En Route Update

The idea had been to drive our little white 1970 VW Beetle Cabriolet, the car Rosie and I once drove when she was green across the Sahara, from the Midi to Amsterdam where my permit for street parking had unexpectedly been granted. All was arranged, though the car has not been used for the past 18 years. The ISSR conference in Louvain-la-Neuve was the pre-Amsterdam destination, and I had worked out hotel reservations along the way to make the drive slow and feasible, but, alas, we got no more than three-and-a-half towns away from the start, and Magda died on us. Petit Claude is in Italy for the funeral of his nephew who was killed in a motorcycle crash, so his emergency assistance was not available. I am certain virtually that it is something simple and easily remediable, but instead dear Pierre came to the rescue, dropped the project on which he was working, brought us home with our luggage, and we have reached the hotel we had booked in Orange now in our Ford, had a swim in the pool, two rounds of negroni and the formule for dinner. Temperature in the low 30s – centigrade of course.

Next today is Villefranche-sur-Saone. Then Dijon, Nancy, Roger in Luxembourg, the conference, Leon and Leonie in Cuijk and finally Amsterdam with a car for which we have no parking. It has become an unexpected and circumstantially enforced vacation; all the hotels had been pre-paid. No point in complaining.