The guy has no tits, but he has a tailwind

It's mid-September, the best time to travel and we have four weeks of vacation. No, it's not nine seemingly endless weeks like last summer, but at least.

Autumn is fast approaching, but we have taken Sardinia out of the program this year for the fourth time. Family circumstances could cause short-term recalls and then it would be counterproductive to have to swim away from an island. So we take the château in tow, where Zappa spent days tinkering with the drum brakes and re-soled them with new pads that no longer squeak, and we go on a trip from which we can easily be back home in two days at the most.

Now we are traveling around beautiful France for the third time this year, somewhat aimlessly and without a plan.
Well, not completely aimless, at least late summer vide greniers are on the itinerary. And we also have to leave the German highway twice in Lower Saxony because Zappa has to collect old cameras after just a few kilometers.

The first village flea market will take place on Sunday in a suburb of Mulhouse overlooking the Grand Ballon d'Alsace. After we soaked up the sun under the Hessian apple trees on this wonderfully warm Saturday, a traffic jam near Karlsruhe slowed down our already not very brisk journey a little. For dinner there is tulle during the journey and Zappa is very sad because today we were supposed to have Bombay-style fish curry.

When we finally reach Mulhouse, the night is dark in the flea market town, the chosen sleeping and parking space is big enough for a caravan and a robber's den and a relaxed silence settles over the land, so that we look forward to a restful sleep.

And yeah! We know that we are right next to the train tracks. But who expects on Sunday morning at 5:00 a.m. a clatter, a roar and a thunder that will catapult the plugs out of your ears and the snorkel from your nose? We both sit up in bed and stare at each other with wide eyes! As suddenly as the deafening noise begins, it falls silent again. What was that?

From the sound of the gigantic corn harvester that caught our eye on the side of the road as we drove. Did the farmer pull up next to us and immediately bang on the caravan door in anger because we were in his path or in his parking space?
I carefully creep to the door and peer out, expecting Monsieur Agriculteur's tirade of abuse at any moment.
But to my surprise, I don't see anything! Nothing! No combine harvester, no giant tractor, no tank, no angry country dweller! Just a yawning emptiness on the tracks in the immediate vicinity. Zappa thinks it must have been a single locomotive flying low.

There's still bedtime left, so we close our eyes again. But with our hearts pounding in terror and fantasies of machine monsters à la Transformers, we can't find our way back to the realm of dreams so quickly. When I finally dozed off, the village bells ringed me awake again with their tireless, thunderous ringing.
In the morning at 6:00 a.m.! I will probably never really understand Catholic customs and customs. When all the village roosters start crowing their necks hoarsely, we finally give up. Because as we know from experience, Alsatians with hacken Porsches and jingle money like to go to the flea markets very early and buy up all the treasures.

But Zappa is in no way inferior to them and bang! other old cameras have disappeared along with the rattle of filters in his pockets.

On this beautiful late summer Sunday we finally learn that the speed bumps in French municipalities are also called "donkey humps".

And we learn that jam jars should also be closed properly in the caravan refrigerator and not sloppily and inaccurately as in Kurz's household. Otherwise, the delicious strawberry jam has to be fished out of every nook and cranny and can no longer be put on the croissant.

Now we sit in the sun on the banks of the Doubs in Franche-Comté and let the day end. Where will the journey take us in the next four weeks? We will see...