Life throws up some challenges, but often it is only when you are in a situation where you have no other choice, do you rise to meet the challenge. And so, it is only when yo are thrown headlong into driving on European roads do you throw away anything that resembles sanity and go with the flow. If you are not up to it, stay at home in your bedroom slippers and stay safe and sane.

I chose to meet this particular challenge and now I have almost graduated from the European school of driving? I almost have all the requirements:

• I sit in the seat that passengers sit in in Australia
• I overtake on double lines
• I almost always ignore stop signs
• I always drive over the speed limit
• I park across car parking spaces but never in them
• I almost never indicate when changing lanes in traffic
• I push into traffic when I don't have right of way
• When passing just about anything, I always just miss them, especially babies in prams and little old ladies with walking sticks.
• I drive down one way streets
• I drive down a street just on the speed limit, the street being wide enough to take a Fiat Panda with the side mirrors folded in and I am in a Renault Megane and manage to stop in the case of an unsuspecting householder who happens to leave the house via the front door
• I cross busy intersections and as I go just miss, in order
  • A little old lady with a walking stick crossing 5 meters away from a pedestrian crossing
  • A Fiat panda stopped in the middle of the intersection while the driver, out of the passenger side window, talks to a man who has a barking dog on an extendable leash
  • Another motorist taking a short cut across the intersection on the wrong side of the road
  • A police car parked 2 meters away from the kerb
  • A 17th century arch which was built to ensure easy movement of two way traffic - on donkeys.
  • (did not see the baby in a pram.

    )

• Overtaking on bends
• Overtaking on bends on mountainous roads
• Overtaking on bends on mountainous roads with cars coming in the other direction
• Overtaking on bends on mountainous roads with trucks coming in the other direction
• Overtaking on bends on mountainous roads with trucks coming in the other direction whilst the trucks are passing other trucks.

• Doing all of the above (including the first list) whilst talking on a mobile phone and lighting a cigarette simultaneously
• Oh yes, just in case you did not realise - the one way street the wrong way - of course.
• Doing all of the above without attracting the attention of the Cabinieri or the undertakers.

Cruise control is absolutely obsolete because you are overtaking and braking every 30 seconds or so. I am sure they are working on an "I want to overtake NOW!" mode to make it usable again.In Turkey or some of the old eastern bloc countries you are more likely to be doing exactly the same in some rust bucket with brakes that barely work, a cracked windscreen and a couple of springs coming out of the seating. The one saving grace is that some enterprising mechanic will have got twice the performance out of the car than what it originally had.

Especially if it's a taxi. But then they will have disconnected the meter to make sure that performance is not impeded.Now, having reached a reasonable level of expertise, I have only five or six days to get the necessary skills and I think I can do it . There is just one problem area which I have not mentioned so far which I, like most Australians, will struggle with.

It is the ability to be able to let other drivers do all the things that I have been talking about, to you, as often as you do it to them and do it most of the time with grace and humour, or at least tolerance. It's going to be tough.See you on the roads in Australia!.

By: Raymond Strachan