Column: why I prefer to drive through Germany rather than France on holiday - AutoReview.nl

The sanitary facilities along the autobahn are almost always clean and that makes me very happy. I am not afraid of contamination, but the times I was in France for my holiday and planned a sanitary stop along the autoroute du soleil, I regularly returned to the car without anything to do, hoping to find a clean toilet at the next stop. meet. Or at least not a squat toilet, the well-known hole in the ground. I never have that in Germany. The sanitary facilities for which you have to pay are always clean and in tip-top condition. That seems obvious, but it is not. Not even in the Netherlands.

The whole rambam was there

Recently I stopped at a large gas station along the A2. Coffee from Starbucks, freshly made sandwiches, well-stocked shelves; the whole rambam was there. That's going to be fine, I thought. To access the toilet room I had to pay, but that's fine. But once I was inside, it turned out that no toilet was clean. I didn't need toilet paper because of my little errand, but if I did, I was out of luck; unlike my bladder, the toilet roll holder was empty.

When I then wanted to wash my hands, there was no soap coming out of the dispenser. And to make matters worse, no matter how much I waved my hands in front of the sensor, I couldn't get the tap to start right away. Finally, I caught a few drops of water from the second tap only to discover that - you guessed it - the paper towels were gone...

How do those Germans manage to do that, I wondered in surprise as I walked back to my car with wet hands. The world turned upside down, because I should be surprised why that often doesn't work in the Netherlands. And not in France either, in my experience. No, next year I will drive through Germany again to my Italian holiday destination, even if that means a bit of a detour. And all the roadworks? I would be happy to take that up for sale.