Driving on the German autobahn need not be too terrifying, but strange things happen. Say, for instance, you are on your way to Stuttgart. You are at the wheel and a guy in a BMW cuts you off. He rolls down the window and waves a stop sign. It’s fine, say the companions, just pull over.
License and registration? Where are you coming from?
…Um, I’m American.
No, no, where are you coming…wait, what, now?
And so it went. The German police were running spot checks on this section of the highway. Apparently, it’s quite the drug running corridor, with their biggest bust being 7.5 kilos of marijuana. Six years in prison, the driver got. Just for being a mule. Their last bust was just an hour before they stopped us.
The cops were really friendly, maybe disarmed by this unexpected tiny rolling subdivision of the UN. We were one German, one Austrian, and me, two of us heading to Italy via the Stuttgart airport, one heading back to Austria to his job with the military.
They looked at our papers, told us stories about the big drug running problems: heroine, crack, liquid ecstasy, and plain old pot, being shifted from Amsterdam to the East edge of the EU via this highway. The good cop, a friendly guy with a waxed handlebar mustached chatted with us while the bad cop, who was hardly unfriendly, did some stuff in the squad car. They looked in the trunk at our luggage, unzipped one bag, and wished us happy travels.
We theorized that they stopped us because we were three dark haired types in a car with foreign plates. We may have fit the profile on the surface, but clearly, we were not what they were looking for.
We caught our flight to Rome in plenty of time, we weren’t delayed by our run in with the law. And now, I;m in the big room at Casa San Francesco. I’m watching the sky fade to gray as high clouds blow by above the olive trees. Out the window in front of me I can see another farmhouse, to my right, the village of Scansano. There’s Italian pop on the radio and a wood stove snapping in the background. Last night I had excellent eggplant pizza for dinner, and today we had putanesca for lunch. It’s nice to be here in Italy again.