7 Things to Know Before Driving in Germany

7 Things to Know Before Driving in Germany

The seven things you need to know before driving in Germany welcome to searching for history we’ve been thinking it would be cool to share with you guys our experiences driving in Germany so in this video we’re going to talk about our experiences and uh let you know what it’s like it really isn’t that different than in the USA but there are

Differences um they do drive on the right side of the road and a stop sign is a stop sign although pretty much everything else is different but there are some similarities number one German Road and traffic signs it’s helpful to study the signs before before you drive and it’s good to

Have a passenger or a co-pilot that can uh help you look up what signs are as you’re driving down the road cuz you know it’s not so easy for the driver to do that yeah I think there was one time where um we saw we kept seeing

Signs uh that was like a squiggly line and it was a caution sign for water over the roadway and if I hadn’t been able to look it up on my phone then we wouldn’t have known to be cautious around those spots so there’s quite a few different

Traffic signs like we were saying it’s really good to stud up on them and understand what you’re looking at like a red circle with a number in it you know that’s the speed limit and then you’ll see a white circular sign with with three or four lines across it and that’s

To say that speed limit is over or there’s no speed limit so you can go as fast as you want at that point of course fast as you want is is still as fast as you can go and still be safe and you know and then largely the

Signs are quite similar to here in the United States when you’re on the interstate versus autobond you know overhead you’ll have uh so many miles to the next city or the next uh you know Autobon or or exit or things like that well speaking of traveling on the

Ottobon you’ll see a lot of signs that say asart and um it’s not you’re not actually going to a town called asart or a place called asart that just means uh the way off the Autobon or exit so yeah the joke we like to do is we’re we’re just driving in circles

Around the town of elart so one thing to keep in mind when you’re driving around um if you’re anything like us you’re searching for historical sites and if you see the brown signs that’s that’s where you want to go so any Castle you know Palace

Things like that um it’s going to be on a brown sign and with an arrow saying go this way is it in the hearts region where you see the different witches on the yeah on the brown signs we play a little game where you can find the

Witches on all the brown signs and some some of the witches are like good witches and some of them are evil witches number two the autobond one thing to really keep in mind is when you’re on the Autobon the left lane is for passing only I know

Here in the United States it seems to be kind of like everyone knows that rule but doesn’t always follow it there you have to pass then get back over because if you don’t before you know it you’re going to have some kind of European sports car like right on your tail or or

A really fast motorcycle something so you get over to the left and you come right back something we’ve noticed the last several times we’ve traveled in Germany is there’s quite a bit of road construction on the ottobon and they’ve developed a program kind of psychological program to help people uh

Emotionally deal with the frustration of road construction so you might see as you approach a road construction area different emoticon signs and there’s you know so there’s uh like sad faces and angry faces and then eventually happy faces As you move through the road construction and we’ve been shocked that

It actually does help us like feel better about getting through the road construction it would be interesting if they could Implement that here well it’s it’s fun just to see that uh the empathy that the signs are having with your frustration so you see kind of the angry

Frowny face that eventually turns you that’s red but then eventually turns into a green happy face one thing to talk about with the Autobon especially compared to in the United States is the on and off ramps are really short and quick and what I mean by quick is is you’re you know it’s

Kind of a tight turn and then you’re just on the Autobon having to go super fast where here in the United States you seem to have a longer you know Runway to get up to speed there you’re just expected to go yeah fast you have to accelerate quite quickly and be very

Aware of merging very very quickly onto the Autobon so because you’re right there um it an exit or an entrance will it it just spits you right out yeah and then the reverse is true is you’re going really fast on the Autobon you take an exit and then you’re immediately slowing

Down and it’s uh and you’re in town yeah and then you’re in a town and you have to go slow okay so driving on the Autobon there’s the Autobon rest stops most rest stops have gas stations and restaurants if you see a sign for a rest stop that

Does not show gas stations and restaurants I would skip those those tend to be truck stops and they’re usually pretty gross so look for the ones that have the sign that’s the sign indicating gas and food yeah so it’ll be a a blue sign um it’ll say Ros Hoff and

