Why??? I hear you ask.

Well…. because it is on our way to our next house sitting assignment in Montpellier.

And yes, we have already had some time (two days and one night) in Montpellier, when we had our appointments for chest x-rays and medicals regarding our visa applications. But our next visit to Montpellier will give us a chance to further explore the city and to experience city living, in a new apartment right in the centre of town. That will be a big change from all the house sits we have done so far in France since we arrived last December. And, we might even get a chance to go for a swim in the sea.

Mulhouse, (pronounced using my phonetics is …. mool-oo-ss) is very close to the Swiss and German borders, and the cross-cultural influences are quite evident, even after being here for only a day.

Mulhouse is famous for its museums, and we are confident our time here will fly. We decided to buy a 3-day pass for €18 each which allows us to travel on all public transport for the 3 days, and also gives us great discounts on entry into some of the museums. We are pretty sure we got a great deal.

The layout of the town is quite different to some others we have visited recently – with lots of circular streets in the central part of town, and where this part of town is filled with large, modern and busy shops. And, there are no cars allowed!! Well at least in the dozens of streets that make up the centre of the city.

But what is very familiar about Mulhouse is that the main part of town houses the church in a large square – called the Place de la Réunion.  It is much smaller than the massive cathedral in Strasbourg, but still helps orientates travellers such as us.

The tram system has four lines which are very easy to work out. Once you outside the main part of the town, the lines are discreetly hidden amongst the grass. It looked fantastic.

On our first day, we visited the Cité de l’Automobile – and our €18 3-day pass allowed us to enter for free (the normal price was €13).

I was not too sure I was going to enjoy this, but Mick was very excited. This museum shown in the photo to the left (note the car bodies coming out of the window), houses 400+ cars, all in pristine, almost-original condition.  They had been part of a collection belonging to Fritz Schlumpf, who originally started by collecting Bugattis, and there certainly were heaps of them. I have to post a separate article about our visit there, as there were some special cars I think are worth sharing. But, to finish this post I want to share a little secret about Mick and me.

When we were quite young (18) we bought our first car – together. We paid $100 for it – $50 each. We thought we had ourselves an absolute bargain, even back then in the early 70’s that was cheap.

I told my parents that Mick had bought it, and he told his parents that I had bought it.

It was a car neither of us had ever heard of – it was called a Simca. And guess what we found at the museum? Not the exact one, but….

…. it looked pretty much like this. I think ours was a little newer than this one, and the engine was not in the back as far as we both can remember.

There were a few Simcas in this display in Mulhouse, and from what we read, they obviously had a good name, back in the day. But sadly, not the one we bought.

I think we had our Simca for less than a week when it started to play up. We got some advice about what it needed to get it going again, and the amount was well out of our university-student budget. While it could ‘limp’ around a bit, we went to a scrap yard to see what they would give us for it, and we were horrified that they wanted to charge us $50 to take it.

So, a new plan was contrived.

Mick and I drove it to a spot that was not too far from the scrap yard, and we removed the plates, and ran. We took the plates to the RTA (at the time) and got a very small refund on the registration. I often wondered why we were never caught out for this misdemeanour. But, we weren’t.

Once we got over losing our money, and our pride, on our first car, we often joked later…….

“Some car that Simca!!”