A Guide to Traveling and Driving in Europe.

Many of you, I am sure, have travelled to Europe, rented cars and rejoiced in its glorious landscapes. Many, however, have not had the courage to rent a car and drive in crazy places like Italy. Many of you have shared these fears and I write these words in order to curtail those fears. It is my conviction that driving oneself is the most enthralling way to experience a country and those atypical cultural subtleties. I hope that the end result from reading this story is that the fear is minimized enough so people take the plunge.  It is just so much fun.

Without the ability to be independent during our trip, we would have not had the chances to experience things the way we did. Like when we attended a weekend festival in one of Italy’s spectacular medieval towns. Hanging out with the locals and sipping the local beer and eating the local pizza was, for certain, a life experience we will cherish into our next lifetimes. Or when we drove to a secluded beach near Sienna that was recommended to us by the same locals. It required a half-mile hike down a sumptuous trial dotted with uniquely Mediterranean trees and shrubs, at the end of which opened to a gorgeous cove framed with high cliffs and a calm, deep green sea and brilliant blue skies. One must work for true beauty. Truly magical and simply delicious.

First thing to know. Not all countries and driving “cultures” are alike. We humans are diverse and our sense of what driving embodies is very different depending on where one finds oneself. Yes, the EU is sort of one place. But then again, it is not.

Our trip started in stunning Switzerland. Landing in Zurich on an early and uneventful flight from Dulles, we processed to wait until the Enterprise office opened to pick our car. Our reservation was for much later after opening but, hey, in the USA reservations are kind of loosy goosy, right? Many of us can get cars earlier.

Not in Zurich. A reservation is a reservation and the time is the time. That was the first surprise on our 15-day jaunt through Switzerland, Italy and Austria. The second came soon after, when we headed to get some breakfast to wait for our reservation time. Switzerland is not the land of $8 dollar omelets. No siree bub…

After leaving behind a small fortune for our morning fare, the time of the reservation was upon us and thus we headed over for the mandatory paperwork. As I declined the extra insurance coverage - which I do, all the time at home - I had a fleeting neuron talk to me: “Hmmm, perhaps it may be a good idea for you to get the extra insurance coverage this time.” I mean, Italy and its crazy drivers, right?  “Nah, I am a great driver,” was my response. Heck, I have driven Europe before including  - yes – the obligatory autobahn jaunt. (Alas, only on a 3-series BMW, sadly, and only for a top speed of 145MPH.)

But I digress.

Our car was a Mazda CX-5 midsize SUV. Nice car. It had a pretty spunky diesel engine, great suspension, awesome steering feel and very nice turn in. Nice sporty seats and interior as well.  With only about 7k kilometers on the odometer, it was fairly new. And, to top it off, it was an upgrade. (Hmmm, the wait and the pricey morning chow was worth it after all.)

Maybe there is something to Mazda’s Zoom Zoom.  ‘Midsize,’ however, may be fitting in the land of leviathans and our limitless open spaces. In Europe, however, the CX-5 was, for the most part, a too big of a car.

Lesson number one and by far the most important: Adjust your mindset the moment you get off the airplane. Everything - and I mean everything – is smaller, tighter and narrower in Europe. Do a mental reset. Seriously. Think small. Trust me on this. It will help you manage things way better.  Dimensions are very different.

Do this specially if you wish to visit the stunning rural areas of Tuscany and its medieval towns.  (Ahem, they were never designed for cars, much less big ones.) If you don't reset, you will find out soon enough and be obliged to do so quickly as you exit the airport parking into narrow lanes and sharp turns. No long connector road from the airport to a distant highway. Nope. It is right there. Right away.

From the lanes in the autoestrada, to the signage telling you there is roadwork being done down the road, proportions are unique. Parking spaces are sized for postage stamps. Parking lot ramps are like narrow ribbons of portentous indignity, begging you to part with that beautiful paint job with that bare concrete wall only microns from your mirrors. Best to retract those hurriedly. Secondary narrow roads require absolute focus and attention. Anticipate things. Even a construction rig fully on our side of the road - yep it happened (thank God for ABS and quick reactions.) As I am sure you will be accompanied, have that second set of eyes help you drive.  

