A German couple picked us up and gave us a lift to the Tyrol valley. We sat down and had a nice lunch and made use of the lovely toilets there - good toilets are important. I believe you need to be comfortable in your space during the process of waste evaculation.
A couple of rides later and we eventually came to a stop at an enormous driver stop/hotel/petrol station/truck stop. I wrote about this on the 17th July so I'll just post the photos which go with the explanations. You can see the cars on the autobahn above and to the right of our tent.
Please note: the photos of our tent are usually taken the next morning, seeing that we most often arrived while it was already getting dark, or in this case when it was very dark and around 11.30pm.
Another view. Autobahn on the left, car park on the right, petrol station in front and truckers all parked behind. We thought that in the middle of the night someone was tampering with out tent - i.e. pulling one of the pegs out and the running off, as we heard rapidly, escaping footsteps. We can't be sure exactly what happened but there were no missing pegs on inspection in the morning.
Besides the peg bandit, we were woken by the Turkish family reunion / convention in taking place in the carpark (or were they Indian, Claudia?... she was the one who poked her head out to see who was causing all the commotion). It was a busy place.
On the way back to Switzerland weeks later one of our lifts told us that free camping like this is illegal in Germany. Oh well, if no one sees you you're not breaking any laws are you?