The Order of The Ampelmen

I was out wandering the streets of Berlin the other week, as I am oft to do, when I noticed something.  A little startling discovery of the "that so simple, why didn't I realise that before", but with some profound implications (ok, not really).

You see, when you are walking around, you often need to cross a road.  These roads have cars on them, driven by mostly oblivious people at high speeds.  To solve the dilemma of whether getting to that cafe is worth risking your life for, the forces that be created something called Traffic Lights, to curb these maniacs, and then ultimately ampelmenn to aid in ones crossing.

So, I'll be stood there, marvelling at the crossroads in action, looking across the road at three separate ampelmen.  The first of these is for my side of the road, the second for the tram tracks and the third for the opposite side of the road.  Now, what I've found is that often, the amplemann on the far side will turn green first.  Leaving me stood on the opposite side thinking "WHAT THE FUCK!! Why do those motherfuckers get to start crossing the road before me!!!  by the time mine changes and I get over there, that one will be on RED!!!!!".  And this has often happened, leading to a little camp jog across the offending lanes.

Now, what I'm about to impart may be one of those things that everyone knows that has somehow bypassed me (there seem to be a few of these).  And it is this.  That the crossing is designed to cross on the right hand side of the road!!!  The green light in the direction of traffic changes first!!!  Crossing on the left, is just a silly thing to do and mostly pointless.

Not having noticed this earlier may be due to complete stupidity on my part, or the fact that I come from a country where people do everything on the left first (escalators are a pain in this regard, up is left, down is right!!), or simply that there are far more important things to think about and I've devoted very little mental processing to this.

Either way, 21 months of Germanic living and not noticing this to aid in my road crossing is just ridiculous.