A Study in Automotives

Thought I'd talk about the situation here regarding transportation. Let me start out by saying that gas here is crazy expensive. It's about $8 a gallon in Germany, basically double what we pay in America. Thus, people usually travel by way of public transportation. There are no school buses. Kids get to and from school using the city bus. In most cases, families have one or two very small cars. Little VWs, Fiats, Smartcars, and Citroën cars are everywhere. Not only do their relatively small engines allow for better gas mileage making it much more cost efficient to own one of these rather than the mega cars we are so used to seeing in the U.S., they are much easier to handle on the narrow old streets of Europe. Another thing I've found is that everyone drives stick-shift. It's fascinating. Even the buses. You hardly ever see that back home. The manual gear shifting is the perfect motif for the average German. Precise, smart, and modest. It's just the way of life.