it weren't for the buses and trains.

   

   Yes, even that would make me cancel a car trip.
   Who knows how long it will keep snowing??



4. I can enjoy the scenery from the train. Even the stretch from Horb to Stuttgart and back, which I take most frequently, never gets old. I can't enjoy anything when I'm driving - most definitely not the scenery.


5. I can also enjoy a glass of wine with lunch. That may sound strange to American readers, but having a glass of wine or beer with lunch is not uncommon here. I can do without it, too, but it's nice to have the option. I would not dare touch a drop of alcohol at lunch if I needed to be driving on German roads three hours later.


6. Although I have to allow for the possibility of delays, I can say with relative certainty when I will arrive somewhere to meet someone. The train I'm taking to Tübingen on Friday is scheduled to leave Horb at 11:24 and arrive in Tübingen at 11:54. If I were ballsy enough to drive there, I wouldn't have any idea how long it would take to get there and then find a parking place. I don't even have to think about that - I can leave my house at 11:00 and I'll be at the Bahnhof in Tübingen less than an hour later.
   
   
   


7. It's more environmentally friendly than driving by car. The way I see it, the trains and buses are running anyway whether I'm on them or not. Every car on the road is using one type of energy resource or another, and if I drive instead of go with the train that's already scheduled to drive that stretch (Horb to Esslingen, for instance), I'm doing more harm to the environment than good.


8. There is a WC (restroom) on most trains. I don't like to use them, but in case of urgent need, it's there. There's no WC in the car.


9. I can read, sleep, plan my day, make a shopping list, eat and drink, write a blog post, and meet people (this is highly unlikely in my case but might appeal to others) while traveling by train. None of that works behind the wheel.

This bus stop is a four-minute walk from home,
and I'm down at the Bahnhof in nine minutes..

All told, I'll take public transportation over driving any day.

What did I miss?

Diese Woche in Kürze / Week in a Nutshell

31. August, 2014

This week I...

• ...wrote letters to my children, who are now both in college. The hand-written kind of letters, sent via snail mail, that take 5-7 days to arrive.


• ...startled my husband, who was watching TV in the living room, with a shocked gasp when I discovered a typo in a blog post I had just published. I apparently used my "OMG, SPIDER!" noise, because he leapt out of his massage chair to rescue me.


• ...spent a day in Stuttgart (walking through the Rosensteingarten, a huge park) and Herrenberg (wandering the Altstadt). Forgot to turn off my GPS tracker when I got on the train - AGAIN! - so the data is screwed up and I don't know how to fix it.


• ...wrote the following memo: "Seriously, Fruit Flies, STOP drowning yourselves in my wine! I'm sick of it! And what is that noxious odor of nastiness you emit when you expire? Knock. It. OFF!" They didn't get the memo.


• ...linked two of my day trip blog posts in a blog hop on Young Germany. Wondered whether I should be participating; I'd hardly call myself young!


• ...wished from afar that I could have helped my son move into his college dorm on Thursday. Unlike a lot of parents who lose their minds a little when a kid (especially the youngest) goes off to college, I am nothing but totally excited for him and can't wait to hear about his experiences - the ones he's willing to tell me about.


• ...learned that a 9-year-old accidentally shot and killed her weapons instructor with the Uzi (a semi-automatic machine gun?) he was teaching her to fire at the Bullets and Burgers gun range in Arizona, USA during a family vacation. Just when I thought I'd heard the most ridiculous of U.S. gun "regulations," I find out that children as of age 8 are allowed to fire semi-automatic weapons in Arizona. Boy, was I cheated out of a childhood. My parents didn't even let me play with matches at that age. All I had were dolls, model horses, and stuffed animals.


• ...rode the Stuttgart U-Bahn for the first time.


• ...attempted, with M's help, to bake my first Zwetschgendatschi (Bavarian plum cake) with Zwetschgen the neighbor shared with us from his plum tree. It wasn't bad!

• ...successfully created and inserted a table on a page of my blog, so now I have a list of German words I commonly use here along with the English translations.

• ...for the fifth time this summer, did not go to the historical city tour of Horb as I had planned. The first time I got the meeting point wrong. Twice, including today, it was chucking down with rain. Once there was a town festival going on and I couldn't find a place to park. Another time we'd had a big lunch at our favorite restaurant and I crashed on the sofa instead. I've got two more chances in September.





...passed on another opportunity to drive on the Autobahn to Esslingen.

Getting Around in Germany

We live, as I've already explained, in a very small town. The somewhat larger town of Horb lies in the valley below and has a train station.  The station is probably a 40-minute walk from our house, or an 8-minute drive.  From this station I can get to any city or town in Germany that I want to visit, relatively easily. I don't need a car to leave town and go somewhere shopping for a day.

My daughter and parents are coming to visit in December, and they would like to see some Christmas markets during their stay. Martin will be in the office most of the time, and I'm still not comfortable driving, especially long distances. In Wisconsin, this would have been a problem, and we would have spent a lot of time sitting at home. Here all we have to do is get down to the train station, and we can go to Nürnberg, Ludwigsburg, Konstanz, Esslingen, Stuttgart, Freiburg, and any number of charming towns.  We can get to the small nearby towns by bus, and the bus stop is a 4-minute walk from our house. The bus schedule is available online, so we don't even have to stand around and wait at the bus stop.

This is one of the brilliant things about life in Germany - the accessibility of public transportation. In Fond du Lac (Wisconsin), one is stuck if he doesn't have a car. There are buses in Fond du Lac, but I never met a person in 19 years of living there who used them. Oshkosh is 20 minutes away by car and has nice opportunities for shopping, but if you don't have a car or know someone who does, you can't get there.

Martin's mother has been staying with us for a few days, and tomorrow she takes the train back to Esslingen. It will cost her €8.40 ($10.80), and the trip takes about 75 minutes.  She doesn't like driving out of Esslingen, and so if it weren't for the train, she wouldn't be here unless Martin had driven there to pick her up.

When I go to Esslingen without Martin, I take the train. I always bring a book, but I usually nod off for a nap. I couldn't read or sleep if I were driving! Driving in Germany is no fun anyway. The roads are packed with cars, campers, and semis, and although there are sections of the Autobahn where there is no speed limit, there are so many cars on the road, constructions zones, and traffic jams that one rarely has a chance to drive faster than 70 mph. Besides that, parking is a big pain. Parking garages are your only hope, and squeezing into those tight spots takes some real talent or a Smart car.

It's just one more reason why I feel lucky to live here - I live in a small, quiet town where there's next to nothing going on, and I don't drive much yet. If I get bored and have a free day, I can choose a town to visit and buy a train or bus ticket for a day trip there and back. It usually takes longer than driving by car, but it's convenient and makes travel possible even for those who don't drive.

Checking the arrival time

Since I still don't plan on driving further than to and from the train station in Horb anytime soon, I am grateful for the accessibility of the buses and trains. I feel somewhat environmentally friendly, as well. The trains and buses are still going to be running their routes whether I'm on them or not, and leaving the car in the garage saves us gas and  doesn't cause additional air polution.

I'll use that as my main reason for not doing much driving over here!