Canberra: the capital of roundabouts!

Yoyo started driving the second day she arrived in Australia. She figured if she had to drive, the sooner, the better.

(MM is a versatile bear but there are couple of things he prefers not to do, 1) driving and 2) getting anywhere near a dog. So Yoyo is the driver and MM gives directions, speaking of a perfect match! )

So far she manages to drive OK except 1) she still turns wind screen wipers on when trying to indicate left/right turns (because the indicator thingy is on the wiper side for the US cars); and 2) her heart still sinks a bit when she is spotting a roundabouts sign (as shown in the picture).

There happen to be LOTS OF roundabouts in the City. No sure if anybody has ever counted the total number but judging from the high encounter frequency, there must be hundreds of them. One can get a sense of how the city is "oddly circular" (to use one of Yoyo 's friends word, after he checked out Canberra from Google Earth) by just looking at the city map. The most prominent roundabouts of all even enclosed the entire Australian House Parliament!

At least Yoyo knows that her fear of roundabouts is more of a psychological issue, after driving through probably a hundred of them by now. Her first encounter of roundabouts was not long ago in Boston and that was an unpleasant one, to say the very least. It was in the dark and Bostonians are famous for their impatience. Yoyo feels like ouching even when she thought about it--she frozen in some unknown darkness, with headlights flashing from all over the places and angry honks filled up the air...Luckily nothing happened; well, other than a scar, a nicely rounded one in Yoyo's memory.

Obviously Yoyo is not the only one who finds roundabouts scary. This website defines them as "a British traffic system of indeterminate purpose."

Another source of her fear of roundabouts is due to her NO sense of direction. She got lost walking in her hometown all the time, so to drive through roundabouts in a country she just arrived doesn't help her find her way. Bill Bryson's warning doesn't help either: never leave without a map of the city, a compass, provisions for several days and a mobile phone with the number of an emergency service.

At least somebody made good use of the Canberra roundabouts by making fun of them and won a ticket. Here was their winning slogan,

"The Canberra Roundabouts – We’ll last roundabout three seasons before going interstate."

:)