Driving Somewhere New

Went for a long-ish drive in Berlin for the first time today: our place in Zehlendorf to the embassies on Hiroshimastraße and back. Over an hour of driving.

Learning to drive in a new place is stressful for a lot of reasons, but the worst is not knowing the social customs. Yes, there are the rules, but knowing which ones are actually enforced, respected or entirely ignored is something you can really only pick up with experience.

I've also realized that navigation with Google Maps helps quite a bit to learn the ways of the road. For example, in Berlin, I learned today that it's usually two lefts and not ever really a U-turn.

Part of our lifestyle is accepting that it's going to be a lot of readjusting, but doing so with a giant, heavy machine will never not be stressful.