From the Mental Basement: November 2015

...or, Whoa, Dude, It's Gone All Europe Out.

I've been trying to decide whether what I think about this part of the trip is really about the impact that a strange foreign place makes when you first arrive - land in Munich at 10 in the morning their time after leaving Vancouver at 1 pm our time, not really too sure WHAT time it actually is, blunder around the airport trying to find your buddy arriving on a different flight...it's a strange kind of fun.

We rented a car at the airport and headed out. I was in a daze and have no pictures of the car but it was a nice Ford compact of some sort. First thing I notice: windmills. Big huge ones like the one up Grouse Mountain, only these ones are all turning. Lots of them, you start to get that "War of the Worlds" feeling.

They're everywhere! If I lived around here I think the first thing I'd do every morning is look out the window to make sure none of them moved in the night.

Then I notice that buildings everywhere have solar panels. Conclusion: electricity is expensive here, and it must be windy, too.

There are other fun things to see, like lots of three wheeled motorcycles pulling little trailers, coming home from their weekend camp-outs. Why three-wheeled motorcycles? Who can know...

Eventually we got off the autobahn and went into a town called Hof, our first real stop.

This is the city hall for the town of Hof. I don't know when it was built, but to me it just SCREAMS apfel strudel.

All the buildings and sreets are strange and charming, people are nice, coffee is good. I didn't realize that Dale, my travel partner/guide, came here for more than just coffee. When we got back in the car we stayed on side roads and soon came into some tiny little hamlet that had its own little Wall, and a museum where you got the rundown on how it all worked. This little tiny place, about 50 people, has a brook going through it, you could jump across it in flip-flops, and when they made the deal in '45 on dividing Germany, this brook was part of the border. East and West spent the next 45 years looking at each other across that brook, a Wall, guard towers, a checkpoint, dogs, guns, barriers...the works. We toured it. Here's a link to a site that sort of describes it...Modlareuth is the name of the place.

See how narrow this road is? And yet at the bottom of this hill they had a Wall of their own, with a gate and dogs and guards...I think that white thing just left of center is their little Wall, now part of a museum.

There is still a fence and car barrier and patrol road and bare strip of raked earth for a long ways along the border here, even though it can now be crossed freely..

The concrete was to drive on while patrolling, the little post used to be for communications, the bare dirt strip was kept herbicided and raked so footprints were easy to see...fence is to the far left, this used to be East Germany.

Guard tower...you could climb up into it and look out through all the little shooting slots...

Finally, we arrived in Nuremberg and navigated to our AirBNB place. Nuremberg was very picturesque, and it was some kind of Medieval Days festival at the castle a few blocks from our place. We wandered around, stopped for a beer, looked at old old churches, and had a great dinner at a local place our host recommended. Totally Europe.

Inner courtyard at Nuremberg Castle...It's old here, real old....maybe a little TOO old.

Medieval Days at Nuremberg Castle, between the inner and outer walls. Note the whole pig on a spit to the left. Close examination will also reveal people in costume. No bagpiping skinheads in this shot, though.

Just a detail on the inner wall at the castle. I guess "money to burn" has always equated to just "power".

That same wall, just for some context on the worth of doing all that carving, for that one corner piece.

Detail on one of four very elaborate old churches in the old part of Nuremberg. Again, "money to burn"....and I don't know what that gilded caption says or means other than "1509".

Longer view of that same church.

From a bridge in old Nuremberg, very near where we sat and enjoyed a quiet beer, watching people cross the bridge. Jet lag can be quite peaceful.

The view from the 4th floor walkup in Nuremberg. I particularly like the cabling job across the street on the roof, from the satellite dishes to people's apartments.

I was going to skip this, but since (a) I made such a fuss about it when we were there and (b) we didn't have time to go see what's left of the great rally area from the bad old days, I have to mention it, and ask questions: is there such a thing as medieval bagpipes? Were there ever bagpipes in Bavaria? And do bagpipes currently have some connection to skinheads? I ask because one of the tents in Medieval Days at Nuremberg Castle featured a bare chested skinhead in a kilt and army boots screaming out lyrics about death and violence and playing bagpipes apparently made out of wood and animal skin. You can thank me later for not having pictures, because I'm still haunted by everything wrong with that guy in that place. You don't want the visual; the visual makes me wish I could poke out my mind's eye.

The good meal, pleasant host, cool castle, and a sound sleep made most of the bagpiper conundrum dissipate. The next day, feeling all happy about the reunification of Germany, we resumed the Autobahn. More windmills and even what looked like a nuclear plant.

Pretty sure those are cooling towers just left of center...

Here's a very short video of a couple of cars in the fast lane passing us as we bumbled along the Autobahn at a turtle-like 140 kph... cars going real fast

Anyway...after that it was a pleasant couple of hrs in Leipzig followed by deep gratitude for GPS having been invented and getting us to Berlin.

I'm not doing Leipzig any favours with this shot...a typically really ugly Soviet-era public building with some kind of inspirational message in Latin next to a kind of latter-day workingman's glockenspiel..."Omnia Vincit Labour"...no mixed up messaging here at all.

Trying to make amends to Leipzig with a picture of an ornate memorial fountain in front of I think their very modern university.

I see it has been more than two months since I attempted to foist anything at all off as a post. I can hardly explain where the time has gone, but just shy of three weeks of it went to Europe on a lot more than 5€ a day. I've been thinking about how to frame the whole thing and what keen and novel insight I can bring to the whole experience, and that's probably why there's been no post - because thinking isn't the same as writing, even aimless, unstructured, pedestrian writing...which you will now see.

If you've been wondering about when I was ever going to do anything you can thank my friend Michael for this post. I was slated to run with him last week and didn't want to tell him I'd done nothing at all, so I had to start. If you're annoyed to see I didn't just go away, blame Michael.

So, I went to Europe, with my usual amount of intense planning and forethought, which means I bought some tickets last spring and some Euros about a week before I left and otherwise didn't think much about it. My friend Dale, whom I traveled with, is probably still exhausted from having to do all the thinking and telling me what to buy from whom when. Just to get it out of the way, I DID put on my own pants every single day.

The original impetus for going was a cycling vacation at the Belvedere Hotel in Riccione, Italy. Dale and others had been before and raved about it. Take a look here at the glossy website for the hotel. You ride a bike through Italian countryside (or "citrus idea" to the iPad spellchecker) for a week, and spend the time when you're NOT riding eating sumptuous feasts, drinking free wine, and sleeping. What's not to love? Here, check out the sumptuous feast menu, just one evening:

It doesn't matter that half the time I couldn't recognize the menu items on the platters I was choosing from. I just ate, and ate, and it was allllll good.

A bonus shot of the pool and deck...okay, so yes, this was taken on the one rainy day, but you get the idea. Nice.

Still, flying to the other side of the world entails time zone changes, and finely tuned athletes like us need time to adjust to to those in order to perform at our peak. That meant getting to Europe and killing some time waking up at normal hours before riding. That same flying entails a large cash outlay, which meant thinking about what to see and do while over there and NOT riding. Having seen and done nothing in Europe for 35+ years, I was going to be seeing new everything, so I didn't care WHERE I went. I couldn't lose no matter where I went or what I saw...you, on the other hand, as a reader... well...

So the plan was:
fly to Munich,