But, funny story, even with all that mindset adjustment stuff and fully engaged mindfulness from 15 days on the road, I still could not find the signs for the car-rental return back in the Zurich airport. It took having to go into a parking area by mistake and talking to a policeman to understand where it was.  Knowing the general location of the place and signs the second time around - and requiring that all in the car look out for them - we found them. Barely. Even knowing and driving like a lost tourist. Event then, I was barely able to make the sharp left that was required to enter the rental return area. Yep, you guessed it. The signs were absurdly and oddly small for anyone, much less for american-sized visual anticipations. The signs seemed like and afterthought placed on one of the parking structure’s post on the left.  As if they wanted us to perennially go round and around the airport like the scene from one of the Vacation movies where Chevy Chase’s character is stuck in the traffic circle around the ark of Triumph – was it? - unable to get off.

Highway on-ramps? Do not expect them to be long and sweeping. Sometimes you have “longish” ones, sometimes you simply don’t. We found this out urgently while getting back on the autoestrada after a fuel stop and – of course – an espresso.

Lastly, but most importantly, look out for road going cyclists. I am one myself and very empathetic to others on the side of roads. In the age of distracted driving, I cannot stress this enough. Cycling is a big thing in Italy. And they ride on those secondary narrow roads full of sumptuous turns. We came upon many of them. Slow down and be attentive. Give them space.

Of course many Italians did not believe in any of these pronouncements and many passed us even in continuous double yellows in those back roads. Italians will tailgate. This is a fact. Don't take it personally and help them get around you by slowing down and waving them by. That is the only choice you have unless you enjoy having a car glued to your rear for extended periods of time.

Things are tight. In fact, if you were driving the behemoths that we are so inured to here (cue: Tahoes, Suburbans, Armadas, even Cayenne’s) you will have a very hard time. They simply will not fit in many places. Do. Not. Rent. One. The gazes from the locals will be enough to make you cower in shame at your local rest-stop while you sip on that wonderful espresso.

Switzerland is the land of speed cameras and speed control. We were warned about this. Lesson number two: Do not speed in Switzerland. If you do, have your Waze App on and leverage the Nav in your rental car, which told us, where the cameras were. And they were everywhere.

It was quite amusing to see a procession of Lamborghini’s akin to an earthbound rainbow of colors out for a Sunday romp and going only about 110 Kph. This is the permissible top speed in Switzerland, by the way.  At least in the region we were driving. Judging by the locals, going 10 Kph above seemed acceptable. So 120Kph should be ok. It is really tempting to go faster. Don’t.

With all that said, I still got two speeding tickets. Ouch.

If you don’t like long tunnels, do not drive in Switzerland. It seems like half the time we were in that country, we were in the darks. Beautiful, well maintained and luminous, but still tunnels. For a guy that loves light and blue skies, tunnels are –well – dark and these tunnels were long as well.  You can pass in tunnels, unlike most tunnels in the USA. But, again, don’t speed. There are cameras lurking in the dark.

Lesson three: Do not remain on the left lane. This is probably a well-known practice to all you sophisticated drivers, but I will make a note of it regardless. Pass, move over and use your signals. Do this in all countries that you will be driving in. Specially Germany. I am sure many readers have experienced a seven series BMW or a 911 barreling down at you at 160 Mph with headlights a’ flashin. I did when I did that autobahn thing.

When passing in Italy is ok to flash your lights from an approaching distance; in most instances people do see you coming and will move over without prodding.  Flashing is not a thing that provokes ire in some of our fellow Americans stateside. Do not get in tailgate mode and flash, however. 

If you come across a deluge such as we did in Italy, slow down and turn on your rear fog light. For those that don’t know, this is a mandatory feature in European cars and they make a lot of sense. I wish all cars in the US had them. For the substantial deluge that we experienced, also turn on your flashers. Amazing how quickly Europeans turn them on and don't wait until there is impending doom like we seem to do here.  Even during basic traffic slowdowns the locals turn them on. I guess we are too cool and proud for that here in the US.

Lesson four: Lock you valuables in the trunk or put them away from view under those covers in the back of your SUV’s. Yeah, it is Europe, but things do disappear into stranger’s hands. Even shattered windows have been known to happen at highway rest stops in the pursuit of a new iPhone or a cool new laptop. We did not have this happen to us, but there are stories, especially in Italy, which borders certain countries to the east that are less fortunate.

