LOL jor

Come on Intrepid!

He/she started the most interesting thread so far this week.

Keith

eurotravler, you said you were backtracking . . . were you speeding?

I got a parking ticket in Copenhagen and the fine was $120. It was at 1:30am and my flight was scheduled to depart that morning at 7:00am. I decided to simply tell Avis when I returned the car that I'd received traffic ticket. But the Avis desk was closed, so I flew home and expected to see a major blast on my credit card. It never came.

Six months later I returned to Denmark, rented a car from Avis and told the Avis agent about the parking ticket. I had brought the ticket with me and I showed it to him. He seemed non-plussed, did some poking around on some folders and paperwork and said "Oh, well. Dont worry about it."

I took the ticket to the police station expecting that they would either throw me in jail or simply ask for the fine. They did neither. The desk sgt said forget it . . . but he didn't look up a file or do anything official looking . . . just "forget it."

I have been a little nervous for the last 3 years wandering what or when something would happen.

I agree with JOR. Talk about a conversation piece...

Well, look at it this way. Paying the ticket is your way of thanking the gods that you got your purse back - and yourself - safely, i.e. without landing in a German emergency room.

I think you got your money's worth, yes?

I do hope that we hear again from eurotravler...

What is the speed limit?; what was the speed?; what is the fine?; how did they find you?

P.S. Were you REALLY speeding???

Flygirl and Amp322 -

It's an erroneous assumption that there are no speed limits in Germany. I was stationed there from 1990-1993. I'm sure if things have changed, someone will add more info.

While autobahns sometimes do not have speed limits, there are parts of the autobahns which DO have speed limits. Also, while I was there, even if there was no posted speedlimit, you could be fined for going at an unsafe speed for the conditions -- I believe this was normally applied if someone had an accident during bad weather.

Also, most of the metropolitan areas had posted speed limits. I recall that it was only 30kph in most of the small villages. And you absolutely could and would get tickets for speeding in the villages.

During the 3 years I was there, I got one speeding ticket in the mail. I knew I was speeding near Kaiserslautern and as soon as I saw the flash in my rear view mirror, knew I'd been caught. It was very easy to pay (at least while you are in country) since, like the utility bill, you could simply pay it at the Post Office.

Now I'm getting homesick. I would move back to Germany in a minute if I could get a job. (Well, except for my Mom who lives with me.)

Euro,

It seems to me Germany's public sector is most deserving of your payment. I drove through much of Bavaria this summer and was thoroughly impressed with the overall state of the roads: pot hole-free, a refreshing lack of road kill, and not a tollbooth in sight. (Indeed, Bavarian roads make the eastern U.S. equivalent appear woefully inadequate.) Perhaps, then, your payment - along with numerous others thanks to the "Big Brother"-like radarkontrolle - will assist in keeping German highways in tip-top condition. Moreover, your conscience will thank you for it.

Best of luck.