a true story of car leasing in europe

"Are you the American who doesn't know how to drive?" asked the middle-aged businessman looking straight at me through the open passenger window of my car. His sharp double-breasted suit and gentlemanly delivery — with only a slight French accent — intimated his status as a bigwig of some sort. Uh-oh, I thought, I'm in trouble. I leaned toward the passenger window, offered up a "That's me," and held a shrug of an expression on my face.

My words passed in front of the bearded French mechanic who sat next to me. The mechanic couldn't say yes or no in English, but for the past fifteen minutes he'd been amiably trying to teach me how to drive a manual transmission car.

Preserving my leaning position and pitiable countenance, I awaited a response from the suit. Surprisingly, although the dude remained silent at the window, he didn't seem upset with me. I relaxed a bit and settled back in my seat.

Meanwhile the suit had produced a small rectangular case which he was presently holding open before the mechanic. Exotic brown cigarettes lined the inside. (I was told later in my trip that they weren't cigarettes but cigarillos, miniature cigars.) Apparently my situation was so serious it called for some sort of contemplative smoke — not, it seemed, a good sign, especially for a twenty-something, jet-lagged non-smoker from Iowa who couldn't drive a manual and who, on the first day of his first visit to Europe, sat behind the wheel of one in downtown Paris an hour before rush hour.

The mechanic took the case and snapped up a cigarillo while the suit introduced himself to me. "President of Renault USA" is all I heard. This was a bigger wig than I'd expected. They've called in the top brass, I thought. The mechanic was now offering the cigarillos to me. I pinched one. The mechanic took a light; I took a light; the bigwig lit up too. Voilá, the cig was smooth. I took another drag. … The jet lag, Paris, the poilu of a French mechanic, the extremely urbane businessman, the cigarettes — altogether surreal. Hey, I thought, this is cool.

"Why didn't you get an automatic transmission?" asked the businessman.

"Uh, well, the manual transmissions were quite a bit cheaper," I answered. "I didn't think it would be so difficult to learn."

My anxiety was back and it punctuated the end of my statement with a series of nose-laughs exhausted across my ironical grin, which grin presently deliquesced, all evidence of my anxiety retreating to my eyeballs. I looked at the businessman, then at the mechanic, then back at the businessman. Go ahead, laugh at me. Please. I know I'm foolish but you gotta credit my bravado. Typical American bravado — both our strength and our weakness. Laugh. Laugh. P-leeze, I need a good laugh.

The businessman looked at me, nodded slightly, took a drag and looked away in thought. The mechanic stared at the car floor and began his own subtle nodding. I wasn't gonna get my laugh. No, these guys were too cool to get mad or laugh at me; they just wanted to help. Nevertheless I wanted to escape.

Suddenly I remembered sleep and instantly began to drift off to it. But my ego, considering this phase of the trip more a mission than a vacation, slapped me straightaway with the stolid injunction it'd been holding all along: There will be no turning back. Adhering to the mission meant driving a manual transmission. I knew that an automatic would cost some US$500 more; I didn't want to pay US$500 more. Still, I thought, maybe I should give in and get an automatic. I asked the businessman whether he had an automatic available and if so how much it would cost.

"I'll have to investigate," he responded with typical equanimity. "It will take about one-half hour. How long do you want the car for?"

"Ninety days," I said.

Perfect. I had a half-hour in which to hone enough skills and summon enough guts to get out and about on the streets of Paris. If I couldn't cut it with the manual, I could come back and get an automatic. I stubbed out the cigarillo.

"If I'm not here when you come back," I added, "it means I decided to take this car."

The businessman went to check the inventory. The mechanic got out and tended to other business. I methodically put the car in gear and circled where I'd been circling, around the pillars dividing the entry and exit to the parking garage. First gear, second gear, first gear, neutral, reverse, neutral, stall. First gear, second gear…. I circled several times before pausing, consciously taking a deep breath, re-reconciling my mental map of the city with the stylized one — half map, half advertisement for McDonald's — on the seat next to me, and tentatively rolling toward the street.

Now under the hard, afternoon, early-May sun, I was in full view of everyone. I promptly stalled the engine for the umpteenth time that day. These people are ignorant of the dangerous tyro now on their streets, I thought. Pedestrians were going about their business — old men shuffling, mothers issuing children across the busy street, fashionable women striding with purpose — all as if the two-ton projectiles zipping past them were targeted by drivers possessed of Mario Andretti's skill. I chuckled in the high pitch of disbelief and set out to make my unique contribution to the chaos.

