work permits up 45%

[cityboy]

Totally agree with you on lane discipline and the right hand \ middle lane hoggers.

I would like to see 'em all horsewhipped, but that maybe because I have a hangover because I was on the lash last nights all paid in Forints.

[Joe Black]

Travelling by car in Europe is great fun. The main noticable difference is that lane dicipline seems to be better in Europe than here...Plenty of carnage but overall still far more pleasurable driving.

Somehow the words "plenty of carnage" and "great fun" and "pleasurable driving" just don't seem to go together.

Had a conversation with a Canadian guy here the other morning, mentioned that a few times I'd seem people drive down the pavement in a residential area because they didn't want to wait in traffic, reply (in a very nonchalant manner): "yeah, I've seen that as well".

Sometimes it's reasuring to know how normal it is.

[hyperD]

Somehow the words "plenty of carnage" and "great fun" and "pleasurable driving" just don't seem to go together.

Had a conversation with a Canadian guy here the other morning, mentioned that a few times I'd seem people drive down the pavement in a residential area because they didn't want to wait in traffic, reply (in a very nonchalant manner): "yeah, I've seen that as well".

Sometimes it's reasuring to know how normal it is.

When I travelled around Europe with my wife in the Tuscan, I met a Canadian guy in Romania who had been travelling around Croatia in a Land Rover with the mandatory jerry cans strapped on it. He said that he'd seen plenty of pile-ups and "carnage" that looked like something out of a war.

What he described to us was fairly grim to be honest.

One thing we liked in the TVR was to power around the convoy of slow eastern european lorries to make some progress. What was more distressing was seeing the overladen skodas trying to tailgate our every manoeuvre and often overshooting our duck-in positions.

I even saw 4 guys leaning out of a window of a trabant taking photographs of our car with their mobiles while overtaking us on a twisty blind road.

Despite the carnage, when you have a free road it's wonderful to floor it and enjoy the view with the roof down. It's great to outpace a 911 on the autobahn. And an audi that had been going slow around the twisties - beautiful overtake maneouvre on the apex and powered past...

Driving around the Swiss border and the mountain roads were breath-taking. Flooring it in the tunnels and have people moving out of the way as you just unleash 380bhp was very grin-inducing!

It's more annoying to go up to 175mph with the roof down and still accelerate only to find the wife has woken up and told you to slow down....

Not so good when you're doing < 10mph in Romania because the national roads are so badly made that you have to keep pulling over to let 20 cars pass you.