Christine in Croatia: Road Trip to The Netherlands

11.32hrs...right!

From Bestovje, Croatia to
Den Haag, Schiedam and Zwolle, Holland;
by car via
Slovenia, Austria, and Germany
into The Netherlands (Holland).
GPS 1288kilometer (800miles),
under 12 hours,
in reality just over 16 hrs,
(however we did make it
home only 14.5hrs).

It's like driving from state to state... well... The different languages, money, and toll systems, plus the border check points, do make it a bit more of a challenge.

The Autocestas (as they are called in Croatia) are easy to drive. There are plenty of rest stops with WC, most have restaurants, gas and convenience stores. Therefore we never needed to get off.

We did quite a bit in 8 days.

1st stop: Saturday's Healing Crusade with Pastor Mitchell - Den Haag, Netherlands

Sunday, Tom preaching in Schiedam, Holland.
Great family and a great church, we were blessed!

Final destination... Zwolle Conference!
Also see Feb. blog zwolle-conference

In Holland stop for the ducks and watch out for the bikes -yikes!

Lost count of the all the tunnels... I think the longest we went through was

the Plabutsch Tunnel, approx. 10km (that is over 6 miles) long, in Austria.
Imagine you are in a video game, (or maybe a James Bond movie ;-)

On the way home.
Does that sunset look like a burning bush to you?
That moment when you see the 1st sign with your city. (insert smiley face)

My observations, as the passenger, and tips for the next time you are on my side of the world.

There are two things you need to know to travel through Slovenia even if you only travel (see map) a very short distance;

#2 You must buy a vignette, a sticker which you attach to the windshield. Vignettes can be bought at any gas station and are sold by length of days, the shortest is 7 days. (meaning we needed to buy 2 - an 8 day trip.)

#1 although Slovenia is a Schengen country, Croatia is not, therefore we needed our passports to cross the border. The crossing can be slow and both countries have separate check points. Thankfully the times we crossed traffic was light. However coming back into Croatia, the traffic on the other side...

I watched in horror, thanking God that their misery was not my misery! (Way Worse than Boston traffic or any of the Cape bridge nightmares! ) Not just the 3 to 5 hour back up, but chaos doesn't even describe the area in between the two borders!

I thought there must have been something going on, but I have since been told it is like that all summer!
Note to self: never,ever,ever cross the border on a weekend night.

Note to you: If you must I would suggest having a full tank of gas, plenty of water and food.

Austria, I think is the most beautiful to drive, you can almost always see the mountains and they are spectacular and ever changing in depth and color. [Sorry, not something I could capture in a picture, in a moving car, thru glass.]
Most of Austria’s rest stops only have glorified port-o-potties, yep, still beats getting off an exit, but just saying.

Yes parts of the German autobahn have no *speed limit. SO you do not travel in the passing lane bc the ‘fast’ auto's go by as a blur, i.e. " hey was that BMW or an Audi?" However most peeps drive 125-145km (85-95 mph). There was a lot of construction, so for long stretches of road, we all drove 20km.
Germany has the rest stops with the most variety, some really big with motels. My favorite, we found on the way home, it had both KFC for Tom and Burger King for me! You have no idea (insert happy dance here)!!!

Note: some have a great system for the WC where you pay (euro) 70cents to enter, and the machine spits out a coupon for 50cents to use in the food court or store. Yep, we bought more candy then we would have.

*Fun facts: The unrestricted sections of the German autobahn attract people from all over the world who crave a high-speed adrenaline rush.

“Top 10 Speeds Clocked on the German Autobahn”:

#10 in 2008 , 192 miles per hour (309 kilometers per hour): Corvette ZR1;

'Thanks to some pesky traffic and a few work zones, the team only managed to get the ZR1 up to 192 mph.'

#7 In 2003, 201.3 miles per hour (323.96 kilometers per hour): Ruf CTR Yellowbird

On the A81, a section of autobahn that runs between Würzburg and Heilbronn...

The full list is impressive, I only added these bc, #10 is the only USA car and we also encountered some ‘pesky traffic and a few work zones’! and we drove through Würzburg as did #7. (You can read and link to videos about the rest of the top 10 at

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/5-fastest-speeds-on-autobahn.htm#page=0 )

Interesting note: The autobahn has its own dedicated police force called the Autobahnpolizei. Officers undergo intense training and they drive specially outfitted police cars and motorcycles made by BMW, Mercedes Benz and Audi. Germany’s yearly number of traffic-related fatalities is around 6 deaths per 100,000 people, comparable with that of neighboring Austria (8.3 deaths per 100,000 people), France (7.5 deaths per 100,000 people) and Switzerland (4.9 deaths per 100,000 people).

And lastly on day 1 {Friday}, but first 8 days later {Saturday}, the motorways in Holland were mostly farm land, loads of sheep and cows. Fields of sunflowers (saw some in every country:-), corn, wheat and other crops, very scenic. Windmills, tall and white, also dot the landscape and are kinda graceful looking.

One more FYI list:
Croatia: Tolls are paid via entry (ticket) and exit stations (pay)
In Austria you do need to purchase a vignette (i.e. Slovenia above), plus we paid extra tolls before a couple long tunnels.
Germany & Holland - all toll free motorways, nice!

Ok so that was our 30+ hours of highway driving,
Worth it bc T did all the driving!
Worth it bc conference was timely and the preaching down to earth.
Worth it bc it's so nice to meet up with old and make new friends...
Or as Solomon said; Eat, drink (coffee) and be glad!