The first thing you notice when you're cruising along the French AutoRoute, or the German Autobahn is that everyone in a BMW, Mercedes, or VW is cruising along much faster than you are.  And I was going 150 km/hr (do the math, it's .6 km to the mile).  

And you start seeing the signs shown above, start laughing out loud, and find yourself having to back track because you missed your exit.  Being the proud owner of a fairly adolescent sense of humor, all the various "farhts" struck me as hilarious.  OK, so I'm heading towards ugly American territory, I got over it eventually.

Then we needed to have some lunch.  We were somewhere around Basel in Switzerland, and I wanted some kind of quaint cafe experience.  My co-travelers were willing to stop at a roadside diner, but I persisted.  And since I was behind the wheel, I got to choose.  :-)

The place turned out to be terrific.  It a cute little town called Wangen.  It was very small, and it's on a river that starts with "A".  The victuals were great, the company terrific, and the wait staff humored our sorry attempts at reading the menu.

Then, for no apparent reason these horse drawn carts loaded with extremely cheerful people came by.  We still have no clue what they were doing.  We surmised they were part of some sort of parade, were probably pretty well lubricated, and were having as good a time as we were in their town.

The picture of the clock tower was the end of the street from where we were having lunch.  It gives you a sense of how delightful and aesthetic this little Swiss town is.

We are still at the restaurant, and like all good travelers we made use of the facilities.  After Mick came back to the table giggling away about the self cleaning toilet, Caroline decided it was good web site fodder and popped this picture.  The toilet has a little squegee that wipes off the toilet seat by spinning it around underneath the housing at the back of the seat.  Then the housing withdraws into the body of the tank area when it's done.  And it's got a nice assortment of lights so you'll know if it's just been cleaned or not.  God forbid your butt should touch a seat that hasn't been wiped!

Jim and I watched Mick and Caroline giggle themselves silly over this toilet.  I think we get points for putting up with such silliness, but that's just my opinion..

The main church at Frieburg is quite spectacular.  Even though it must have gotten blown to hell and gone in WWII, it's in great shape now.  You can definitely see where  all the new stone and new stuary has been added.  But the effect is still impressive.  It's also unique in that it's a red stone church.  There aren't very many of these around with Baroque styling.  Since it was a holiday, there was some kind of event going on inside, which precluded our entering the church.  We settle for ice cream and staring at the outside for a while.

The first picture is a building that sits opposite the church.  I never found out what it was since I can't understand German.  But it had some great gargoyles on it, and a bunch of great armored soldiers and shields.

The second picture looks like spaghetti, but it's not.  It's ice cream.  Honest.  Caroline got such a kick out of it that she wanted a picture, so here it is.

Caroline thought this door was really cool looking, and I agreed.  But this was right after a conversation about what holiday it was in France.  It was some kind of Ascension, which means, if I understand it right, that Mary (mother of Christ) died and went up to heaven on this day.  Since I was feeling so full of Christian spirit, I thought I'd reenact the typical Christly pose against this ironwork with the gold leaf.

The picture of the buildings are typical of what we saw in Freiburg.  The colors are very cheerful, and the buildings are all well taken care of and highly detailed.

The clock is another great tower clock on one of the buildings.  This one in particular struck us as significant since it was the building that holds the McDonalds.  The people in Freiburg will always get chimed for their Big Macs.

Caroline saw this pink phone and thought it was very funny.  It seems all the phone booths and their accompanying phones are bubble gum pink.  We have no idea why.  But that's part of what makes traveling so interesting..

As we were cruising along the old section of Freiburg we stumbled across this granite bench that is carved like a bull.  Now, all sorts of things spring to my mind, especially when I'm so close to a church.  I figured some underground pagans were trying to make their presence known and commissioned a bull right near the church.  But you can come up with your own theories, which undoubtedly would be every it as good as mine.

Crossing the border into Germany wasn't an issue.  There weren't even any Frontiere police station to see.  This was a big difference from going into Switzerland.  Since the Swiss prefer to stay neutral and not join the EU, they snag $25 worth of highway tax as you cross into the country on the fast highway.  The tag is good for a year, but in a rental car that isn't much use.  We got lucky and didn't have to stick the thing to the wind shied, and thus I hope Jim and Mick get a lot of use out of the thing over the course of the next year.

We eventually found a place to sleep in Unkirch, which is a wide spot in the road on the way to Colmar and the wine country.  It turned out the hotel also had a disco which seemed to cater to some very local looking people.  Needless to say, the people watching was great, and we headed off to bed long before the people in the disco emerged from their partying.

We got up the next morning and had some breakfast at the hotel.  We were the only English speakers in the place. That was OK since Jim and Mick do a great job with the language issues, and I can point really well and make all sorts of descriptive faces to get my meaning across. 

We then started out journey in the cool of the morning.  Since the car is a Citroen with all of 14K kilometers on it, the air conditioning doesn't work at all.  This is a great feature to help us appreciate the terrific summer climate of the French country side.  Now, repeat after me with a really bad French accent..  "It is French, therefore it is Bettare'!!".