Less than a hundred meters later — and before making my first turn — the high resistance that is Paris's desultory web of roadways had upped my anxiety enough to melt the mental map which moments before had seemed so crystalline, leaving a fugitive remnant that, despite all my straining to read signposts and to reinterpret Ronald McDonald's Paris, I couldn't build on or even save. If taken as the summation of my wrong turns, I became effectively dissolved, here there and everywhere, Schrödinger's Cat in the black box of the "City of Light."

Yes, Paris had swallowed me with all the perfunctory efficiency of a septuagenarian taking a pill.… But I wasn't going down smoothly: I stalled the car one, two, three, four — I don't know how many times. The French reserve honks for the most awful driving exhibitions; I felt like a hated goose on some mad migration I'd caused to go awry. I refused to make eye contact with anyone for fear of suffering a just humiliation. I shrank down like the vowels in the word fool, the car's body affording thin consonants of protection against an imaginary paragraph — no, page — of human types who from virtually all positions possible shared singular delight in deriding my every action.

Maybe I should take this thing back! … No, just don't hit something or someone, I told myself, remembering the mantra of my high school driver's education instructor. "It doesn't matter if you miss'm by the width of a hair," he loved to say, " — as long as you don't hit 'em!"

I turned on the radio. Almost instantly a familiar song commenced. It was a new hit by Lenny Kravitz, and one of my favorites. The initial buzzing guitar riffs and screaming vocals soon gave way to the title question — " Are you gonna go my way?" The song still raging, I stopped at a red light. Without taking my eyes off the light, I lifted the spent cigarillo from the clean ash tray of the spanking-new car and stuck it loosely under my upper right lip. The smell of the tobacco mingled with the ambient, uniquely French new-car smell. The light turned green. I took a deep breath. The tobacco hit my taste buds. Lenny hit a high note. I hit the accelerator. Ninety days and 24,696 kilometers (14,817 miles) later, on schedule, unscathed, and guilty of only a few minor and inconsequential traffic offenses, I would return the car to Paris.

— Eric Bredesen, Moto Europa author

myths about driving in europe

Traveling Europe by rail is great, but private auto travel gives you unparalleled access to the land and to the people. Nowadays it's easier, more economical and hence more popular than ever to meander across Europe by auto. Generally only one partner is required to render an auto tour of Europe less expensive—all transportation costs considered—than a tour facilitated by rail passes. And nowhere is driving more fun. Yet several misleading myths about European motoring persist and keep untold numbers of travelers from enjoying this great value. Let’s explode these unfortunate myths.

Myth #1: Europeans drive on the left side of the road.
True only in the UK, Ireland, Cyprus and Malta.

Myth #2: It's difficult to get the proper documents.
Provided you're at least 18 years of age, your domestic driving license is usually all you need. Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Russia and Spain do require non-Europeans to carry also an International Driving Permit (IDP). The AAA sells IDPs for about US$10. Many auto-rental companies require customers to be over 23 or 25 years of age, but tax-free short-term auto leases (ranging from 17 days to 1 year) are available to persons as young as 18.

Myth #3: Fuel costs in Europe make driving there three to four times more expensive than driving in North America.
The price of gasoline in Europe is generally three to four times higher than in North America. But the gasoline-powered vehicles of Europe are more fuel-efficient than those of North America. What’s more, diesel vehicles are widespread. Diesels run about 20 percent more efficiently than gasoline-powered vehicles; and in continental Europe, diesel fuel is about 30 percent cheaper than gasoline.

Myth #4: Parking in Europe is a nightmare.
Free parking spots abound on the streets, at train stations, at tourist sites, at provincial hotels and motels, and, yes, at hostels. This abundance prevails especially off the beaten path, precisely where a motor vehicle can take you. Expect to pay only about US$30 per month for parking.

