Europe 2006

The Radweg (cycling route) from Heidelberg to Tubingen looks like a long but very attractive one-day ride if you look at it on a map that doesn’t offer a lot of detail – like the actual kilometer count. The path basically follows the Neckar River through field and forest and winds through small towns with names like Hirschhorn, Eberbach and Zwingenberg, which are easy enough to negotiate even when faced with a noticeable dearth of bike path signs. Occasionally the path would end at the riverside and the only option was to take a ferry to the other side where the rest of the path sat waiting. But for a couple of Euros it was worth it, for the rest and the diversion from the long, long path. We got into a rhythm, rolling through countryside and then past another town with the clusters of orange roofs surrounding the church tower, across the lazy water on another lazy ferry and on again through more farm land. At one point, riding through the middle of what looked a whole lot like someone's farm, we laid the bike down in the grass and took a break in the shade. It was positively idyllic – grasses swaying in the breezy fields in front of us, spotty evidence of mankind's presence in the form of houses and barns and fences, the river slipping by a dozen yards away...and a ten-ton mower/thresher thing rumbling toward us along the narrow paved lane. I watched as it bounced closer, long rotor-toothed arms hanging out on both sides. I looked at the two men riding high up in the cabin, seemingly oblivious to the world around them - or at least to the tandem in their path. They just kind of stared at me as I jumped up and started waving my arms and yelling something not in German. I think Mayumi blurted out something in Japanese. Then we all watched as one row of iron blades passed over our left pannier, inches from plowing right through it, tearing it and everything in it and perhaps the whole tandem to shreds.

As they rambled on down the path they decided to go ahead and raise those cornfield-mowing monsters, for the next people, I guess. Danke, guys.

The afternoon was a perfect mix of swimming, relaxing amid the mountainous scenery, chowing on the cheese and crackers we picked up at a supermarket called Casino, showing off our strawberry and white paste farmer tans and watching guys with big straw hats walking around selling stuff.

The canal district of Annecy is quite intimate, which is to say not sprawling. And a fantastic place to spend a few hours if not the better part of a day, particularly with the outdoor market going on. Wherever I go – Europe, South America, Asia – I always love going to check out the local markets. They’re one of the few places I really feel in tune with the country and the culture around me. Even with the predictable array of vegetables, fruits, flowers and meats – and of course, in France, cheese – wandering among the crowds and the vendors, listening to the constant chatter, even though I’m reduced to guessing what they’re talking about, I feel like I can’t get much closer to the heart and soul of the land in which I stand. Until I step up and get to sampling some of the fare on display. I didn’t expect to be able to buy one single small slice of cheese, though. Once I figured that out we were really rolling.

I’ve never been much of a history buff, which is too bad considering the stuff you can learn about the places you are walking through and the things you are looking at. At first we simply thought this was a good spot for a picture. Later we found out that the narrow stone building in the middle of the canal was once a prison, among other things. Which made me think that at one point in Annecy’s past, the bad guys had some of the best views in town. Certainly nicer than any view from any apartment I’ve ever paid to live in.

Our cable car was slightly less packed than a Tokyo train during rush hour. The multiple observation decks, which put us within spitting distance of the top of Mont Blanc or so it seemed, offered a bit more breathing room – not to mention views that, as John Muir once put it, ‘bankrupt the vocabulary.’ But it was walking the path that few others opted for that truly made me feel like I had been welcomed by Chamonix.

Despite the atrocious sounds coming out of our rear wheel, the next twenty minutes was a blast. Road and restaurant signs were still all in French, but the scenery, the buildings and the atmosphere had all changed. The land rose quickly above us on both sides. The river of pavement wound playfully back and forth through the trees. People moving about among the scattered shops and homes, all built in that inimitable Swiss style, some of them eyeing us with amused interest. The air was cool. The shadows were long. And the road suddenly turned upward. We thought it was going to be all downhill to Martigny, the first real town along our route, but Switzerland had other ideas. For the next fifty miles or so it seemed the road climbed and climbed, winding past lonely farm houses and deep green fields that didn’t care how painful the evening was turning out to be. When we finally reached the next pass, having pushed the bike as much as pedaled, we found ourselves standing on a point higher than the border where Romain had dropped us off. In the distance, and far, far below, lay the town of Martigny. We were done going up. Now we just had to go down. Our drum brake wailed the entire way, at times heating up to the point where my spit would start sizzling on contact. Pausing every few switchbacks to check out the huge, slanting fields of grape vines while the brake cooled down, Martigny didn’t seem to be getting any closer as the minutes and the kilometers crawled by. It was almost dark by the time we reached the valley floor and the sleepy Sunday Martigny evening.