Uh it’ll have a a little gas pump symbol and and then uh a knife and a fork Crossing each other that’s uh that’s what you’re looking for our favorite um rest stops to look out for are ones that have Burger Kings at them we found that

Burger King in Germany has a it has a really fresh and limited menu so those are fun number three pain to use the restroom so one difference is at a rest stop or really anywhere in Germany you’re going to run into you have to pay

To use the restroom and it’s a good use for those coins that are kind of building up in your pocket um sometimes especially at the gas stations if you get a receipt as you come out of of the bathroom then then hold on to that because when you buy

Something you give it to the cashier and you usually get a small discount so if you buy I don’t know soda or snacks or water or whatever you want to buy at your restop gas station you get a small discount number four speeding tickets there’s one thing that uh you

Really need to hear about when you’re driving in Germany is speeding tickets and they’re really easy to get uh you’re going to find that the the the speed um you’ll you’ll be able to drive as fast as you want there’ll be no speed limit and then just a minute later all of a

Sudden you’re going really slow and It’s tricky because the speed feed signs aren’t always where you think they are so most time they’re on the side of the road but occasionally as you’re going into a village something like that they could actually be painted on the ground

And how it works over there at least in my experience is is you’re not getting pulled over by you know the pit eye you are actually going past a a camera and you’ll see a big Flash and uh unfortunately I’ve had this experience a couple of times so if you see that flash

You know you’ve gotten a speeding ticket and then a few weeks later you will get a letter in the mail from the you know the the German state or or city that the ticket took place in you’ll end up with uh little envelope like this in the mail

Inside there’ll be a letter that’s completely in German and even though I speak a little German my vocabulary doesn’t include anything that has to do with getting a speeding ticket so then it’s like you have to figure out how to translate it and figure out how to pay

Um and you know first my thought was well do I really need to pay this but looking into it um you do uh the you could be sent to a collection agency um you could lose your your ability to drive in Germany on like future Vacations so you really need to pay it

This particular speeding ticket I I got was uh for 88 years 5050 luckily I was able to go to a website a web address in this uh letter and then pay using PayPal so that worked out you know I’ve been driving in Germany since the early 2000s so you

Know off and on for the last 20 years and this wasn’t a problem in the beginning but now it seems to have become more and more of a thing where there’s these uh camera speed traps all over the place and you won’t realize that the the speed limit has gone down

Or you’re slowing down but you didn’t slow down quick enough and then you see the Flash and and and now you have a ticket coming in the mail avoiding the speed trap cameras is one of the reasons to drive on the automon more than the back roads um the areas where I think

It’s the most challenging to to see what the speed limits are is when you drive on a back road uh and you’re going in between a lot of small towns and Villages cuz all of the small towns and villages will have a slow speed limit

But you’ll see when you get out of the Town those scientists say well you can go as fast as you want but it doesn’t really mean that like Germans can probably you know they’re local and they know how fast they can really go on those roads but as a tourist you just

Got to kind of be mindful of well if it says if you see the sign that’s okay there’s no speed limit then you can go fast but almost immediately you have to go slow again yeah and uh and and then to to almost a crawl in in these

Villages but yeah I’ve gotten three speeding tickets and out of those three none of them were from the Autobon right it’s it is the the back roads um going through small villages uh things like that so definitely I recommend take the aabon as far as you can go and then get

On the secondary roads that way you’ll you’ll avoid the risk of so many speeding tickets because if you just mindlessly drive as fast as you want across Germany you’ll get home and have dozens dozens May aund of speeding tickets I mean you’d have a lot of speeding tickets you would number five

Parking so one thing to talk about uh when you’re driving in Germany is parking and it’s not always so easy to figure out where to park every parking lot has different rules and so how I get around that is nowadays on your smartphone you can put a translation app

On it you know I use Google Translate and I have German downloaded onto my phone and so you know I’ll just end up pointing the phone at at the sign translating what it says and then I know exactly what the rules are it’s pretty cool and there’s really no other way

Around it um a lots of times you’ll you’ll see where it says to park and you have to go buy a ticket that you put on your dash simple things like that I think before we had the translation app we were using you know little phrase

