The short answer
There is no fixed test route in Düsseldorf. The examiner decides where to go as you drive and gives directions in good time. What repeats are not streets but situations: multi-lane junctions, tram tracks, roundabouts, a stretch outside town or on the motorway, and a quiet street for the set manoeuvres.
The question reaches us every week, usually on the phone and usually in a lowered voice: do you drive the test route beforehand? The honest answer is unspectacular, and for most people a relief.
Why there is no route
Because the test does not check whether you can recite a way through town. The examiner decides during the drive, according to what the traffic offers and what he still wants to see. The drive runs 55 minutes and has to cover a certain mixture in that time. Which streets those are is secondary.
What repeats instead
- Multi-lane junctions with their own turning lanes and light phases that never repeat
- Tram tracks in the carriageway and stops without a boarding island
- Roundabouts, single and multi-lane
- A section outside town or on the motorway, if the time allows
- A quiet street or a row of parked cars for the set manoeuvres
- Residential areas with priority to the right and cars double-parked
We have had learners who memorised laps — and who come unstuck the moment an examiner turns off one street earlier than expected. That is where a learned route turns into a disadvantage. Somebody who knows the situations does not even notice the difference; somebody who knows the lap notices it immediately.
Where the drive starts
At the agreed meeting point with your instructor and the examiner, and from there straight into ordinary Düsseldorf traffic. There is no training ground and no warm-up lap — which is also why we train in real traffic from the beginning rather than on a closed-off area.
The examiner gives directions in good time
Instructions come early enough to act on and are repeated if you ask. Not having understood one is not a mistake and is not marked as one. How the test drive runs is a post of its own.
Where we start and what lies directly outside the door is under getting to us — the traffic you are tested in begins at the kerb.
What to take away
There is nothing to drive in advance — and that is better news than it sounds. Master situations rather than routes and you can drive any street in the city, and the examiner can turn off wherever he likes.