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Control City Freak visits its 4th country and third International Road, Autobahn 3! We’re zipping diagonally across Germany with our first look at control cities across the pond!
Control City Freak is updated weekly and covers every two digit Interstate Highway in America as well as other roads. I’ll be showing control city signs on each 1 and 2 digit (2di) Interstate Highway in the continental United States and will strive to make as complete a record as possible, as well as various other highways. I’ll also be getting into the roadgeek weeds here and there, showing downtown skylines and state border crossings, and making corny jokes. I welcome all to join my geeky tour of every primary Interstate in the country!
All images of roads and signs come from Google Street View unless otherwise specified.
The Aurobahn 3 Shields comes from Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesautobahn_3#/media/File:Bundesautobahn_3_number.svg
Maps used in this video come from Google Maps https://www.google.com/maps/
Music: Acoustic Sunrise, from the Apple iMovie sounds library
“Du Hast” Rammstein
“Roll Out the Barrel” Lew Brown
Control City Freak Episodes mentioned in this video:
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Interstates, Interstate Highways, Control Cities, Signs, Roadsigns, highway nerdery, Germany, Europe, Deutschland, Netherlands, Austria, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Frankfort, Munich, Nuremburg, Regensburg, Autobahn, Duisburg
20 Comments
Frankfurt am Main (that is, Frankfurt on the Main River) is indeed the Frankfurt people know best. There is also Frankfurt an der Oder (that is, Frankfurt on the Oder River) is the other big one; it's over by the Polish border.
The phrase you didn't try to pronounce on the sign with Passau is "The city of three rivers", which is Passau's nickname.
At the NL/DE border, the Dutch word "Uit" is pronounced just like the English word "out" and means (you guessed it) "Exit/Way Out"🇩🇪🇳🇱🛣
You should wait until 515 is part of I-11 to do it
I think you should reboot I-15 when the chief’s play in Vegas. The only other places it goes to with a football team that it goes to have other fish to fry like I-5, I-8, and I-10. If you do I have 3 or 4 exit requests depending on the direction you go
I knew the NFL was playing in London but I had no idea they now have games in Germany.
I already requested a exit for the parkway in ky on mountain PKWY when when you do it exit 16 on the E470 vid the the exit request a for the ky mountain pkwy
Heh! Ausfarht. Almost sounds like an insult I'd use against someone who cuts me off on the virtual highway on The Crew 2. By the way, I read the translation. It means exit.
Tim Burton lied to us! DĂĽsseldorf in real life is NOT the quaint village with alpine wooden houses that Augustus Gloop comes from in the 2005 film.
Wouldn’t Stuttgart be a better choice for an aesthetically pleasing “Alpine” community?
Super cool to see the Autobahn on your channel, Todd! 🙌🙌🙌
Just found out Cheifs play the Pats on my birthday! Hopefully a 495 or Route 1 video!
My grandparents spent time in Germany. According to them, any place with the word "Bad" in front is where a public bath either is or use to be.
So at 2:05 the sign saying "Signalering" which in this case doesn't reflect a sign for a town/city boundary. Although you are correct that nearly identical signs do indicate town and/or city limits this way.
But this sign actually means it's the end of usage for Dynamic Message Signs. So there won't be any usage of digital road signs beyond this point (at least in The Netherlands), but only analog road signs will be in place.
You should do a video on the E40
Cool to see Germany! I like how threy do mileage signs. Larger signs than America with a couple upcoming cities and prominent highway junctions.
Limburg, Germany, has absolutely nothing to do with "Limburger Cheese". This cheese originated in the old duchy of Limburg, now a part of Belgium.
You need to do a Quebec autoroute series one day!
Next time you go back to Germany, you should do Autobahn 2, specifically from Helmstedt to Berlin. The road has a lot of history as it was the one route that allied citizens were allowed to use to get to West Berlin during the Cold War. There’s even a video you had to watch before you traveled on it. Really cool stuff!
How cool to see an Autobahn featured on CCF! Great job! Really loving the variety of roads and countries on the channel recently.
Some clarifications from a heavy user of the Autobahn network:
2:20 The entire Autobahn system (except some short near-border segments) is a tollway network, however, tolls are only charged for large vehicles (currently >7.5 metric tons in weight, >3.5 tons starting in July 2024). There's an ongoing debate about also implementing tolls for cars, but there's no agreement in sight in the near future.
3:14 That's actually an out-of-service overhead variable speed limit sign. The three smaller panels display speed limits for the three lanes, and the two larger panels in between indicate additional information or hazard signs (congestion ahead, road work, fog, etc). Automatic toll gantries can easily be identified by the large cameras on them.
7:58 Hainbach is just the name of this specific rest area. Most rest areas are named after places or towns close to them to make em distinguishable. Here, Hainbach is the name of a very small creek that runs through a nearby forest. The translation for the term "rest area" would be "Rastplatz" (smaller rest areas) or "Raststätte" (bigger rest areas with food and gas services). Actually, there are also a couple Autobahn rest areas named after far-away cities in former Prussia (part of the pre-war German Empire), like the A3 rest area "Landsberg a.d. Warthe" (named after the now Polish city of Gorzów Wielkopolski / Landsberg an der Warthe) to commemorate the flight and expulsion of German people from Central and Eastern European countries after WWII.
12:37 This picture is not on mainline A3, but on southbound A45 shortly before its intersection with A3, hence the two different directions of A3 that are signed there. A3 is a six-lane road in this area, not a four-lane.
Of note, odd numbered single digit autobahns generally run north-south while even numbered single digit autobahns generally run east-west.
At 3:13, the gantry can display variable speed limits on the square signs with warning signs (e.g., wet road, heavy traffic) on the rectangular signs.
There are no tolls on the autobahn.
Trucks are not allowed on the autobahn on Sundays. On Sunday nights just before midnight, you can see trucks stopped on the side of the highway in Belgium and the Netherlands waiting to be allowed into Germany. You won't see that in France because they don't allow trucks on the Autoroute network on Sundays, either.
On Autobahn 2, if you look closely, you can see the remnants of Checkpoint Alpha near Helmstedt. Most of it has been demolished, but a watch tower remains and an old inspection station is being used as a rest area.
The “D” at 10:57 and the “CZ” at 9:02 are to specify that the control city is in a different country (probably to avoid accidentally crossing a border). Shouldn’t matter too much because it’s the EU, but it is still a good thing to point out. We have seen things lice Vancouver BC on I-5 before.