We didn’t know it at the time, but we had rolled into town on Switzerland’s Independence Day. Sierre might have been a nice enough place to stop for the night on any given day, but when the girl at the visitor info center told us of the festival and fireworks going on down by the lake we knew we’d be staying. As was our routine by now, we grabbed some bread, meat, cheese and juice at the supermarket and headed for the park for a lakeside lunch. And of course, a swim was in order. Then with a few hours before the evening’s events would start warming up, we headed off to find a home for the night.

The valley continued on into the distance, but our goal for the day was Interlaken, on the other side of the mountains looming over us to the north. As if it were prescribed by destiny, we found ourselves crunching to a stop right in front of the Brig train station. Inside, the peachy woman in the ticket booth told us the next train was leaving in minutes, if that long. Thanks to the Europeans’ collective appreciation for cycling, there were ramps from the street into the station and all the way up to the platforms, and we got the tandem onto the bike car with several seconds to spare. With empty seats all over the place, we had plenty of room to stretch out and enjoy the view as we chugged and creaked our way up out of the valley.

For whatever reason, Interlaken was a day behind schedule – or had Sierre jumped the gun? Either way, it was perfect. Their Independence Day celebration was in high gear when we rolled into the center of town. The crowds and the music and the noise were unexpected but eminently welcoming. Mayumi plowed her way into the mass of people lining the street while I found a place to park the bike; the rest of the afternoon was filled with traditional costumes and waving flags, horse-drawn carriages and crowd-soaking fire hoses, drummers and jugglers and guys with ten-foot-long wooden horns – and, at night, fireworks, which we took in along with our dinner of bread and cheese and meat and wine. And through it all, the rains kept creeping by overhead.

But we didn’t sit around for long. The Jungfrau Express was departing. The ride to the top would take close to an hour – a slow, creeping hour of increasingly broad and distant views of town and our tent. An hour or so of ridge top trails brought us across to a place that looked down – way down – on the valley we had traversed that morning. Even though the last part was done by train, it still felt good to look down and say ‘We biked up that.’ After a quick rest, cut shorter by the fact that it was pretty darn chilly up there, we began the long hike back down to town. Despite the clouds that just would not lift for us, keeping the mountaintops hidden for the rest of the day, the view spread out before us was indescribable. The valley was a wrinkled carpet of dark green, with the mountains rising so high it seemed as though the valley floor was sinking right into the center of the Earth. Town was nothing more than a blurry cluster of orange rooftops. The road could have been the river, and vice versa. Forget about finding our tent – we could barely pick out the campground. It was going to be a long hike down. We were loving every minute of it.

I don’t know what the connection is, but after spending a few hours or an afternoon or a day seeing how simple some people’s lives are – modest houses, tending farms, no streetlights to steal the stars from the night sky – eating dinner in a restaurant seems silly, if not ostentatious and stupid. I don’t understand it, and I don’t think I can adequately explain it. Suffice it to say, after a day like today, nothing seems more natural or more perfect than sitting outside on the ground and eating a picnic dinner while watching the valley, the mountains and the world grow dark. But then, spurred on by whatever lift that gave us, we biked up the hill into town and had a couple beers while listening to a bit of live music at one of the outdoor cafes along the main street. Is beer compatible with living simply?