Myth #5: Europeans are crazy drivers.
The European driving style is faster and more chaotic than the North American style, but Europeans generally are better drivers than are North Americans. The average kilometer of European roadway bears 60 percent more vehicles than its counterpart in the United States; but compared to the US count of 1.1 deaths and 95.7 injuries per 100 million vehicle kilometers, the UK counts only 0.9 and 74 respectively, Sweden 1.1 and 30.8, Norway 1.2 and 42.2, the Netherlands 1.3 and 48, Switzerland 1.3 and 56.3, Denmark 1.7 and 30, Ireland 1.7 and 38, France 1.8 and 39.1, Germany 2.0 and 90.* Indeed, European drivers customarily demonstrate remarkable patience and goodwill: honking is kept to a minimum; slow drivers pull over onto the shoulder or otherwise signal to let faster drivers pass; the faster drivers wave or beep in appreciation.

Myth #6: European roads are prohibitively vestigial and confusing.
Wrong again. A comprehensive network of new expressways (autoroutes, Autobahnen, etc.) crisscrosses the entirety of Western Europe. In Austria, France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland you must pay tolls on most of these sleek roads; but in the rest of Europe they are free of charge. Avoiding expressways, though, is advised and easy. Parallel to the expressways run the highways that once served as the main highways. Typically these secondary highways afford much more interesting scenery and experiences than do the expressways and are in excellent condition. Regardless, navigation is a breeze. European traffic-control and road-signage measures are either remarkably similar to those employed in North America or else sufficiently heuristic as to be easily followed by foreigners. Moreover, coming into a town, everything tends to fall into place if you follow the ubiquitous signs to the town center or train station. The parking lot at the train station will be at your disposal—often free of charge.  Even the infamous roundabouts that increase in frequency with your proximity to a city or town—especially in the UK and France—make navigation easy, as they provide for any number of revolutions while you figure out which turn to make.

Myth #7: Crossing borders is a long and hair-raising process.
Border crossing is usually free of hassle; often you need not even stop.

Myth #8: Driving is a lonely process.
For starters, driving will amount to a great subject for conversation and it’ll grace you with a certain mystique in the eyes of the fellow travelers you’ll meet. Surely some of these travelers will ask to travel with you. Regardless, persons traveling accompanied will rediscover the special intimacy that develops during a road trip.

* 1995 "Statistics of Road-Traffic Accidents in Europe and North America," United Nations Publication 0497-9575; and the International Road Federation's 1991–1994 "World Road Statistics."

why drive europe?

In relating the eight myths about European motor travel, I've told you the fuel costs, the toll costs and the parking costs associated with a motoring tour of Europe. But how does the economics of motor travel compare to that of rail travel? In this respect a recent edition of budget-travel guru Rick Steves' Europe Through the Backdoor newsletter pointed out, "Every year, as train prices go up, car rental becomes a better option for budget travelers in Europe. It's surprisingly easy. While the lion's share of travelers are planning on train travel, you should at least consider the driving option."

Even if motor travel works out to be more expensive for you than rail travel, the value afforded by motoring tends to be greater and often justifies a greater expenditure. Many people hold that the value realizable in European travel is inversely proportional to the number of people traveling Europe at any one time. This is partly true. Europe does accommodate millions of tourists, and the crowds do become overwhelming at times, spoiling the integrity of the experience. Yet Europe is a big place. In most cases travelers who claim that the whole continent is saturated assume this based on samplings of anomalous concentrations of people. Apart from the sights that tend to concentrate visitors, the modes of transport which most visitors opt for—trains and bus tours—play a primary role in contributing to these concentrations. Trains and buses tend to lock you onto the beaten path, where you'll visit the same places and meet the same—often, understandably, jaded—locals that other travelers meet. This phenomenon results in something like 90 percent of the travelers frequenting 10 percent of the places. To this I say, "Great! These mobs are leaving the rest of the place to we intrepid types."

A motor vehicle allows you to wave goodbye to the sweaty throngs and the sometimes nasty, phony or otherwise fraudulent entities that dine on them. Of course once you're away from the tourist hordes, finding accommodation becomes easier. And prices tend to be cheaper off the beaten path. Regardless, traveling by motor vehicle forces both budget traveler and royalty alike to travel—to live—more like a local. Indeed I've found that the more business I do in Europe—including the procuring and driving of a motor vehicle—the less I act and feel like a tourist and the more I feel charged up with integrity.

A motor vehicle is like a special ticket to the great museum of the present. What makes the ticket so valuable is the flexibility it bestows. You can go where you want when you want. You're subject neither to train nor bus schedules nor to the strikes that all too often wipe them out. You have door-to-door capability. You can toss in virtually as much luggage as you like and transport it straight to a place where you can undue all the zippers. And you don't have to pay for all the short bus trips to outlying accommodations and sights. Essentially you have no downtime.

