It`s All Greek to Me

The family trip to Berlin to visit the wife`s olds was disrupted by Hephaestus, the Greek God with line management responsibilities for the fire of thunder and the flames of volcanoes.

Unable to fly we decided to drive up. There may have been a no fly zone at 30,000 feet but there was no shortage of the pesky little critters at ground level. I have spent most of this morning trying to scrape vapourised fly bits off my windscreen.

Driving on the German Autobahn is not dissimilar to a danse macabre, reminding all who hurtle along, what for the most part is a glorified country lane, of how fragile their lives are and how vain the glories of earthly life can be. I lost count of how many accidents we saw. Traffic reports of death and mayhem and stray cows in the fast lane (mad cow disease?)came in over the radio thick and fast. Strangely no "ghost drivers" this time. These are the suicidal souls who decide it would be a jolly good wheeze to drive the wrong way up a motorway and it seems to be a popular German hobby.

I noticed that every few miles there were posters of sad looking people under the banner "Runter Vom Gas". I asked the wife who this Runter Vom Gas chap was. A German X factor winner perhaps? She sighed her well practised sigh of the terminally disappointed, asked arched questions, the gist of which was had I ever actually turned up to one my German lessons, and then patiently informed me that it wasn`t a name but rather a road safety campaign slogan. It means take your foot off the pedal if you don`t want to die. Well, maybe, but I suspect that the majority of German road users also think Runter Vom Gas is an actual celebrity because they were certainly not slowing down. Maybe they were all racing to get home to catch his new single on tv.

Anyway, I survived. Lucky you.