Driving through Istria

For the first three months of our mission we lived in the flatlands of Croatia.  But Istria is mountainous.  The Croatian road department has been quite practical about how to handle it.  They simply level everything out.  They've built some big bridges, and for the rest they just go through.

Clearly, they were all bored by very large, identical machines.  There is one of these tunnels that is over 5,000 meters long, which is somewhat more than 3 miles.  The tunnels I've pictured here (except for the curved bridge) are all the same size.  Big enough for two lanes, with a nearby tunnel for the two lanes going the other direction.  But the 5,000 m. tunnel has four lanes in a huge tunnel.  There are fans mounted at the top of the tunnels, but that long one was not up to the task.  It stunk of diesel exhaust and other incidental hydrocarbons.  By the time we got to the end, we were SO happy to get out of the inside of that mountain.
    They have escape exits in even the shorter ones, and in at least one I noticed a little shrine built into the concrete abutment by one the emergency telephone.