Licence Obtained

While not quite the dynamic title of a James Bond book, I'm nevertheless pleased to have completed the final hurdle -- the practical exam. You may recall the earlier ones -- to receiving my German driver's licence. It was actually the second attempt having failed the first one on the last turn into the testing centre's car park a week before Christmas. To be sure it was cruel (and I felt in error) given that we were expecting to drive to Spain a week later. There is a minimum two week wait between tests.

We agonised over our options for a couple of days and in the end decided I was too poor of a passenger to make it. So it meant that in the end we flew to Spain, instead of the expected total of 6 days in the car. Though more expensive it was, of course, much faster however we are still undecided if it was less stressful. It also gave me an opportunity to use one of my more recently frequent phrases when discussing the (now obviously simple) solution to a problem: '... and all it took was a whole lot of money.' I'm still amazed at how many problems this almost trivial solution can be applied to.

So now I'm driving again, much to Gaynor's relief (bad passenger that I am) and for those alert readers who remember my commentary on the Australian driving learner caught doing 177 km/h, I managed 130 during the exam I passed, mostly due to the short amount of autobahn and the under-powered car I was in. :D