Journey to the East Chapter 2
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Sunday 15 June, Luxembourg/Mannheim. An unexpectedly long lift from a talkative young Belgian woman, Ursula, who over the course of the afternoon and evening related everything there was worth knowing about her love life, a little of which is described in True Confession. Sunday 15 June, Luxembourg/Mannheim. The rain got heavier as the day wore on. Ursula continued to divulge intimate details of her relationships. I began to get concerned about where I was going to spend the night. We were on a small road, there were no towns ahead of us, and Ursula was headed for the US base, not Kaiserslautern itself. She hinted that if we couldn't find a suitable spot to let me out, I could stay at her place on the Base. I watched as one likely-looking lay-by after another slipped by, Ursula shaking her head each time. I had the awkward feeling, after the first couple of hours in the car, that this was going to happen. She was a nice enough person, but, well, she was a few years older than me and about twice my weight. But the thought of not having to spend the night in the rain spurred me on to take at least a passing interest in her confessions. I was thinking about how to handle the night ahead when, around 10:00, the car pulled off the main road and arrived at the military checkpoint at the base. I could see very little through the driving rain. A guard approached us and requested our passes. He told Ursula that I wouldn't be allowed in--security was tight on account of these terrorists down in Stuttgart, he couldn't remember their names. My stomach sank, but what could I do? You win some, you lose some. I donned my so-called "waterproof" rain-jacket, grabbed my rucksack, and waved good-bye to Ursula and her man-problems as she drove through the checkpoint and disappeared into the night. Then back through the pouring rain to the road, silently cursing my fate. Jesus, even an all-night session in the clutches of that man-eater would be better than this! The road was pitch-black, not a car in sight, and in a couple of minutes I was soaked through. My thoughts were as bitter-black as the night, as I prepared myself for spending the night in the downpour. But it wasn't to be! Despite the downpour and darkness and the terrorists and the lack of space for a car to pull in, the first motorist that came along stopped in the middle of the road and shouted at me to jump in, "Schnell, schnell!". I didn't even ask where he was going--tonight it was going to be any port in a storm! The driver was a quick-tempered middle-aged guy on his way somewhere to do something with somebody--at least I think that's what he said before I managed to blurt out that I couldn't speak German. His enthusiasm diminished notably (maybe I was the person that he wanted to do something with?), but he continued gamely trying to make conversation. He guessed that I had come from the base and assumed I was American (Amis, he called the Yanks), and I didn't bother correcting him. In very broken English, he told me to be careful of the Terroristen, they might attack the base. Which terrorists? I asked. Did he mean this Baader and Meinhoff, whom Ursula had told me about? "Nay! Nay!" he spluttered, Baader and Meinhoff were already in jail, and were on trial near Stuttgart in a specially-built courthouse. So we're safe then? "Nay! Nay!" (I had gathered by this time that this meant "No!") There are other terrorists, he said, with guns and bombs. From his gesticulations I gathered the country was swarming with them! We continued driving through the rain in an uneasy silence. After more than an hour's driving he stopped at what appeared to be an industrial complex, muttered something about Ludwigshafen, and motioned me to get out. "Ludwigshafen?" I asked. "Ja, Ludwigshafen", he replied gruffly, and pointed into the darkness. I pulled on my already soaking "waterproof" jacket and trudged off, heading for God knew where. Quickly soaked through once again, I walked through the darkness for what seemed like miles until I came to a bus-stop. As I was checking the time-table, a bus pulled up--the last bus that night.
"Ludwigshafen?" I shouted to the driver. With one foot on the step of the bus to prevent it taking off, I quickly checked my map, while the driver drummed his fingers nervously on the steering wheel. Mannheim was roughly in the direction of Heidelberg, across the broad expanse of the Rhine. Hadn't Ursula said that Heidelberg was beautiful? "OK, Mannheim", I said, and I got in. Through silent empty streets we drove, the rain keeping up its constant patter on the roof of the bus. All buildings were in darkness. No one else boarded the bus. Somewhere below us the mighty Rhine was rushing through the darkness, and I thought of a poem I had come across (probably in one of Henry Williamson's books), Die Wacht am Rhein--The Watch on the Rhein, about how the staunch Germans would defend their country on the Rhine. "Land of our fathers, have no fear, Your watch is true, the line stands here." I was soon to meet this watchman on the Rhine! After about half an hour the bus pulled to a halt and the driver signalled to me to get out. We seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. "Mannheim?" I asked. "Ja, Mannheim." Once again out into the rain, and a night that turned out to be one of the worst I experienced on the trip, as described in A Gun at my Throat. Monday 16 June, Heidelberg/Munich.
