Yes, I drove on the autobahn in Germany.  No, it's not exactly what I expected. 

The autobahn isn't a specific road; it's a term that refers to the German highway system.  It's true that there are no speed limits.  Well, it's mostly true.  There was an occasional speed limit when it went from three lanes down to two, but people didn't seem to notice.  In addition to the lack of speed limits, there's also a lack of police, which makes sense since there really aren't any laws to enforce. 

Despite the autobahn sounding like a lawless, chaotic mess, it was actually quite organized and systematic.  Most parts of the autobahn are like a 3-lane interstate.  The right lane is for slow people and trucks.  The middle lane is for medium-speed people and trucks passing trucks.  The left lane is for speeders.  But there's one big difference:  You stay out of the left lane unless you're going at least 100 mph.  The reason is simple:  Other people are going at least 100 mph in that lane, and they come out of nowhere.  The cool thing is that people inherently follow this rule, largely because they don't want to die.  This works out well for the speeders because people stay out of their way.  It also works out for the non-speeders because they avoid death.  All in all, it's a great system that must save millions of dollars of unnecessary law enforcement money.  Imagine if New Jersey had no traffic cops?  The state would no longer be in debt. 

After driving several hundred miles on the autobahn, I not only saw zero cops, I saw zero accidents.  Not to say the system is fail-proof and completely safe, but it was definitely worth noting. 

Since it's Germany, there were a lot of VWs, BMWs, and Mercedes.  But by far the fastest cars on the road were Audis.  I don't know why this is.  Every Audi I saw was zooming by me at 120 mph.  I personally got our little rental car up to 120, but it seemed to completely top out at that speed.  They say gas mileage decreases exponentially after 40 mph, so I can't even imagine how inefficient it must be to drive three times that speed. 

Another thing of note was the types of cars on the road.  There were approximately zero SUVs.  There were approximately four pickup trucks.  The rest were sedans and wagons. 

Overall, it was a very cool experience, and even more so in a rental car with manual transmission while trying to read signs that made no sense. #travel