Some people might argue that motor vehicles are slower than trains and that the time spent driving should be considered downtime. That's largely a bad attitude speaking. I just mentioned the advantage of doing otherwise mundane business in Europe. As the operator of your own vehicle—of your own tour—you're doing business of sorts. Even if you never get out of your vehicle, driving forces you to look at a physical map and to work at creating a mental map, an understanding of the continuum that is Europe. You'll read the landscape while navigating it, and it's just as good a read as any book. Remember, necessity is the mother of invention; when riding trains or buses—which allow you to exercise your vision but don't require you to exercise a map—your understanding of the continuum, your mental map, is rarely constructed. It's only natural: the more you let other people think for you during your trip the less you'll know about the place when you leave. It reminds me of a Burma Shave (shaving cream) sign I'm told long ago graced US 30, the "Lincoln Highway," as that road ran through my home state of Iowa on its way from New York to California: "DON'T LOSE YOUR HEAD TO GAIN A MINUTE," the sign warned. "YOU NEED YOUR HEAD, YOUR BRAINS ARE IN IT." Rather altruistically this advertisement evokes images of horrible automobile accidents; but there are myriad more ways by which the value of your head can be compromised. Jumping on an overnight train or bus in Seville, for instance, and the next morning waking in Paris has its advantages, but the increased value of your head that results from experiencing how Seville connects to Paris is not among them.

And even during the day, trains constrain your vision. Trains, of course, run on tracks. Train tracks are much cheaper to build and trains more efficient to operate if the tracks run across flat ground. So train routes tend to follow the flattest land available—and the flattest land available tends to be unexciting. Even when trains venture into the mountains they spend much of their time in pitch-black tunnels. And even if the train window isn't dirty and you have a great view, it's gonna to be the same view that everybody else sees. What's more you won't be able to smell the pine or feel the breeze or hear the birds or taste the local wine. While train travel passively constrains your vision of the outside world, it strives to completely shield all your other senses.

Indeed you'll exercise the most important aspect of a motor vehicle's flexibility when you stop and open its doors. You can stop for photo ops. You can drop into this or that intriguing winery, taste a few samples of red and buy a bottle for dinner. You can stop and talk with that farmer or that group of old men or children on the corner. You can pull up and watch that local soccer or rugby or cricket match. If when passing a mountain stream on a hot day you see people swimming in a cool natural pool below, you can pull over and join them, like I did. In a train you zip by such joys. Compared to a day of motoring, a day of traveling by train greatly diminishes the chances that you and your stories will serve as objects of fascination later on. You're going to Europe to further your understanding of the world. Well, Europe and the world are infinitely more than hundreds of disjointed cities. Between those cities are thousands upon thousands of wonders, many of them untold or undiscovered, the perfect ingredients for adventure—get mixed up in 'em.

Among the wonders you can explore are thousands of outstanding campgrounds and ideal spots for free-camping that only a motor vehicle will allow you to frequent. It's worth noting that without a partner or two, camping is a bit too lonesome for me. As such I do most of my camping when traveling with friends.

This brings up a good point. You may worry that by driving you'll miss out on the social situations that pop up on train rides. You will miss out on these. But in a way driving will make meeting people even easier. Driving is a great subject for conversation, giving you an added mystique when you exchange stories with fellow travelers. Many of these travelers will want to travel with you; and if you're so inclined you'll be able to choose whom you want to share the traveling and costs with. (Although you'll have a tough time getting tag-alongs to pay for more than their share of the fuel costs.) Regardless, if you're traveling accompanied, you'll rediscover the special intimacy that develops during a road trip. Something about driving with good company spawns the best conversations.

Another putative advantage of rail travel is the overnight train ride which allows passengers to save a night's lodging expense and to maximize their sight-seeing time. Yet on top of missing many sights along the way, these night-train folks often arrive at their destination tired. You can expect to get only about five or six hours of sleep on a typical overnight train ride. I don't know about you but that's not enough sleep for me to feel good the next day. And I want to to feel good while I'm in Europe. As a motor traveler I average about eight hours of sleep each night. Moreover, not marching to someone else's schedule, I wake without an alarm—a vacation in itself. To get more sleep on a train, you'll have to fork over US$15 for a couchette. A couchette is a bed in a compartment—sometimes lockable, sometimes not—with two triple coed bunks (blanket, pillow, clean linen, and up to five compartment mates included). An attendant monitors the couchette and deals with conductors and customs officials for you. You could also opt to pay US$40–80 for a two- or three-bed sleeper with a sink.

