My family owns a vacation house in Southern France. In a cute little village named Moux with narrow roads and old houses. The area is rural, full of vinyards and has a typical Mediterranean climate: Plenty of sun and almost no frost.
The landscape is beautiful, right between the Massif Central and the Pyrenees. Traces of roman civilisation, wild gorges, old bridges, medieval buildings from modest castles to Cathar fortresses on the most remote mountain tops.

Only the French local train system is not what it used to be. The town technically has a train station and the tracks are used daily by trains between larger cities. But as far as I can tell it has been decades since the last train stopped here. And while the région Occitanie is trying to revive its local train network, right now the public transport consists of a bus that rides three times a day. Hence one needs a car there. But I don’t own one, live 1600 km away and take the train for travels within Europe anyway. A car just for vacation does not make sense and renting them is expensive. Also I swore to myself a few years ago that I will never again buy a combustion engine. A car is ruled out. But a scooter would do the job. An electrical one. Used, so it isn’t too expensive. A 45 km/h slow one, which I don’t have to bring to technical controls in Germany and which can just stay in the South.

Hence the idea ripened to buy a scooter and drive it to Southern France. But electrical scooters can’t run too long distances on one charge and at 45 km/h Vmax one is not that fast anyway. So what! The journey is the destination and after being caught in my small apartment during the first wave of COVID-19 I could really use some feeling of freedom and space! I’d take a tent and lodge mostly on camping municipal. A minimalist, silent, uninvasive, environmentally friendly, individualistic, slow vacation with fresh air and a lot to discover to the left and right!