Friday, June 03, 2005

Greek drivers

For the most part I guess I don't do much driving in Greece. We live in a small village, there is a decent grocery store nearby, but occasionally we drive to a big supermarket about 10 miles away, and now and then we drive to Thessaloniki to visit my husband's family, which takes about an hour. We didn't have a car yet when we lived in Athens (thank god), but when we moved to the island of Kos, my in-laws presented us with a brand new Hyundai Accent.

Of all the places to get used to driving again (it had been about a year since I left Nashville) I suppose Kos was good. It was an island, only about 25 miles long and 3 miles across, so there wasn't much in the way of major driving. There was a main road that took you from Kos town across the entire island, and that was the busiest thoroughfare. It was your basic two-lane road, with wide lanes so people could pass easily, but the speed limit was around 70 km/h, so not very fast. The one thing I noticed here was even if I was pushing 90 km/h, there was still some jackass who just HAD to pass, going some really crazy speed on a road that wasn't exactly a straight line. Now in normal, everyday life, I suppose I understand these jackasses somewhat. You are on the interstate, some people don't want to spend their lives driving, so they go as fast as they possibly can. But this was an island, for god's sake. A small island, at that. At normal speed it couldn't take you more than 20 or 30 minutes to get from any one place to another, which I suppose is a luxury to Americans like me. But I swear, people rushed, pushed, honked, and otherwise were driving assholes on this little island, almost as bad as people were in Athens.

Now, there was a time when I thought no drivers could ever be as bad as Nashville drivers, especially the Green Hills soccer moms in their SUVs. I went to Birmingham once and met their match. Then I came to Greece. Litochoro is a TINY village. Its all uphill. The main road leading from the interstate is 80 km/h until you get to town, where it changes to 30 km/h. People are such assholes if you don't go up that road fast enough, and by god, if you slow down upon entering town, they go crazy. And of course, the asshole in me just wants to slow down even more, because goddamn, this is a small place, there are children here, people crossing the street, and in town you really shouldn't go that fast.

We get the added pleasure, in Litochoro, of the young men on their motorcycles and pimped out cars trying to cool. We happen to live right next to the lower roundabout of Litochoro, which apparently is the most popular place for these young men to do their crazy stunt driving. Now, I understand there is no mall here, or other nice parking lot to get your crazy man thing going, but seriously, the number of times one of them has nearly wiped out because they can't control their car/motorcycle is really so not cool. Not that I give a damn, really, and of course I secretly hope for them to wipe out, just a little bit, to learn their lesson, but this is one aspect of male behavior I have never understood. I have never known another woman who finds this cool or attractive either, for that matter.

Do I need to talk about the number of tractors/farm equipment/ill-loaded trucks that run around on the roads and interstates in Greece? What the hell is up with that? Suddenly I feel like I'm back in redneck country, U.S.A.

I'll have to admit, for the most part, drivers in Thessaloniki seem pretty mellow. I mean sure, there are people who like to rush, but they seem to have much more patience than drivers elsewhere in Greece. The big problem I have with Thessaloniki is it has a lot of weird dual diagonal turns, and on one stretch of the main road that leads from the interstate to the city center, the lines on the road are gone. Completely. And not even locals seem to have a friggin' clue where the hell you are supposed to be driving. I just pick a car to stay behind, for the most part, but there is a lot of weird cutting-in and such that goes on. Of course, I can't blame anyone for that. The lack of lines on the road, and the hereditary inability Greeks have to form straight lines makes it difficult for them.

I just had to get that off my chest.

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