Relaxing in the train reading my guide-book, I was tired but happy.
Here I was heading
for one of Germany's beauty-spots.
Heidelberg was
another fantastic medieval university town, the oldest in
Germany, dominated by a ruined Schloss. The amphiteatre built by
Hitler, mentioned by Erica Jong in her book Fear of Flying, was above the
Schloss on the
site of an ancient Celtic gathering-place. And here's a modern-day
Celt free as a bird in the land of the Teutones...
"A Burschenschaft?" I said. "Do they still exist? I thought they died out years ago!" He had that embarrassed look that most Germans of a liberal persuasion adopt when speaking about the Hitler era. "Well, yes, Hitler banned them along with all other non-Nazi-run organisations, but they were revived after the war in West Germany." "Hitler banned them? But they’re basically neo-Nazi training grounds, right?" Now he actually blushed. "Well, let us say, conservative, patriotic. In favour of the unity of Germany, that kind of thing." I was sceptical and he knew it. I was thinking: tell that to the Jews, the Slavs, the Gypsies, and all those other hapless victims of German nationalism. "The Mensur--it's good exercise," he offered. He went on to say that Heidelberg was traditionally renowned for its association with the Burschenschaften, the uniformed student associations. Each had its own distinctive colours, rituals and house, which doubled as meeting-place and lodgings. Part of the ritual involved duelling in the traditional manner with part of the face remaining unprotected, the Mensur, but I did not notice a Schmiss (gash) on any of the students I saw that day. He then changed the subject and went on to tell me about the Schloss, the former home of the Winter King and his daughter Sophie In the late afternoon, my shattered nerves somewhat restored, but feeling tired from lack of sleep, I took to the road to Munich. Got a few short lifts on the Autobahn to Stuttgart, then a good long lift all the way to Munich itself. The driver, Karl, was a pudgy jolly guy who had recently gotten married and was inordinately proud of the fact. He was a plumber, and had just completed a job in Stuttgart. He was the kind of guy who liked to comment, good-humouredly, on anything and everything--all he needed was a listener. From the moment I got into the car he kept up a constant patter, despite his poor English. Karl told me about the two eccentric kings of Bavaria, Ludwig I and II. Ludwig I almost lost his kingdom on account of his obsession with his "Spanish" mistress, the dancer Lola Montez, he said. I surprised Karl by informing him that Lola Montez was in fact born in Limerick, and after her marriage (to an Irish officer in the British army) lived in Westmeath and Dublin. Shortly before Munich we stopped off at Dachau concentration camp, then Karl took me to his apartment and introduced me to his wife, who was rather surprised at the sudden appearance of this scruffy hitch-hiker in her tidy apartment. But that's hitching for you, you never know what to expect! Karl had to deliver a package to someone near Munich, then he would drop me off in the city centre. I was feeling very tired at this stage. It was just midnight when I arrived in the centre of the city, too late, once again, for the youth hostel. Karl's car disappeared into the traffic and I headed for the Hauptbahnhof, the main train station. Because of my limited financial resources, hotels were out of the question. As my guidebook said, for the price of one night in a hotel in the West you could spend several weeks in one in the East. The station, which was also connected to various underground and suburban train services, was bright and spacious, lots of people still bustling about, even at this late hour. I found the waiting room and tried to sleep sitting up against my rucksack. It wasn't very comfortable. The railway police came around regularly and ejected anyone who wasn't a bona fide traveller--my rucksack obviously qualified me to be one--but the commotion kept me awake. A steady stream of down-and-outs and rough-looking characters passed through. At one point I was just nodding off when I was awoken by a sad-looking guy wearing make-up and a dress and carrying a handbag, asking me something in German. I muttered that I didn't understand, and he then asked me in French if I wanted some company. I didn't, so then he asked if I'd mind him sitting down next to me for a smoke. I gave up all thoughts of sleep for the moment and joined the little group gathered around a kiosk drinking beer. It was a mixture of local alcoholics and insomniacs and a few travellers like myself. Sacha from Yugoslavia was thin, long-haired and carrying all his possessions in an Afghan shoulder-bag. Mohammed was from Iran. Sacha was on his way to Amsterdam, and gave me his address and phone number in Ljubliana, in Northern Yugoslavia, saying I should visit him there if I passed through. Tuesday 17 June, Munich.
