You pass a lot when you drive on the A 9 from south to north Germany these days. At motorway junctions, noise barriers and bridge rest houses - this in Franconian Forest is particularly beautiful. It is still in Bavaria just before the Thuringian border and was opened in 1967 as the first bridge restaurant in Germany. At that time it was right next to the check-in facility and offered West Germans a daunting view of the border crossing. Here, before entering the GDR, they were able to see the advantages of free consumption with a last wheat beer. Today a well-known fast food chain continues this tradition. There you sit in your coffee break and look out of the bridge window at the never-ending flow of vehicles, trucks and long-distance buses.You can even see an “Ellenator”, that bird of paradise among automobiles, which, with its two rear wheels, which are close together in the middle, looks as if it had been painstakingly patched up again after a war injury.
Like a general mobilization
However, by far the most conspicuous means of transport these days is: the mobile home. On the A 9 you will encounter mobile residential units in every imaginable nature: whether as a lurching trailer with extended side mirrors, as a creeping retro carriage or as a two-story luxury vehicle. They stand on the hard shoulder and let off steam, they park toilet blocks and gas pumps, and they are carried piggyback across the asphalt by heavy-duty trucks. You pass at least ten such huge delivery caravans. Normally this is only known from the days of general mobilization, when tanks roll past the frightened population on endless freight trains. And the association is not entirely wrong, only that it is not about military mobilization, but tourist mobilization.To mobilize the mobile, so to speak. According to a recent survey, almost three million Germans have bought a mobile home, camper or caravan in the past twelve months. Another 3.5 million Germans are said to be planning a purchase in the near future.
While the dream of owning a house is a long way off for many small families because of the skyrocketing construction costs, the idea of a virus-safe vacation becomes more attractive with every new incidence report. The tour operators report a staggering five hundred percent increase in bookings for campsites. So there is currently a jolting through this country - from the bridge restaurant in Franconia forest it looks as if a whole nation is retreating into its wobbly snail shells in order to be guests instead of friends only with itself.