Should Have Asked Me

When I read in the newspapers at the weekend that Fulham's trip from West London to Hamburg was going to take ten hours I thought what? Presumably that was based on somebody googling Hamburg and then using the 'get directions' facility and dividing the miles by an average speed of around 70 m.p.h - big mistake.

My recent trip to Germany taught me one thing, when the roads are clear (such as on Easter Sunday) the Autobahn are almost as good as the roads in Belgium for quality and for achievable distances, but when something goes wrong, they are horrendous.

On the Thursday of my arrival a five hour journey up the A1 via Bremen and Hamburg to Lubeck took nine and a half hours, on the Wednesday coming home the trip from Magdeburg to Duisburg along the A2 took closer to ten hours when it should have taken five. By the time I reached Duisburg I'm sure I was starting to have out of body experiences! The A1 problems were roadworks from Bremen and a series of accidents, the problem (in my opinion) not helped by some sections of the road being unregulated in terms of speed, a couple of tyre blow outs looked especially spectacular/nasty depending on your view point. The journey back was interrupted by an accident just east of Braunschweig which I managed to work my way around by virtue of working out my position relative to the sun. Now if you think I'm kidding I'm not, a colleague of mines husband does the same thing, GPS and Sat Nav are for wimps - did Erik the Red discover America by logging onto a GPS, did he heck.

Anyway the back slapping and general, 'wow look at me I can navigate euphoria' lasted about an hour or so, until Bielefield approached. Now one thing I will remember and treasure about my German road trip is the regularity at which sign posts bearing the names of German football clubs approached. The journey west along the A2 is similar to a trawl up the M1, M5 and M6, club spotters paradise.

Just as Fulham's coach didn't move for three hours so I had the chance to savour one particular section of German road laying expertise for two hours. Unlike Fulham however I didn't get out and do exercises at the roadside, although in retrospect I should have. When traffic did eventually get moving a series of diversions took the traffic heading west through towns not suited to the volume of traffic they were experiencing. Traffic lights operated on weird timings which only allowed two or three lorries or cars through, causing tailbacks that seemed to wind their way through parts of Lower Saxony and North-Rhine Westphalia I didn't expect to see - ever!

I suppose it all adds to the experience but somethings just aren't worth adding in the first place.