This is not a parking spot.

One of the very highly amusing things I love about Germany is observing when stereotypes ring extremely true. For example, they don't tend to do small talk and they are dressed in lederhosen and dirndl in public. One of the things that particularly amuse me is the driving. Yes, they do drive very fast - it's terrifying to realise that someone did roaringly overtake you despite your current speed being 130kmh, but also reasssuring to know that they will pull into the right lane to let the real speed freaks take over. This politeness also extends to the general lack of road rage (so far). Nary a honked horn to be heard despite all die Stauen (traffic jams). Despite all general control on the roads, it is highly amusing when I see them do something that reminds me that, yes....they are Europeans after all. This is particularly apparent in the parking. 


When Gnoudesavanes visited, he was highly amused to point out some cars that were separated bumper to bumper by approximately 5cm. Another time, someone asked me to get out of their car, and they then proceeded to park in such a small space that they had to crawl out of the passenger side. But my absolute favourite happened this morning in the Forschungzentrum carpark. There is (quite a large) visitors carpark that the bus drives through to drop off us non-drivers. It was moderately full and people had proceeded to park in a manner that lead to our bus driver to thread the needle. It was like this:

Where the rectangles are cars, the green ovals are the nature pieces, and the dashed lines are streetlines. Basically, cars were parking next to the trees where there was no parking space. 

Watching the driver navigate what should have been a dual direction carriageway that had been compressed to one lane, I observed to my friend on the bus that back in Melbs, people would get fined for parking thusly. The reply I received was, "But it's not blocking the road, our driver will get through it without hitting the others." And so he did. That was also very German.