Books but a lot of those are not specific enough to parking rules to really know what what you’re supposed to do and there’s a lot of small parking lots that you know are um they seem like public parking lots but really they’re only for certain businesses or hotels

You have to be mindful that where you’re parking is actually a public parking lot yeah and and you’ll see Germans parking all over the place you know with two two wheels up on the sidewalk and two on the road and things like that and I don’t

Know what what or how they do that legally and I personally would just avoid that and just find a legitimate parking lot yeah even if you see people doing that I’ve always assumed that it’s because they they either live in in the areas you know right next to that spot

Or they’re they’re doing some kind of business right there something there’s some reason but myself as a driver in Germany I don’t feel like that’s a good idea to to mimic that yeah well especially when you’re driving a rental car you don’t want it to be sideswiped by

Some some somebody else or towed away and then now I have to figure out the German culture of retrieving your car from a tow company that’s true so one thing that uh you will encounter is a parking clock and when you rent a car a lot of times there’s

This parking clock in your rental car yeah in the glove compartment or in a pocket on the door um so that’s for use parking on the street there’s going to be designated places that require a parking clock and it’s it’s just this little blue uh sometimes plastic I’ve

Seen ones that are cardboard that has a clock in it that you spin and you set the time where you that you started parking and then you put it in your in your window uh in you know on your dash so to continue talking about parking a lot of times when you’re

Parking near cities or in cities you’ll need to find a parking garage and sometimes those parking garages are are really busy and they’re full but if you simply wait in the queue one car will come out and then each car will filter in and be able

To find a spot so it’s it’s best to just fi get to the parking garage that you want to park at that’s close to wherever you’re sightseeing and then just wait wait in the line uh and somebody will always come out yeah I mean you might

Have to wait 10 minutes 15 minutes at the most but if if the parking lot’s full you just get in line and uh then you’ll be able to go in so it’s worth waiting rather than kind of panicking oh no the garage is full and then you’re searching for another place to driving

Around and around it’s it’s not it’s not a good feeling to have that kind of panicked like I’ll never find a parking you will find a parking space so just be patient number six day trips into the City and another strategy we’ve come up with is you know you don’t always have

To park in the city yeah that’s true it’s sometimes it’s good to park outside the city and take a train in so we did that when we went from we were staying in m and we wanted to do a day trip into dress in which which is a great day trip

So we took the train in and it would and it’s a great um opportunity if you’re traveling mostly by car to have those little bursts of train travel is is a really fun tourist experience yeah and and some of these cities I mean we don’t

Live in a big city so we’re not really used to driving in them and uh there’s so much traffic and it’s just feels so chaotic and stressful that it’s so much easier just to leave your car in the town you’re staying and then just day trip in on using public transportation

One thing that I wanted to add is um driving in a big city in Germany can sometimes be confusing not just because it’s a big city and maybe you’re not used to that but also because there’s uh some pedestrian zones and so there’s areas where cars can’t go and there’s

Also lots of trams you know like tramways and so it’s quite unnerving to drive around a corner and all of a sudden you’re looking at a tram that’s that’s not that’s no good I’ve accidentally found myself driving where only trams are supposed to go so and number seven car

Rental so driving in Germany one thing to talk about is car rental and uh for peace of mind I always get the collision damage waiver I just want to know that if I get in a car accident or something happens that you know I’m not going to

Have some you know tens of thousands of dollars bill waiting for me so the Peace of Mind of a collision damage waiver is worth it you know it adds it adds some money you know maybe 10 $15 to every day but it’s worth it and don’t pay extra for GPS in your car

Uh lots of times cars just have it already and so you’re really paying for nothing and then of course you can just use Google Maps on your smartphone and it works great in Europe so you know I would never never pay extra for for

GPS and I would advise do not rent a car bigger than you need there’s lots of tight places to fit a car so whether it’s small parking lots and in parking garages or parking places um or just to get into to a quaint little village that

Has a medieval gate those Gates were not built for for cars to go through so yeah I mean they’re built for carriages and then if your car is too big you can’t drive through right so yeah definitely um smaller is better yeah in Germany for sure well that’s all we have to say

About driving in Germany while it can be challenging at times it actually is really fun to drive in Germany and uh we hope you found this video helpful don’t forget to like share comment on this video and please subscribe to this channel thanks for Watching

In this video we are going to discuss the 7 things to know before driving in Germany. This comes from our own personal experience driving in Germany over the years. In lots of ways, it really isn’t that different from driving in the USA, a stop sign is a stop sign, they drive on the right side of the road. However, there are big differences. In Germany, the left lane really is for passing only! This video will cover: traffic signs, the autobahn, speeding tickets, parking, car rental and other useful tips. Please join us as we talk about the 7 things to know before driving in Germany.