Back again at the hostel at 12:00 to sign
in but they still wouldn't let us into the dorms until late afternoon.
Several of us took seats in the cafeteria, where I thought I might get some sleep
with my head on the table, but our calm was shattered by the
arrival of about
100 German schoolgirls, laughing and chattering and charging around the
reception area.
Maybe it was due to my fatigued state, but all appeared beautiful with
bodies to die for--knocked even the Amsterdamers into the shade.
These girls were dressed differently to
the schoolgirls we had met the previous year in East Berlin. Those
girls wore short miniskirts or hotpants, which displayed more of their
bodies than they hid, like wearing only lingerie in public. The Western
girls wore tight jeans and tops, snugly moulded to their still
developing bodies.
If you can't beat 'em, join
'em! So we sat around with the
school-girls waiting for the dorms to open. They were an absolute joy,
and very keen to try out their school English, so I got lots of
interesting information, starting with the fact that there are about
3 million more females than
males in Germany. Unfortunately about 2 million are over forty,
as a result of the war. These girls were from Hamburg, which they
said is a
lively city. None of them had smoked dope, they said, but it was available.
The RAF had already engaged in armed encounters in Germany and Stockholm earlier in the year, and it now appeared there were other groups carrying out similar work to the work of the RAF, one of them being the 2 June movement. I was told that just a few weeks previously one 2 June member and a policeman were shot dead during a gun battle. When the schoolgirls discovered I was from Ireland (they called me "Der arme Ire"--their little joke) they told me about Heinrich Boell, a respected writer who had come to Ireland and written the popular "Ein Irisches Tagebuch" (An Irish Diary) in the fifties. The right-wing press (mainly controlled by Axel Springer) had hounded him for years, falsely accusing him of being a terrorist sympathizer. In turn I told them about Christabel Bielenberg, now resident in Ireland, who had written a magnificent book on her experiences in Germany during the war, "The Past Is Myself". Unfortunately, the girls were ushered away before tea-time to prepare for a trip to the theatre. My tiredness had been forgotten. I made the acquaintance of an Indian guy, with whom I shared some bread and salami, and who gave me some tips on travelling in India. An Australian who was sitting nearby approached me after the Indian had left and said he couldn't help overhearing that I was on my way to India. He said he had just come from there, and had found it to be a dirty, expensive place. He had stayed in one of the best hotels in Delhi, expecting it to be dirt cheap, but in fact it was just as expensive as the top hotels in Australia. The food in India--he had only eaten chicken and rice, and that looked dodgy, in the hotel restaurant--wasn't as good as in Australia and nearly as expensive. The streets were dirty and he couldn't find a good steak-house anywhere. "You can forget about that kip for a good time, mate! I couldn't wait to get out of the place, and I didn't go overland neither. That's for them nuts into survival training. This is my vacation--I want to enjoy myself!"
The hostel seemed to be full of Americans by the time I got back.
The schoolgirls had left for the theatre. I sat opposite
an English guy who was reading a paperback version of the
Ring of the Niebelungen and eventually we got to talking. Andy, a
social worker, was intent on climbing
the social ladder by marrying into a middle-class family and scraping up
from there.
Classical music blaring from the speakers at 7:30 AM awoke us and
drove us from our beds--no chance to sleep off the exertions of the
last couple of days!
We had to be out of the hostel by 9:00. Met up with Andy and the
Indian guy to go to the city centre.
