I've never seen Paris

In 1978 during my time at the German army, a friend of mine, decided to drive to Paris for a weekend. Together with our girlfriends, we started early on a Friday morning. The car we used, was a NSU 1200C, in Germany better known as "Lighter on wheels", because some of them burned down, due to overheating. Some of them had fire extinguishers on board!
After a short time, we arrived in France, and some hours later, we only around 30 miles to Paris were left. Suddenly the motor began to overheat and then he stopped running. 30 years later, I don´t know exactly, what happened, I think it was something, concerning the cylinder head gasket.
What to do know ? In Germany it wasn't easy to find a repair shop (workshop) for a NSU, so you can imagine, that there was no way to find one in France. After a while, we found a workshop, that was specialized, to repair French marques and agricultural machines. The mechanic was a typical French man, with a Basque cap, moustache and smoking Gitanes cigarettes in a row. And, we didn't trust him very much....
Despite our little knowledge of French language, he understood, what went wrong. In his job, he was a genius. Normally working at agricultural machines, he repaired our NSU overnight. Improvising with some parts, he found in his shop. After changing some big thanks and a some money, we went on our journey back home. We drove home with a low speed, listening constantly to the sound of the motor.. And believe it or not, we arrived at our hometown without any problems.
I haven´t seen Paris ever in my life....


Today, I can laugh about it !

Tilman