Friday, 20 June 2008
Permis de conduire
It has been a while since I blogged about passing the written test for obtaining a French driver's license. That process took months and cost more hundreds of euros than I like to think about. But once it was done, it only opened up the next phase of the process—driving lessons from a government-certified Auto École. This process also takes months, and also costs hundreds of euros :-(
You cannot take the actual driving test until your driving school teacher decides that you are ready (schools are penalised if the candidates they present don't pass), and the test itself is quite strict, and far more thorough than what I knew in the States.
Anyway, I took my driving test on Wednesday, and passed. All told it will have taken about ten months and a couple thousand euros to get a driver's license—nothing like driving in the States, where a license is considered more of an entitlement than a privilege. At any rate, I'm glad to finally be allowed to legally drive in Europe, and I did learn how to drive a stick-shift in the process, so I guess I at least learned something.