I think I could stand living in Luzern. I also think I say that about a lot of places I visit. But the city definitely has a good feel to it – not too big, but the downtown area is nicely spread out; there’s a relaxed sort of energy about the place, which probably doesn’t make much sense, but until I find better words, there it is; the people emit a genteel, genuine friendliness; blue ribbons of water laze through the city, past inviting stretches of sidewalk cafés and under timeless wooden bridges out to the Vierwaldstatter See; and the whole area is surrounded by mountains, Mt. Pilatus to the west standing as their patriarch. And of course, the cycling opportunities seem endless…

With no real threat of rain the next day, a more in-depth tour of Luzern was in order. A guide to the city I had picked up showed a map lined with a walking tour of all the city’s major sights. I don’t know whether Stephan was particularly psyched for a six-hour stroll back down to the River Reuss and the Chapel Bridge, across to Lowenstrasse and up the hill for a drawn-out exploratory tour of the nine (eleven?) towers of the old City Wall, back down through the Old Quarter and up the street to the Dying Lion Monument and back again, stopping for another picture every few steps all along the way. I couldn’t guess how many times he’d seen it all before. But he was a gracious guide and great company. And the view from the City Wall was exquisite.

And the Mayumi Party Line keeps on connecting. After a dozen or so tries we finally got a hold of Markus, who Mayumi met on a group tour of the Western United States. Markus, originally from Leipzig, had just recently moved to the Munich area and was eager to have us as his first houseguests. Or perhaps he was just eager to have houseguests. Regardless, he was all smiles when we finally found him among the throngs outside Munich Station.

I wouldn’t have recognized the town of Burghausen if I didn’t know we were driving through it. Actually, I didn’t recognize anything even as we drove up and down the streets I must have walked dozens of times back during that muddled month during the summer of 1987. But I wasn’t interested in that part of town anyway. What I wanted to see again – and show Markus and Mayumi – was the castle. Burghausen’s Schloss, overlooking the Old Town, the Salzach River and, on the other side, Austria, happens to be the longest castle in Europe. With several towers and citadels separated by courtyards and connected by stone walls, the entire enclosed complex extends over 1,000 meters along the ridge towering over the cobblestone streets and the buildings of the part of town that boasts a history dating back to the 7^th Century, if not earlier. For Mayumi and Markus, I suspect exploring the castle, walking through the old town and crossing the bridge into Austria was interesting enough for a few hours of sightseeing. For me, it was a trip back in time, through a doorway to a room full of recollections and a return to the giddy feeling of traveling abroad for the first time.

As long as I’ve lived in Japan, and as many temples and shrines as I’ve visited, I’ve never gotten tired of them. Traveling through Europe, I carry the same sentiment when it comes to churches. On the surface, one could say that even though they all contain the same basic elements, each has its own unique characteristics – something distinctive or different. And this may indeed be true. But for me I think it goes deeper than that. Nowhere else, I think, does man come close to mimicking the elusive combination of grandeur and peace found in Nature. Perhaps it is fitting that the places man has created to worship and give thanks to God, Allah, the Almighty, the Creator, Kami-sama or whatever he chooses to call his own personal supreme being are the same places that approach this balance of sense and spirit. Palaces and monuments and museums can be beautiful, to be sure, but for me, after a while they lose their aura. In the places where man has worked to create something for an entity other than himself is where I find myself, time and again, believing in peace.

We rode up and down the cobbled main street in front of the station a half a dozen times, searching for the visitor info center; luckily our new air pump and thus our tires were still performing admirably. Finally we found it – and found it to be closed. The sketchy map we’d photocopied from a guidebook we borrowed from the Fukushima City Library was going to have to do. But I don’t mind wandering the streets of a new place, hoping to happen upon whatever it is I’m looking for. Without a map to guide you directly where you want to go, you’re forced to pay more attention to the streets and the buildings around you. And if you’ve got an ounce of traveling spirit in you, you’re going to want to get around to exploring the town anyway, so why not kill two birds with one stone and take the tour while you find a home for the night? We crossed the river and rode through the pedestrian zone, around window shoppers and sightseers and past the minions already settled down to their outdoor café dinners. The youth hostel was located on a hill, which made it easier to find but a bitch to get there with a loaded tandem. Then we found out they were full – not the news either we or the white-haired guy who had pushed his bike up the hill in front of us wanted to hear. But according to the map there was a campground down a nearby side street. Then according to reality we found out there were two, though one of them resembled a backyard more than a campground. Perfect. We paid for a spot of grass, dumped our stuff and pedaled off to the supermarket we remembered passing to pick up the makings of a massive picnic feast.  ** Note the guy with the red cycling shirt and cap in the background.

The skies cleared as the morning rolled on and we came upon a town with a riverside park that was simply begging us to relax, have some lunch and, of course, dry out the tent. And who were we to decline such a warm invitation? Plus, any day that brings you to walking barefoot through the grass is a day well-spent.

