I had a long travel day. I didn’t expect it to be long as the drive on Google Maps estimated it to be around 5 hours or so. That’s barely a third of my waking hours so I can easily shove that into an early morning and get a workday in right?
Alas I didn’t take into account that in America that’s four to five hundred miles of well maintained interstate travel. Easy peasy especially with a Starlink for rolling calls.
But in Europe it’s a whole other beast requiring concentration, quick corrections and constant change. Roads are a mishmash of local jurisdictions, variable paving quality and constant switches in speed limits and limited straightaways.
Also a lot depends on which country is in the EU versus Schengen zone (so many border crossings) versus just a NATO ally but neither EU nor Schengen.
Then finally you must factor in how corrupt its various elites happen to be at any given time versus when they are in a debt restructuring and revitalization phase. A corrupted ally might have much worse roads than a debt restructured southern EU member.
I did a cruising tour of coastal roads in the Mediterranean last summer from Croatia through Albania to Greece and then another run from Tirana to Istanbul so I’m not a total novice to grand tours.
But today felt exhausting as more need kept coming in and then my rolling calls got interrupted by my “hold on lemme get through this border crossing” as rather expectedly borders were on a bit of a high alert.
Thankfully I’ve made it to my destination just as the markets wrap in American after having stopped for a dinner I’d hoped would wrap quickly but turned into a leisurely discussion of the various news items of the day between Dutch, British, Swedish, Albanian, Slovenian and Greek tourists. They all seem to enjoy a long dinner while I just wanted to get my butt into bed so I could do some actual work and also write my post. So my duty is done. European driving in a nice Audi is harder than American driving in a base model Subaru. Fancy that.
Maybe Brussels should consider an interstate highway system for the European Union if they are serious about shouldering more of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization responsibilities. Eisenhower did a good thing making America’s system so free hero status to however can manage it on the continent.