Borderland – Obernai, France


 

We’re eastward-bound.

After a very restful night at Gilles apartment in Strasbourg, he drops us off at the side of the highway.  Our objective is Frankfurt, but Gilles is dubious.
“I don’t think you can get a ride here to Germany.  Here in Strasbourg everyone going to Germany just buys cigarettes and comes straight back”.
We assure Gilles that we will be fine, thank him for his hospitality, and stick our thumbs up.

(Above: Obernai looks like villages in Normandy would have before the destruction of WW2.)

It starts to rain.   Not heavy, just drizzle, but enough to be annoying.
An hour and a half later, we get a ride.  She drops us off near a major road in the suburbs.  We look at the map and realise we are back in Strasbourg.   We are about 30 mins walk from Gilles place.

(Wet feet?  waterproof your shoes with doggy do bags.)

The hitching options look bad, so we walk.   The burbs go on and on.  The roads have no shoulders, and there are no service stations.   The rain gets steadily heavier.
2 hours later we reach the Rhine, and walk across the bridge into Germany.  It is a moving experience walking across the long disputed border that so many lives have been sacrificed over during the last century.  There is no guard post, no stripe painted on the road, no surveilance cameras, just a simple road sign, announcing we are “arriving in Deutschland”, and to “please reduce our speed in urban areas”.

I’ve been learning about European history first hand over the last few weeks.   Walking across the Rhine, I think back to the grandiose paintings of Napoleon’s vain attempts to add Germany to his empire, to the countless graves in the Somme, and to the shrine in Amsterdam dedicated to Anne Frank.  On the Champ Elysees every flag pole was draped with a French and a German flag, as a symbol of the two countries unity.
There is no memorial at the German / French border, and none is required.   The absence of any sort of marker inspires hope in a way no symbol ever could.

Just as Gilles said, Germany is the land of cut price tobacco.  Every other shop front displays massive wholesale cartons of cigarettes.  We find a service station beside the autobahn, and get to it.   Hours go by without result.   We give up, and catch a bus to a nearby village which is beside the main highway.   We trudge through the rain to the ramp to find that the East-bound side of the highway has no shoulder, and the ramp is much to narrow to hitch on.
We stand in the rain for a while and discuss our options.   Spain is looking good.

The west-bound side of the autobahn has an ample space beside it and we get a ride almost immediately… back into Strasbourg.
Antoine, a chatty software analyst, suggests a place in the city where we can get a ride easily to the south.   We are dubious but too tired to argue.
He drops us off on the side of a busy suburban road.

The sun is going down.  Once again we are walking distance from Gilles place, and i can imagine the look of quiet satisfaction on his face if we show up on his doorstep, wet and cold, and confess our failure in Germany.

Luckily, Antoine was right, and after a few minutes, Veronique stops for us.
Veronique is an energetic woman in her fifties.   We tell her about our misadventures, and she invites us to stay at her place for the night.

Veronique lives in Obernai, a picturesque medieval village south of Strasbourg.  After a hot shower we take a stroll through the town in the twilight, and fall gratefully into bed.

In the morning Veronique gives us hot coffee and fresh chocolate croissants.  We sit around her kitchen table and pore over her French/English dictionary, listening to Australian rock music.

Veronique’s sons are studying and adventuring in Australia.  Veronique tells us how much her sons love Australia, and how welcome they have felt there.

After breakfast Veronique drops us at the highway to Lyon and we hug her goodbye.

We’re southward bound.

(Veronique.)

 
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