Linz, as well as other Austrian cities, we would learn, has a charming affinity for quietly educating tourists, travelers and passers-by on the details of its rich cultural history. I quickly fell into the habit of looking for these red and white banners, signaling to me another chance to peek into the thousands of yesterdays of the places I was walking past and through. Some of the plaques told of significant governmental developments and events that had taken place on the other side of the wall. Others commemorated the times Beethoven or Mozart lived there, composing a certain masterpiece. And some simply spoke silently of a remarkable past, of things that go unnoticed and eventually forgotten, perhaps, if no one cares to remind us. This church was not only the perfectly intimate venue for a classical music concert we decided to take in; Martinskirche was built seven centuries before Columbus landed on the shores of the New World.

The heavens opened up last night, seemingly bent on washing our tent and all our gear right into the river. At least those storm clouds waited until we got back to our campsite so we could watch it happen. Mayumi hung out near the laundry room watching her camera recharge while I stood in the sliding glass doorway fuming. Sometimes I just really, really hate rain. But the clouds always disappear and everything dries out. Eventually.

And with a view like this, I couldn’t help but feel we were in for a good day. I wish Mayumi could enjoy the same vantage point, but from that second seat she has to deal with my back in her face all day. I offer to let her be the captain, as it’s called in tandem terminology, but she always declines. She leaves the steering and braking to me so she can relax and enjoy the scenery passing by on both sides while she lets her mind wander or takes pictures or whatever it is she does back there. As long as she’s pedaling I don’t much care.

With the boatloads of rain we’d had recently, some areas along the river flooded over, rendering stretches of the bike path unpassable. A few signs had been put up, pointing us toward a detour route. Unfortunately, after the first couple of arrows we were pretty much left to our own devices to navigate our way through the several kilometers of country roads that wound through the nearby towns and, presumably, would eventually lead us back to the bike path. The bright side of the situation, it seemed, was that there were a fair number of us all in the same boat; somebody had to have a decent map. Alas, it seemed everyone was harboring the exact same hopes – including those with bad maps. Among the group of us we knew the names of a couple of towns we should want to be heading for. The trick was figuring out how to get there. The road signs didn’t seem to be particularly accurate either. In fact, they seemed downright contradictory. So we put our hopes in the help of a couple of the locals who looked more than a bit surprised to see so much spandex at one time invading their quiet, peaceful, old-fashioned lives. And somehow, everyone ended up watching and waiting for me to garner some directional insight from Frau Hasenpfeffer.

I remembered seeing Melk on a map somewhere, its name in the bigger, bolder print that means it’s got more people than most other places. I also thought, judging from the distance (again using my high-tech thumb and forefinger surveying techniques), that Melk would be a likely candidate for our second stopover in our quest for Vienna. From several kilometers away we could see a yellow palace looming above the trees. From how early it still was I didn’t think we could have made it all the way to Melk already. But sure enough, there was the sign, pointing us across the bridge and into a town that struck us as a bit more attractive than its name. We rested our legs and took in the atmosphere in the town square below that yellow palace that turned out to be a famous Benedictine Abbey. Weren’t those guys supposed to take a vow of poverty? Look at that place! And it goes on and on behind those towers. Mayumi and I looked at each other. They had to have a spare room somewhere behind all those windows, a nice quiet mahogany and gold corner guest room that we could borrow for the night.

But after another twenty minutes of watching fragments of humanity languishing in the shadows of the fountains and statues, we decided that Melk, interesting as it was on the surface, just didn’t feel like home. So we pedaled on. Then we hit a dead end and had to backtrack a couple kilometers. Then we pedaled on again.

The riverside campsite on the southern bank had been washed over with mud by the recent flooding, so we headed for the ferry landing to cross over into Durnstein, another place much more appealing than its name. German just isn’t the most melodic language. According to the town map at the dock, there was another campsite over on that side, in the shadows of the castle. Sweet. Once over there, though, all we found were people who had no idea about any campsite anywhere – except for the mud flat we had just sailed away from in hopes of finding better here in the New World. A bit disheartened, not to mention mildly concerned about the slowly sinking sun, we pedaled out of Durnstein and began looking for any patch of grass or clover that would suit a couple of rogue campers. At one point we stopped to ask a couple out for a stroll if there were any campgrounds around. We suspected there weren’t, and I was ready with my next question. ‘Will the police come by and kick us out if we camp in the park? ‘ The lady laughed and shook her head. ‘Nein, nein, hier ist die Wachau! Es gibt keine Polizei!’ Again, I thought I could really get used to this place.

