Need to escape? How about a drive through Melbourne or Mumbai?

A new app allows visitors to be driven through some of the world’s best-known cities.

SHARE Need to escape? How about a drive through Melbourne or Mumbai?
Erkam Seker

Erkam Seker, seen here on a trip to Los Angeles, has created an App that allows visitors to take virtual drives through man of the world’s best known cities. | Provided Photo.

Hop in the car, crank up the radio and just drive — for miles and miles.

What most of us wouldn’t give for an extended change of scenery right about now.

And now you can, in a way. The “Drive and Listen” app, created by a Turkish graduate student, offers a driver’s view cruising through many of the world’s best-known cities — all while listening to a radio station from that city. Some journeys last a few minutes, others up to an hour.

Perhaps you choose to rumble through Rome, on cobblestone roads with palazzi so close together it feels as dark as night even in the middle of the day. The road widens and you’re in scorching sunlight, with the Colosseum looming in the distance. Or maybe you choose London, where, beneath leaden skies, the city’s famous black taxis zip and dart like shiny beetles along narrow streets.

Or let’s say you have a hankering for home — the way it used to be. You can take a drive along the lakefront as sunset approaches. You pull up to a stoplight just north of Monroe on Lake Shore Drive. Couples with baby strollers and joggers crowd the crosswalk in a time before face masks and social distancing.

Erkam Seker, 24, created the app in April while self-isolating in Munich, Germany, where he is working on a master’s degree in biomedical computing.

“I was so bored at home, and I was missing a ride around my city,” said Seker, speaking Monday via Skype about Istanbul, Turkey. “I used to go out with my friends in a car. Watching the roads as we go is one of the most delicious parts of hanging out.”

He plucked some of the driving videos from YouTube, but as his app gained popularity — he says it’s now received about 3 million views — people sent him videos directly. The app now offers excursions to places as far flung as Melbourne, Australia, and Yekaterinburg, in west-central Russia, where the driver navigates snowy boulevards as street cars, some of which look as though they were built in the Soviet era, rumble alongside the automobiles.

Seker said he typically doesn’t watch the videos from start to finish before posting them. He checks to make sure the video quality is acceptable and that the drivers have chosen interesting streets. Although on one occasion — in Yekaterinburg — the driver navigates, for a time, in an underground parking garage. Fortunately, there’s a fast-forward feature with the app.

And it’s not a total escape. From time to time, a public service announcement cuts in to remind listeners to wear masks and practice good social distancing.

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