What a difference!

I'm a new man! What a difference having a car has made to my life. No longer do I need to spend 3-4 hours a day traveling... this has been reduced to 1 hour! I've got a life again - I've got back into my fitness regime, can go shopping easily and conveniently where ever I like and I plan to start Danish lessons again. "Fantastisk"!

PASS - Finally I have obtained a Danish Drivers licence!

Oh thank god I passed my practical test yesterday! It all went fairly smoothly although of course I was a little nervous that I would do something wrong. There were a few little "trick" directions, like being asked to turn into a one way street and driving down a street that turned into a no entry/one way in the oncoming direction at the end of the street. At the end of the test the policeman said that I had passed the test and obviously know how to drive! He said that as with any test there are always some minor observations and he said that there were a couple of times when the lanes merged on regular streets that I did not turn my head to check for cars (honestly I'd be getting whip lash if I turned my head fully every time there were double lanes reducing to one in Copenhagen - if I have already done a check of where cars/bikes are before crossing an intersection, turning or whatever then I don't feel its necessary to fully turn my head but rather glance in the mirrors and to the side when the lanes reduce to a single). The other comment (and he was very nice about it saying that real life and a test are different) was that whilst stopped in a line of traffic at a pedestrian crossing, I stopped short of the car in front to allow a cyclist to exit a side street. Apparently this could indicate that I did not know the traffic rules because I was giving way to traffic from a side street.

Well this long 8 month saga is all in the past now! I went straight out to look at some cars and I think I have found a good deal on a used car (2006) that has only been driven 25,000 km by an old man! Perfect. Its a little bit of a small girls car, but in Denmark the priorities are different when cars are triple the price, petrol double and there's a pollution tax on your car's emissions - therefore it must be small, economical, reliable and cheap to run!