An unforgettable road trip

“A friend of mine had got it into his head to buy a sixties American station wagon he’d seen advertised in the South of France, and drive it back to Berlin. And so it came about that four of us took a plane to Toulouse, where we rented a car to make our way into the French backcountry. In a continual drizzle, we reached the old farm where this supposed vintage gem was being kept.

We’d been told over the phone that the car was rust-free and the engine purred like a young kitten. Let’s just say that this didn't exactly correspond with reality, and having seen the car, my friend decided to pass. Still, the seller kindly offered us food and a glass of wine, which we felt we should accept to be polite. Inside his house, he served us goose bones with something rather indeterminable — but the wine was amazing.

We really didn’t want this trip to end as a failed mission, so our friend managed to find another vintage car for sale in the same area — a white Plymouth built in 1966. We went there the next day, and he just decided to go for it.

So now we had a twenty-hour drive ahead of us. It was around 5 degrees Celsius outside, and as evening fell, the temperature inside the car suddenly plummeted. Because as it turned out, my friend’s new pride and joy had a slight issue: the heating didn’t work. We had originally expected this trip to be a two-day affair, so nobody had brought any proper spare clothes. In the boot, we found a completely filthy USA blanket, which we draped over ourselves on the back seat. When we stopped for a quick break and to fill up the tank, Helge started running round and round the car, completely overtired and still wrapped in the blanket. That’s how this shot came about.”