Timecodes
0:00 – Introduction
0:53 – German Road & Traffic Signs
3:37 – The Autobahn
7:19 – Paying To Use the Restroom
8:01 – Speeding Tickets
12:23 – Parking
16:34 – Day Trips into The City
18:13 – Car Rental
19:50 – Outro

Music Attributions
Song 1: To the Top by Silent Partner (YouTube Audio Library License, no attribution is required)
Song 2: Fractal of Light by Chris Haugen (YouTube Audio Library License, no attribution is required)

Video Attributions
Video 1: “Drone Shot of the Autobahn” by Arthur Fernando Santos Vieira, Public Domain – Free to use, video available on Pexels, located: https://www.pexels.com/video/drone-shot-of-the-autobahn-8290420/
Video 2: “Barge Moored on Lake in Miltenberg, Germany” by MARROS, Public Domain – Free to use, video available on Pexels, located: https://www.pexels.com/video/barge-moored-on-lake-in-miltenberg-germany-10019261/
Video 3: “Aerial View of a Moving Train in the City of Hamburg, Germany” by wowi allinsky, Public Domain – Free to use, video available on Pexels, located: https://www.pexels.com/video/aerial-view-of-a-moving-train-in-the-city-of-hamburg-germany-16631313/
Video 4: “Heilbronn City” by Omair Tabikh, Public Domain – Free to use, video available on Pexels, located: https://www.pexels.com/video/heilbronn-city-20452177/
Video 5: “Overview Of A Building And Its Parking Area” by Marian Croitoru, Public Domain – Free to use, video available on Pexels, located: https://www.pexels.com/video/overview-of-a-building-and-its-parking-area-5607784/
Video 6: “Aerial Footage of a Parking Lot” by Oleh Shtohryn, Public Domain – Free to use, video available on Pexels, located: https://www.pexels.com/video/aerial-footage-of-a-parking-lot-5587732/
Video 7: “Time Lapse of a Busy Street in Munich, Germany” by Stefan, Public Domain – Free to use, video available on Pexels, located: https://www.pexels.com/video/time-lapse-of-a-busy-street-in-munich-germany-12302781/

Image Attributions
Image 1: “Speed Limit Road Sign Beside an Asphalt Road,” image by Martin Schneider, Public Domain – Free to use, image available on Pexels, located: https://www.pexels.com/photo/speed-limit-road-sign-beside-an-asphalt-road-12125983/
Image 2: “Speed limit end sign against fence in daylight,” image by Skylar Kang, Public Domain – Free to use, image available on Pexels, located: https://www.pexels.com/photo/speed-limit-end-sign-against-fence-in-daylight-6044741/
Image 3: “Autobahn junction entrance sign clipart,” artist attribution not available, Public Domain, image available on creazilla, located: https://creazilla.com/nodes/3510565-autobahn-junction-entrance-sign-clipart
Image 4: “Direction towards Autobahn entrance clipart,” artist attribution not available, Public Domain, image available on creazilla, located: https://creazilla.com/nodes/3510558-direction-towards-autobahn-entrance-clipart
Image 5: “track-road-traffic-highway-driving-motion…,” artist attribution not available, image is released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CC0 (CC0 Public Domain), located at: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/493785?utm_content=shareClip&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pxhere
Image 6: “Vorankündigung einer Autobahnraststätte, frühe Version nach den Vorgaben der StVO 1970 clipart,“ image by Mediatus, Public Domain, image available on creazilla, located: https://creazilla.com/nodes/3508163-vorankundigung-einer-autobahnraststatte-fruhe-version-nach-den-vorgaben-der-stvo