Even with our detour in Melk and waiting out the rock slide with Hard Hat Hans, then spinning circles looking for a home for the night, we ended up covering almost 140 kilometers that day. Late in the evening, sitting down to another meat, cheese and bread dinner, we decided to spend the day tooling around Krems and Durnstein. Vienna could wait one more day. There were vineyards in the Wachau.

The tandem felt light as a skateboard as we pedaled off in the morning. The first stop on our agenda was the castle ruins overlooking Durnstein. As I suspected, though, we got sidetracked. Between Krems and Durnstein lies the peaceful, alluring town of Loiben, the place I wanted to stop the previous night. We rolled through at a much more leisurely pace this time, along the narrow streets lined with neatly-tended homes and restaurants that playfully hid the vineyards stretching up into the hills and down to the river. Again, as I had the first time I gazed upon this sublime paradise, I wondered how much it would cost to rent some living space in one of the farmhouses for a few months. The warm sun mixed with the cool morning air, and it felt like we were riding on rails as we rolled on through Loiben and into the cobbled village of Durnstein.

Back in town, the milling crowds had thickened. It was time to escape before our last memory of Durnstein degraded into a picture of a theme park. But then we noticed an inordinate number of people swirling around this one particular restaurant, perched on a stone veranda a couple meters above the street. We had already picked up lunch at the supermarket on the outskirts of town, but the house special was too enticing too pass up. ‘One order of the Apricot Knodel, please.’　The skinny waiter wiggled the thin blond mustache under his beaked nose. ‘Eins?’　His eyes tightened as we told him we didn’t want anything to drink. ‘Nichts??’　Obviously perturbed by us taking up his table and his time for one dessert between us, he scribbled something in his pad, clicked his heels and turned a sharp left-face, taking his military stride back into the kitchen. Sorry Heinrich, but we already made lunch plans.

The Knodel – which, by the way, they prepare and bake on the spot as each individual order comes in – was exquisite.

The bike path led us once again into the gentle arms of Loiben. It was time to stop and let this vineyard-embraced village envelope our senses. Cafés were open all along the main cobblestone street. People strolled easily along, nobody seeming to be in a hurry for anything. The side streets, though less glazed than the Hauptstrasse, still exuded fair amounts of intrigue for those interested in the details of life in such a place as this. And spread around the skirts of the village we found winery after small, friendly winery, doors wide open for anyone to come inside and check out the local vintage. I had no idea how many different kinds of grapes there really were until I visited Loiben. I would have liked to try them all, but just like in Durnstein wine samples started at around a buck a mouthful – probably because of those of us who would otherwise have no qualms about trying everything in the house. Then, among the tables and racks and shelves of all the various types of wine we found a couple baskets holding the last few remaining bottles of last year’s harvest – for about three bucks a bottle. Still feeling the lingering effects of our lunchtime selection, we dove in and grabbed one. Yes, I can definitely see myself living in Loiben…

Night was falling by the time we got around to thinking about dinner. With the supermarkets having long closed, we figured it was time for that wild and crazy change of pace: dinner out at a restaurant. We tooled around in the growing darkness and ended up at this outdoor café around the corner from L’Elephant, which we had been told to stay away from by the younger Dutchman. There was only one empty table, which meant (a) the place was pretty popular, and (b) we had to jump on it. And for the next five minutes we sat in the middle of a profusion of profusely smoking smokers, waiting to be served by the waitress we knew we had seen lurking among the smoke and the shadows. Another five seconds of discussion fueled by my intolerance for slow service and Mayumi’s hacking distaste for cigarette smoke, we were out of there. Theirs wasn’t the only food in Krems. Our only other immediate options, though, were searching the late evening for another restaurant or picking up – of course – some bread and meat and cheese at the gas station mini mart and eating under the stars back at the campground. As we spread out our feast on the table we agreed this was the perfect end to a fantastic day in the Wachau.

