I have been driving a few kilometers in the past few months. Actually, I counted, something like 9000 km since May. One of my <insert irony> favorite </insert irony> trip has been going from Paris to Frankfurt and back. You'd think after a few times, that one would recognize the way. Well, on my nth trip back and forth, I still got lost on the highway. Yes, you heard me well, the highway (Autobahn in German). In Frankreich, the highways are limited to 130 km/h and very expensive, in Germany, they are free and the speed limit is often...none. Pretty good points I must say. But there is one thing I will always regret about the French highways, that the Germans don't have, and that's signs. I am talking about highways because there are a lot of highways in Germany. In fact, there are too many. So many that you cross a highway every other kilometer, that two highways run parallel but don't quite go in the exact same direction, and that you get lost trying to leave a highway for another. And there are no signs. None. Nibs. Nihil. Or rather, there are lots of signs, but all of them are absolutely useless unless you have a map to check which direction you have to go. I can only suppose that Germans have a very good memory and that they're taught at birth which highway goes where, so they don't get lost (although Arne who is German gets lost as well, he must have a streak of French in him or something). In Germany, you get one sign that says, for example... Köln. You get that about 250 km from Köln. Right, that's good. But then, although you really want to go to Köln, there is no other sign during those 250 km that says where you're going. You get little signs all over the place, telling you about unknown villages and smallish towns (follow the Ausfahrt -exit- signs - you got plenty of those), but Köln, no. You have to assume that you're on the right track, that the 20 Autobahns you crossed and could have taken don't go to Köln. And finally when you get there, you get a sign, (Hurray!) about 2000 m. from the Ausfahrt to Köln that tells you you're on the right track. If, like me, you tend to forget in 2000 m. what the sign said, you're in trouble, because they don't repeat the sign near the exit, or if they do, it tells you about the smallish town on the way to Köln, and that's all. I don't know if I am very clear here, but this might be a consequence of how confusing this whole sign business is in this country.

In Carcassonne, you have a sign that tells you which direction to go to get to Paris... I am not asking for that much, but a few signs would be good, really, at least to some of the main cities, or locations (remind me to tell you about getting to Frankfurt Hahn...). So they might be fast and cheap, those Autobahns, but I would give anything to pay for them to have more signs.