Lesson five: Tolls, tolls and bloody tolls. There are none in Switzerland and Austria, but they are present in Italy. A lot. You have options to pay with cash or credit. We used our credit card the entire time with no issues. The trick is to make sure you get into the correct tollbooth lane. It’s very simple. All you need to do is look for the signage on top of the tollbooth lanes that depicts a human hand handing over money and coins. You can Google the signs, which at times are hard to find as you approach the tolls. Study the images on the web so they are fresh in your mind. Better yet take a pic with your iPhone, lest you forget what they look like. Ask others in the car to help you find them. This is important since there is usually only one or at most two of these manned tollgates. Ninety percent of the time, they are white background with black graphics. Do not go to any other tollgate unless you can navigate Italian and can use the automated toll lanes. Do not go in the lanes with the equivalent of EZ-pass. They are well marked. Tolls are ticket-based like the NJ turnpike used to be. As you get on the highway approach the non-EZ-Pass-like tool gates and press the button for a ticket. Don’t loose that ticket. You will need it as you exit the road/highway where you will need to pay. Look for that depiction of the hand and present the attendant your credit card and ticket. Do this and you will be 100% ok.   

Lesson six. Be aware and be ready at all times. If the story of that construction rig on our lane is not enough, let’s talk about roadwork signage, In the USA it is almost too much and it seems almost ‘too’ ahead of time, right? Not in Europe. At least not in the countries we drove through. Signage is small; placed low on the pavement (as opposed to eye level) not numerous at all and much closer to the actual work being done. Not many flashing amber lights either. We had sort of a close call exiting a tunnel in Italy and being commanded to slow down from 100 Kph to 60 and then 40 within maybe 100 yards. It was a bit disconcerting given that we had a guy tailgating us. He backed off after that ;-)

Repeat. Be aware. Be attentive.  This is not la la land like some of the drivers in our country seem to act on many an occasion. The top speed limit in Italy is 130 Kph and only on the autoestrada. You can go to 140 Kph for the most part. We did not see many 130 Kph zones, however. It was mostly 100 to 120 Kph. If there are no speed signs, my understanding was that the speed was 130kph.  This was confirmed by the car’s nav in the car. There are speed cameras in Italy but not as many as Switzerland and Austria. There will be warnings on the side of road about cameras ahead.  Your nav will tell you where they are as well.  Also, highway signage is made of different colors en Europe. Not yellows or oranges like here. Red, white, blues and blacks rule the day. And most are circular shaped and not triangular or square like in the US. And the signs are way smaller. That dimensions thing that I mentioned strikes again. Study them on the web.

Lesson seven: Trust but verify. So you are thinking that Google GPS is infallible. Think again. For safety and awareness sake, we always had the car’s nav, my Google Maps and my wife’s Apple maps on all the time; maybe a bit excessive but, hey, why not. Roaming in Europe is fairly cheap now. Here is the interesting finding about the perennial war between Google Maps and Apple Maps. (My wife is religious about Apple. Me not so much as it has led my stray a couple of times at home.) Google seems to reign here in the USA, in my opinion.  In Europe is the reverse. Google got me in a couple of fine messes. The worst was in the Swiss Alps in the Tyrolean region as we were looking for our hotel up the side of a very steep mountain. It was a sliver of a road. Basically a single lane road designed for small cars and with a substantial mountainous drop on one side and a wall on the other. Hmmm…retract those mirrors again. Not cool and very stressful having to find yourself at the end of a narrow mountain road at someone’s home and having to turn around with my leviathan. Had I trusted Apple maps or the car’s nav, I would have not gotten us into that mess and ignited the ensuing disharmony inside our steed. But no, Google was my trusted tool. No longer.

It was a trip of a lifetime. I recommend it to anyone with a sense of adventure, conscious of the differences and caring. The only serious close encounter we had was with that big transport on our side of the road on that country road in Italy. Everything else was manageable including that missed garage doorframe while backing up upon arrival to one of the Cinque Terre towns.

Those flexible bumper covers are great, aren't they? A little pushing here and there and all was well and back in place. As for the scratches and damaged paint....hey, we can’t have it all now, can we. 

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