Thun was about halfway between Krems and Vienna, and therefore an excellent place to take a break. Relaxing in the park along the river, we noticed about fifty other cyclists who had figured the same thing. A quick ride into the town square brought us a market with the usual astounding display of ripe colors. Immediately, though, I knew there was something odd about the place. In the next moment I had it: there was nobody around buying anything. Literally, there were perhaps fifteen or twenty people total, in this big open air market – and that included the people selling stuff. Most of the fruit and vegetable stands had basically, if momentarily, been abandoned. It was a little bit like a scene from a cheesy horror movie where everyone in the town suddenly disappears for some mysterious, alien reason. But we made it out of town without getting swallowed by monsters or being sucked into any flying saucers. For this, Thun was a pleasant enough place.

Mayumi met Birgit on the same tour she met Markus – and was just as enthusiastically welcoming. After a quick initial chat she said she would walk us back to her place so we could get settled. On hearing this I imagined fighting the crowds for a half hour as we burned daylight on what would have been a beautiful evening for a little sightseeing. As it turned out, the walk to Birgit’s home took us right through the center of Vienna’s architectural majesty, amid crowds that were far less crushing. The thirty-minute walk turned into an hour as Mayumi and I tripped over our feet marveling at the domed, frescoed, marble statue adorned buildings rising up all around us. As we passed the city library and made our way into more residential environments we picked up the pace. But not much. Already I could feel Vienna giving Loiben a run for her rent money.

As much as we had seen on our walk to Birgit’s house, we had only scratched the surface of Vienna’s sculptured iceberg. Rene, another member of Mayumi’s U.S. tour group, scooped us up in front of Birgit’s old, marble-staircased, elevator-less building and sped us back down toward the city center for the evening stroll I had been so fired up for. First up, this fanatically manicured garden, with plenty of accidental background scenery to round out the view.

And as the sun set we came upon what I decided on the spot was my favorite building in Europe if not the world – Vienna’s City Hall.

Perhaps as a special welcome for Mayumi and me, but more likely as part of the ongoing celebration of Mozart’s 250^th birthday, there was a kind of food and music festival going on in the plaza and gardens in front of City Hall. About two dozen food stalls were lined up in a huge horseshoe, people shouting and laughing and cooking and serving up all kinds of international temptations. Of course there were ample supplies of beer on hand as well – not quite as worldly a selection but certainly more than adequate. The only thing we couldn’t find was a table among the throngs eating and drinking and milling about in the middle of that horseshoe. But we scoped out a nearby park bench, which was actually in the perfect place for checking out the massive screen hanging over the façade of City Hall showing video footage to go along with the classical music that was thundering through the air overhead. The atmosphere was positively charged with human electricity. We were in Vienna, with great beer and excellent people. Mayumi is a very kind and thoughtful person. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve all of this.

Schonbrunn Palace, built during the Hapsburgs’ reign, is quite a magnificent sight, even in the rain. Why anyone would need that many rooms is a mystery to me, though. And this was just their summer residence. I figure a truly beneficent ruling family would show a less self-centric attitude toward the minions upon whose very lives they depend for their own continued existence as rulers. ‘Without the farmer, not even the king eats,’ as the saying goes. Then again, I’ve never been a king, so what do I know about ruling over the masses? I’ve never been in charge of anything bigger than a kids’ soccer team, or maybe a high school English class. Maybe if I were a Hapsburg I’d look around Schonbrunn and say ‘Well, where’s the hot tub?’ But I’d at least have my minions over for a party and put all those rooms to use.

Mostly Mozart, as they say in Austria, which means they’re willing to give a guy like Beethoven his due respects, even if he was a belligerent ass. Of course, Mozart was a boozing philanderer.

Underneath St. Stephen’s there are catacombs. Not just dirt tunnels, either. Real live catacombs, with real live tombs where we saw piles of real live bones of really dead people. Unfortunately, Mayumi got the willies bad enough that she made me erase the pictures. So instead, back out in the plaza in front of the church I put to use the photography skills I learned from that guy in Annecy. Much better than your typical ‘say cheese’ vacation photo, wouldn’t you say?

…checking out one of Vienna’s specially designated ‘dog zones’…