As the Travel World Shrinks

Lubeck City of Seven Spires - Revisited

As the travel world shrinks, it appears the last travel door open to us will be closing on Monday due to a looming Hard Lockdown. Currently, we are not welcome in most countries of the world so in early November our plan was to explore Germany. Then bam, the Light Lockdown happened restricting our opportunities of exploring Germany only to Hamburg and the neighboring state of Schleswig-Holstein. Being smitten with the medieval town of Lubeck, we decided to return for a last chance visit while it's still legal.  Hopefully, we will be able to return another day. Never enough time.

First e-Truck Sighting

Driving through the countryside and small villages is our preference but with today's fog and continued cloudy skies we traveled mainly on the autobahn. After spending hours traveling along the new Electric Highway, this was the first time witnessing its intended use. Last year Germany opened up a new stretch of electrified autobahn for diesel burning hybrid trucks with the hope of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The new e-Highway system has cables suspended overhead the existing highway for specially-equipped trucks. It is similar to how trolleys and electric trains operate pulling power for their electric motors. As an experiment, it appears that so far, quite possibly there are not yet many hybrid trucks. Unlike America, the German highways are filled with a disproportionate number of large long haul cargo trucks. At least the trucks only use the 2 right lanes and speeds must no exceed 80 km/h (50 mph). Well, that low speed is only for trucks folks. If you want to push the pedal to the metal with your Lamborghini, go right ahead. There is NO speed limit for cars. To me, as the fast cars flash by it feels like they are hoping to reach a speed necessary to take flight. Europe has a super rail system but for people not freight resulting in the miles and miles of trucks on the highways. Sundays however are an ideal day to travel as trucks are restricted on the autobahn.

The majority of the big trucks that we passed were from Poland - PL.

Recall road trips playing the license plate game? There is a better challenge here with the little letters on the left of all license plates. Each country has a code so for an old foreigner there's a new fun travel game. LV, LT, E, CZ, HR are a some that we passed and were a few of them stumped me. Would you know all of these? LV = Latvia   LT=Lithuania.  E = Spain.  CZ = Czech Republic HR = Croatia  and D = Germany. 

Most likely my road trip game will be coming to an end for a while. Fun challenge while it lasted.