five Euros

 midnight north of Troyes and safely west of Paris, the maps system elects to choose a route that will avoid traffic congestion far away. Evening twilight was late, and the little cars motor hums on and on. The first stop for diesel, nearly a tragedy, the card gone. The card that is used to pay the tolls with, a blue credit card, a carte bleu as the people call it here. The missing card noticed ,search the ground, search the car. Then the woman from the filling station comes out, she holds up the card

"is it yours, le carte bleue"?

Check the name. It is the missing one, unmistakale.

Give a thank you tip, five Euros. The woman comes over later, she says thank you for the tip. It was not a big amount, therefore wonder why the many thanks. So thank her again for having taken the trouble to leave her place behind the desk to return the dropped card. The loss would have been costly. It is even as if the five Euros would make a difference to her day.

But that was yesterday, now drive into the early morning, climbing the hills near Nancy, leaving all the acceleration to the cruise control, feet comfortably back on the floor.

Cross the border at ifezheim, there is no motorway that crosses the border here. That is strange, it is as if the political differences in the past had never ceased.

Germany, the country of high speed driving, mind the mirror all the time. Mind the cars temperature gauge at those hills near Stuttgart, then Esslingen, They never seem to end, as the route takes the car over the watershed, the line upon one side of which water flows to the Rhine, and on the other side of which ultimately into the Danube and the Black sea.

Just before reaching Augsburg, a refreshment, a cup of poorly made coffee and a croissant that looks like a deep fried wasps' nest and tastes of sugared paper nothingness.

And at half past four in the morning, reach home, the earliest light is starting to pale the sky in the east.