The big day. Due to excitement I had slept badly. I took my luggage and went to Berlin main station to catch my train at 8:28 in the morning.

Almost everbody on the train wore a mask and I opened the window so fresh air would protect us from aerosoles. The Luxembourgish train had closed windows so I kept distance to others as good as possible. Here most people complied with mask laws as well. The train followed Rhine and Moselle, which were really beautiful to look at. In Treves the local train was badly indicated but I found it after some confusion.

I was surprised to learn that the local train stops at the last German station Perl and does not follow the tracks towards Metz. Imagine, you can literally see Schengen from the Station of Perl on the other side of the river and the local train stops as if the EU never happened. In 2020. For perspective: Border crossing local trains and busses between nl/de/be existed already when I was a child. I must know, I took one every day to school. Why the Saarland and the Région Grand Est still haven’t got their stuff together is a mystery to me, maybe they can inquire at the Meuse-Rhine-Euroregion how to do it. Luckily the seller of my scooter picked me up with his (also electric) car. I installed rack and top case on the scooter, packed my things, we signed and exchanged a few papers, I got the keys and off into the adventure I rolled. As it was already dark and the day had been long I went straight to the nearest camping municipal in Sierck-les-Bains.

When I arrived the camping was already closed. But as I stood outside sitting on the scooter looking at the locked gate a group of four men came and one asked me if they could help. I told them that I was on the first night of a big scooter tour. They invited me to camp next to them and opened the door. Turned out they were a group of motorcyclists returning from a walk. I slowly rolled through the gate downhill and as a ground wave came one of them asked me friendly to not start the engine so nobody would be disturbed by the noise and to push the scooter instead. When I told him that I already had been using the engine for the last 20 meters and that the crunching of the grit was all the noise that this electrical scooter would make there was some laughter. The others rode a Honda Africa Twin each and after I set up my tent we shared snacks, drinks, stories and jokes about electrical bikes. One of them worked in the solar business though, so I was not all alone defending electric mobility. They were very friendly and believe it or not, some had even been in Moux, because the local motorcycle guesthouse is apparently more famous than I assumed. My first day had worked out pretty well and I fell asleep without any issue.