In 200 meters, turn right

On of the greatest pieces of advice that one of my colleagues gave me when Kristy and I were here in January was to buy a portable GPS navigator. Of course I needed no convincing, but this advise was what I needed to get Kristy's buy-in to get this sweet morsel of technology. I purchased one of the newer Garmin Nuvis based on the reviews and recommendations and have found it to be not a luxury over here, but a necessity. I don't think I could find point B from point A without it. I don't think that German ingenuity came around until the last century, because if it were present before that, then surely this city would have been planned with a little bit of common sense.

There are no straight roads. There is no "city grid" like Indy. If a street is 2 km long, it is sure to have at least 10 different names. There must have been a law some years back forbidding a street to be one name if it is over 100 meters! You must be good at navigating by landmarks here. If you're not (like me, a navigate by street name) you had better have a Garmin. Or a TomTom. Or something smarter than an intelligent person. But I digress.

So far the Garmin has been amazing. Accurate and quick to calculate the route. With one big exception. Last Sunday when we went to church, the Garmin told us to go northwest, even though church is southwest from our apartment. I thought that it was strange, but continued on with what the Garmin told me anyway. After a kilometer or so, I figured it out; Garmin was trying to take us on the autobahn to get to church. Seeing as how I'm still a newbee in Germen driving, I didn't want to go on the autobahn yet, so when the time came, I just drove past the it, forcing Garmin to recalculate the route. This was a mistake.

Garmin may be smart, but not universal smart. She forgot to tell me (yes, our Garmin has a female voice, and I chose an Australian accent) that the path she was taking us on was under construction and impassible. Unfortunately, there weren't a whole lot of other roads around that led the direction that we wanted to go. After much backtracking and guessing, we finally found a way that would get us to church. What should have been a 15 or 20 minute drive wound up being a 35 or 40 minute drive.

Oh well, no harm done. I still love our Garmin and will continue to trust it over my intuition.

Ken