power struggle

Power struggle - does this word mean anything to you? It has become very familiar to me today. This is our blog. Icke is responsible for the photos, I am responsible for the text. I don't interfere with her selection of pictures, she stays away from my writing. All good so far.

Today, this cow crossed our path, the black one with colorful stripes. Icke saw her from afar. I had to slow down, and I could only avoid stopping because there was a line of trucks behind us. Icke took a snapshot from the side window. At first, I didn't think anything of it, but when she typed, pulled and pushed in her phone for half an hour, the sirens rang silently. My feeling didn't deceive me. "Look," said Icke proudly, holding her phone in front of my face. "This is the cover image for our blog today." A cow with a speech bubble that says "Bonjour". I couldn't say anything at first. "I think it's great," said my photographer. "We are now in France and being greeted. I like our cover image." Period. End of discussion. I didn't even try to talk her out of it ...

But the atmosphere that enveloped us was just too special. We made it onto the road shortly after 9 a.m. and crossed the border into France after five minutes. Soon, huge fields spread out on both sides, lined with dense forests. The sun struggled to break through a fine blanket of fluffy clouds and bathed nature in a soft warm light with its first rays.

The route matched the scenery. Kilometers of country roads connecting small, dreamy towns, almost as if drawn with threads. Although the image with the threads doesn't quite fit, as the road surface rose and fell almost rhythmically. One hill followed another. If you closed your eyes while driving, it felt like being at sea. It went on like this for hours. At some point, I noticed that my co-passenger was feeling sick. She was getting seasick, and just to be safe, I offered her a motion sickness pill. No! Just kidding!

Icke couldn't falter because she had an important task: she had to watch out for speed cameras. I believe these devilish devices were invented in France. There's one on every corner here. I counted 16 speed cameras during the 500 kilometers we traveled today, and I don't want to know how many I overlooked. I have never traveled on French roads without finding a traffic ticket from our neighbors in the mailbox upon my return. I'm afraid it won't be any different this time.

The traffic, the roads, and everything around it are very unfamiliar to me, to put it mildly. Today, our navigation system offered us a detour that was supposed to save us 15 minutes. I tried it. Our new route led us over a closed training track for rally drivers. It has to be like this! The asphalt was torn apart, potholes that could easily swallow a crate of beer, road edges that dropped off, and lanes so narrow that oncoming trucks would graze each other's side mirrors like good friends with their hands. In the last kilometers, we had to endure two traffic jams and a protest action by farmers who burned a mountain of tires, probably enraging environmental activists in the process. But now we are already in Spain. Tomorrow evening, if everything goes well.