I never got my driver's license in America, so now that I have some free time over here I decided to start the process.
Of course, driving a country in the Eastern Mediterranean is a bit trickier than driving in the United States...and by a bit trickier, I mean about 5 times per day I wish I had a TOW launcher on the top of the student car
The roads are very, very tiny in standard Mediterranean faire, and road rules are seldom if ever enforced by the police...pushing through intersections, parking on the side of the road and thus blocking traffic in the right lane, squeezing three cars into a two lane road that isn't painted so it's really only technically one lane, etc etc.
To get a license (
reshion nehiga in hebrew) in Israel there are minimum 28 lessons with a private tutor mandatory, a full medical exam, a written exam that covers the rules of the road AND basic mechanics (how to repair problems, etc), and finally a road test.
Right now I'm done with 15 of the 28 lessons and the medical exam, and the manual is giving me a serious migraine headache since half the time the english translation is so bad I almost wish I had the hebrew book.
Already I've nearly gotten into a couple accidents (all of which were the fault of the crazy Israelis trying to cut me off or cutting across 4 lanes of traffic with less than 2 seconds notice), killed the clutch 7 or 8 times (he has it tweaked so if you make any mistake the car gives you a big
then dies...
) and the highlight so far of my learning process: the teacher's car broke down and started smoking at the end of one of the lessons a couple weeks ago. The mechanic he went to apparently fucked up the whole car when he installed the starter a few hours before my lesson, and I was the lucky contestant who got to find that out
But the good news is, I'll be able to drive in the States too after this since I'll get my international license at the same time
That's assuming I don't die in the process...