As a Chef, I arrived in Bermuda, a subtropical island in the Atlantic Ocean, about 700 miles off the coast of New York or the Carolinas, as a chef in 1972. Fresh off my military service in the Swiss Army, it was my first flight out of Switzerland, and I didn’t speak a word of English.
After getting used to the island, it didn’t take long for me to make a friend from Bermuda; she happened to own a 1963 English Morris Minor. And with that, I survived my first driver’s license—in English! I got my second license a few years later in the USA.
Since the island is only 50 miles long and 1 mile wide at its widest point, it didn’t take long to drive around it in just a few minutes. The problem, however, was that they drove on the left, just like in England! During the two and a half years I lived in Bermuda, I often found myself in tricky and dangerous situations where I had to remember to stay on the left. One day, I was driving along South Road toward Hamilton, the capital, when suddenly, some motorcyclists approached me from the left! They were three Americans on rental motorcycles who had been driving on the right!
Fortunately, the speed limit was only 30 mph.
Due to the lack of space and narrow roads in Bermuda, only small cars are allowed, and only one car per family is allowed on the island!
I switched from my car to a Yamaha motorcycle, which I crashed head-on into a truck a year later and ended up in the US Army Base Hospital on St. David’s Island for four weeks with a bruised back.
😆
But the angels were with me; nothing is broken, just several years of therapy, and my back is still holding up today!
Your Blogging Friend Ulrich Koepf
