Sometimes, you just gotta ask yourself, what the hell?
During a recent trip to more southerly German climes (Bonn), I noticed a lot of the following signs while taking a stroll one evening:
Despite their different wordings, shapes, styles, and colours, the basic message in all the signs was identical: don’t block the driveway. My first thought was whether pointing something like this out (explicitly and very repeatedly) was really that necessary. Germans tend to be pretty law-abiding folks, especially when it comes to their cars. (Put it this way, Germans not only understand the concept of right of way, they also tend to adhere to it. Voluntarily.) And basic common sense would seem to dictate that you shouldn’t block a driveway.
But, common sense—or at least parking spaces—would appear to be in short supply in Bonn …
One thing you can say about Germans though, they don’t tend to fart around when it comes to their signs. Take the one above on the left. Not only does the no-parking restriction apply both day (Tag) and night (Nacht), but you’re also not allowed to block either the entrance (Einfahrt) or the exit (Ausfahrt) to the garage, even though both are the exact same thing. (The proper, direction-neutral word would be Auffahrt.)
My favourite of all the signs, however, was the one in the middle. Because if you pan back from the garage door, you can see that a very large tree has indeed parked itself right in front of that driveway. Now given that trees, like meadows, are not widely renowned for their reading and writing skills, it is possible to forgive the tree (or perhaps the tree is simply blocking the exit and not the entrance), but you still have to wonder what thought processes, if any, were involved here.
Given that both the sign and the tree are fairly old, it’s obvious that some form of detente has been going on for quite some time now. Decades in fact. Although it’s mum on the age of the sign, ChatGPT guesstimates that the house could be upwards of 100 years old and that the tree, a London Plane, was probably planted sometime after World War II and has at least 60 years worth of rings to its name.
Which all explains the situation quite a bit actually.
Stands to figure that the Brits, who administered northwestern Germany and therefore Bonn after the war, would plant something called London Planes all over the city and then sometimes smack dab in the front of a driveway because they couldn’t read the German sign either.
The Blog About Fog 