Führerschein (Driver's License)

I passed my driving test in the summer of 1977 in Framingham Massachusetts. 31 years later, I had to take the driving test again. Why did you take a driving test again, you might ask. Well, sadly, Connecticut does not have full reciprocity with Germany. You are allowed to drive for six months with your Connecticut license, and then your car turns into a pumpkin. Irritatingly Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas and many other states have complete reciprocity. Folks from Arizona can just saunter into the Führerscheinburo (drivers license office) and say “Howdy y’all. I ain’t never driven’ nowhere but in the dessert in ma Daddy’s truck, but I’m here fer ma Führerschein!” and low and behold, they walk out with one. Ironically, even Massachusetts has full reciprocity. MASSACHUSETTS drivers! Can you believe it? But not us. We come from the backward state of Connecticut.

So, Danielle and I paid $200 for the 300 page drivers manual and warily opened it up. How bad could it be?

Signs
The first thing you have to understand here is signs. Germans love signs. There are danger signs, command signs, prohibitions signs, information signs and “additional” signs. Doesn’t sound too bad does it? OK, so danger signs; there are 54 of them in the drivers’ training manual. Command signs are a little easier… only six or seven. Then there are the 48 prohibition signs. The fun part is when they get combined so that you have prohibitions, commands, danger, information and additional signs clustered together in a confused mass. There is a brilliant photo in the book of a construction sight with seven signs plopped together. If you had about five minutes to read and comprehend them, you might be alright, but that would brake a cardinal rule here, which is to go as fast as legally possible at all times. In a city that is 50 kilometers per hour, by the way, unless otherwise indicated by a sign. ;- )

If signs were the extent of the differences, we would have no problems, but they are the tip of the iceberg. The real joy comes when you get into the nitty gritty. Here are a few precious examples.

Roof Loads
Of course you can carry a load on the roof here. Just be careful if it is longer or wider than the car. A load may only project 50 centimeters over the front of the car and it must be 2.5 meters above the street. If it projects over the back of the vehicle more that 100 centimeters then it has to be marked with a flag during the day and a red light at night. Oh, and by the way, if the load projects more than 150 centimeters, then you can not travel more than 100 kilometers, so bring a wheel barrow if grandma lives 110 kilometers away and you are taking a ladder to clean her gutters. There is more about the lateral loads and weight maximums, but I’ll spare you the details.

By the way, all of this information MIGHT be on the test, so you better memorize it.

Trailers
Hmmm, what else was fun? Oh, I know, trailers! The book has seven pages of rules about trailers. Do I own a trailer? No. Do I have a trailer hitch? No. Will I ever tow a trailer here? No. How motivated was I for these seven pages? Not!
“The vehicles must have a device for connecting vehicles.” Dahhhh, you mean I need a trailer hitch? “This device is entered in the vehicle registration book and on the vehicle registration certificate.” Kind of like the title and registration, but never carry the title in the car because if you do a Polish guy will steal your car and sell it on ebay to someone else’s grandma with clean gutters in Warsaw. “The trailer load may not exceed the permissible total mass of the car (in the case of certain all-terrain vehicles and lorries no more than 1.5 of the permissible total mass).” Put on your thinking cap, here is a question from the test.
“Where are you allowed to park a trailer with a permissible total mass exceeding 2 tons in built-up areas regularly on Sundays and public holidays between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.?”
1) In industrial areas
2) In wholly residential areas, on specially designated parking spaces
3) In special areas reserved for recreation purposes, on sufficiently wide roads
4) In the Polish ebay shopper’s drive way where it will end up after it is stolen anyway

OK, so I made four up… sorry. The border to Poland is open now and everyone keeps talking about the criminals and danger and crime ahhhh!

If you chose 3), you are WRONG! You just lost three points. 7 more and you fail!

Well, that is what happened to me the first time. I went back and checked my answers. I changed two. So thorough, so careful, so WRONG. It was a traumatic experience. But I have redeemed myself now. I studied the book like a mad man and did all 55 practice tests about 10 minutes per test. It was a great use of my time. I took the test again Tuesday and got 100%. Yee doggie. I think I will celebrate this weekend and go buy a trailer, just for the fun of parking it!