Thankfully we are living the city lifestyle here and rarely have to drive.  We walk almost everywhere and sometimes take the tram.  But of course we have to leave our little bubble sometimes and take our little Citroën C4.

Driving really isn’t too horrible, as we don’t have to worry about driving on the opposite side of the road or have the steering wheel on the other side of the car.  And South Carolina has reciprocity here which means we don’t have to take a driving test.  But there are definitely some things to get used to and times where we have no idea how an intersection works, what a street sign/signal means, or if we should even be driving where we are driving.

The first thing to get used to is the stop lights are on the side of the road instead of hanging above you.  You really have to pay attention in some areas otherwise you can blow through a red light and not even know it!

The second major difference here is there are a TON of roundabouts.  This makes traffic flow smoother since you don’t have to sit at a red light.  But there are times that you don’t know which lane you should be in, people are entering the roundabout when they shouldn’t, or you’re not sure which exit your GPS is telling you to take.

Speaking of GPS, sometimes I will come to a weird intersection and the GPS will say “take the 2nd left” and I’m looking at all the streets around me to figure out which one is the 2nd left….or the GPS will say “bare right” and there are 2 streets very close to each other and you’re not sure where you’re supposed to bare right.

In other cases, there are just some things I don’t understand…like a blinking light or an intersection where there’s no stop sign or stop light and I have no idea when I’m supposed to go or how the traffic flow works.

So, with all this said, my motto for driving here is:

JUST GO BUT BE PREPARED TO STOP