Travelling Woes

In my opinion, the worst thing about travelling is the adjustment period once you return home. I have never been particularly good at driving in Norway--it's not all that different from driving in the U.S., but with the round abouts, all the signs in kilometers, and a couple of baffling driving laws, I sometimes find myself making stupid and dangerous errors. Especially after spending a couple of weeks in the U.S. with its wide lanes, huge parking spaces, stop signs, traffic lights and high speed limits. To me, the most frustrating and hazardous Norwegian law is yielding to traffic coming from the right. Instead of stop signs, as you approach an intersection you must slow down and if anyone is coming from the right, you must stop for them. This is a tough rule for me to wrap my American brain around, and today, as I was driving back from the grocery store, still a bit jet lagged and stupid, I kind of forgot all about it. Oops! A huge dump truck careened out from a side road right in front of me. I slammed on my brakes, all my groceries tumbled from the back seat of the car to the floor, and I might have released a stream of obscenities. Thankfully, I didn't hit the truck, but I was shaking, my adrenaline was pumping and I broke out in a cold sweat. I have no one to blame but myself and if I had hit the truck it would have been completely my fault. I drove soooooo slowly and cautiously the rest of the way home...hopefully by tomorrow my brain will have caught up with the rest of my body and realize that we aren't in New York any more. On the flip side, whenever I arrive back in the U.S. from Norway and I first pull out onto the thruway, I feel like I am flying...until I look at the speedometer and see that I'm going a paltry 55 m.p.h.

(The photo above is of the Chicago skyline as seen from O'Hare airport.)