Day 13 – The Hay Trailer

Fribourg to Orsonnens, 24Km

We spent the night in the excellent Couvent des Cordeliers in Fribourg where a pilgrim bunk bed costs 30 francs. It was well located in the centre of town and Walter and I had the whole room to ourselves. The facilities were in the next room. Pilgrim luxury.

Breakfast was not provided so we set off into town and joined the bustle in the market where the locals bought their food. A convenient bakery supplied a cheese roll for lunch and a pain aux raisins for breakfast while McDonalds supplied the coffee.

After a few minutes walking, we cleared the city for a day of mixed farming and shady woodlands. Walter spotted an old hay trailer which dated from 1985 and was the same model as the one his parents owned. It was a Mengele 350. The Mengele company was founded in 1907 by Karl Mengele and became one of the most successful farm equipment manufacturers in Europe. But young Josef Mengele didn’t care to join the family business and instead, he pursued a career as a physician. You can Google what happened next to Josef Mengele, how he became the infamous Nazi war criminal and Angel of Death at Auschwitz II who somehow escaped justice in South America.

Tonight we’re staying at the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Fatima. It’s a large facility but we’re the only pilgrims here. A Vietnamese order of monks is now running the Abbey and they cooked us a Vietnamese dinner featuring spinach soup, vegetables from the garden, rice, tofu mixed with various meats in a pot and a green salad with a spicy Vietnamese dressing. There was red wine on the table but I persuaded one of the monks to part with half a litre of Heineken. Afterwards I dug out one of my emergency cereal bars to settle the stomach.