Whether you travel by train or not, you should expect to make several mistakes and face several surprises along the way. By giving you the ability to turn around in an instant, to act immediately on what intrigues you, to seize the moment, a motor vehicle empowers you to manage and exploit these inevitable wildcards. "A traveler who leaves the journey open to the road finds unforeseen things come to shape it. 'The fecundity of the unexpected,' Proudhon called it." So writes William Least Heat-Moon in Blue Highways, his critically acclaimed account of traveling around the US in a camper van. This fecundity of the unexpected assumes a much more powerful dimension in motoring tours than in train or bus tours, and he's a wise traveler who ultimately and strategically surrenders to it in both the planning and execution of a trip. In other words, as a recent television advert has it, "Plan to be spontaneous."

It is prudent, however, to focus for a moment on the unpleasant unexpected happenings that may occur. Crime is a prime example. When traveling, of course, you're subject to a higher likelihood of petty crime than are the locals. Still, in many ways Europe is the safest continent in the world, and virtually no place in Europe is prohibitively dangerous for travelers. Yet in choosing to travel by motor vehicle you're choosing to travel closer to the ground, to open yourself more to the local population—including the subgroup of criminals. But the criminals probably won't be there to take advantage of you: their prospects are much better on trains, around train stations, and among the mobs I mentioned earlier. In other words, criminals go where the crowds go.

Perhaps no other phenomenon takes the potential for both pleasant and unpleasant experiences to the extreme as does hitchhiking—or "autostop," as Europeans call it. Many sources advise that picking up hitchhikers in Europe is a mistake. I'm not gonna to go that far. Unlike North Americans, Europeans accept hitching as an integral mode of transport. Thus a much wider sample of European society sticks out its collective thumb along the highways, improving the chances that your experiences with hitchhikers there will be pleasant if not wonderful. There are even organizations throughout Europe that match riders with drivers. Use your best judgment when it comes to hitchhiking. You're under no obligation to pick up anybody.

Many people consider touring Europe by bicycle. Of course bicycling leads to intimate experiences with the landscape and the people. But you'll pay for that intimacy: bicycle touring is hard work, and there's no way you can get around much of Europe by bicycle unless you have a ton of time and tremendous stamina. I know because I've met several bicyclists during my travels and I recently attempted—with limited success—to bike around Britain and Ireland in a month and a half. A good bicyclist on a long tour typically covers about 100 kilometers (66 miles) a day, an effort which requires about six or seven hours on the road and results in mild exhaustion in the evenings. You will sleep well but unless you're an experienced bicyclist you may get in over your head and end up dreading the next day. With the great effort inherent in such bicycling you can't justify many deviations from your planned route, and to avoid superfluous physical expenditure you must plan that route with extreme care. The overwhelming tendency, then, is to limit yourself, to keep on the move, to pass up the fecundity of the unexpected. In short, you'd better love bicycling for the sake of bicycling. Moreover you should seriously consider covering only 66 to 83 km (40 to 50 miles) per day. If you travel by motor vehicle you can still do substantial bicycling. In fact a motor vehicle facilitates enjoyable bicycle travel. With a bike carrier and/or industrial strength rubber bands, you can secure your bike(s) on your vehicle and drive across boring or hilly country before mounting the two-wheelers; and you can travel comfortably in the vehicle during unpleasant weather.

This brings up a very important point. Your choice of transport doesn't have to be either/or. You can combine motoring and rail travel and bicycling or whatever. For example, you can tool around the countryside for a week or two in a rental car, avoiding the snarled traffic and other troubles of the cities, and then bounce between a handful to cities over the next week or so using trains. Furthermore it may surprise you that there are "motorail" trains which will carry you and your car from A to B. And as you might suspect, most trains accept bicycles for a small charge.

Now that you understand the myths concerning European motor travel and you're thinking in terms of value, you're primed to make a good decision about how to tackle Europe. If you're worried that you're not up to the challenge of savoring Europe's roads, take heart in the True Story about my first day driving in Europe.