I had been planning to spend a
few days exploring Munich--I knew very little of the city, other than something
about the failed
Red
uprisings
I liked what I saw of the architecture,
in particular the Jugendstil (art nouveau) decorations on
some of the houses. But the weather was continuing to be a
problem--and it rained heavily all day. We went to the Old Pinotech Art
Gallery.
This was compromising on my plan not to visit museums and art galleries
where
possible, in order to devote more time to meeting the locals or fellow
travellers, but what else could we do in that weather?
Paintings from 16th and 17th centuries, lots of Rubens. Very tiring, in
my still fairly fatigued state,
to walk around, and the heavy rain prevented us from visiting all the
places we wanted to see.
Went to visit the Dom (Cathedral)
and ascended the tower. Left it too late to visit the Deutsches Museum,
but managed a drink at the Hofbrauehaus. This started us on a discussion of Hitler, Germans, the war, and so on. Andy was a great talker, but of course was very pro-British in all his arguments, whereas the Indian guy and I were (I hope!) a little more objective. Andy told us about Anna Schicklgruber. I told them about the German national anthem--in West Germany only the third verse is sung, whereas in East Germany the words are not sung at all, due to the references to German unity it contains. The hoary chestnut of how German almost became the official language of the US, losing by only one vote in Congress, was brought up. Although this was still taught in German schools, and believed by many, it is not correct--the only vote taken, in 1795, was on whether the Federal laws should be published in German as well as English. Some of the other topics discussed are summarized here. As night came on we headed back to the hostel. There I met Chris, an Australian I had known from Matilda's, and two American Jewesses, Sandy Roland and Nancy Markowitz. Sandy was going to Israel, and was keen on hitch-hiking down through Yugoslavia with me. But she couldn't go through Yugoslavia with her US passport (pity!). Said we'd keep in touch. Chris was on his way to London. We discussed our travel plans. Andy and the two women were going to Salzburg and then to Vienna. Vienna wasn't really on my itinerary, but might be worth a visit if I could keep within budget. My next main objective was Gigi's place in Brescia, via Austria. I was finding the bad weather so far in Germany depressing, and thought it best to leave Munich earlier than planned, and depending on how the hitching went, either head on to meet the others in Vienna, or head down towards Italy. "Well today Mr. Spoffard is going to take me all around to all of the museums in Munchen, which are full of kunst that I really ought to look at, but Dorothy said she had been punished for all of her sins last night, so now she is going to begin life all over again by going out with her German gentleman friend, who is going to take her to a house called the Half Brow house which is the worlds largest size of a Beer Hall. So Dorothy said I could be a high brow and get full of kunst, but she is satisfide to be a Half brow and get full of beer." Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
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Barely able to keep going
after the second night without sleep, I got the bus to the Jugendherberge
(youth hostel).
They weren't open until noon! Today was a bank holiday, I was told
(Tag
der deutschen Einheit, Day of German Unity, often referred to as
Tag
der deutschen Zweiheit, on account of the two Germanies). Shit!
And
me starving and every place closed! As Goethe said: "The Germans make
everything difficult, both for themselves and for everyone else." I
stood outside, looking at the
eight-foot-high sign listing things that were verboten, nicht
gestattet, strengstens untersagt, und strafbar in the hostel.
Reminded
me of what Lenin had concluded about Germany--that you couldn't start a
revolution
in that country because there were too many signs reading "Keep off
the Grass". In fact the Germans themselves had a joke that went something like: "In Germany, everything is prohibited that isn't expressly allowed.
In France, everything is allowed that isn't expressly prohibited."
;)
Their knowledge of recent German history was lamentable.
Hitler wasn't all bad--he had reduced unemployment and gotten rid of the
terrorists, and liked dogs and children. There were doubts on how the
Second World War had started. Either France or Poland, or both, had
attacked Germany, and Germany had attacked the Soviet Union to save the
world from Communism. So a long discussion ensued on this.
I was on the point of asking him why he was slumming it in a
youth hostel, but held my tongue, as I didn't want to listen
to any more of this kind of nonsense. Rising, I made an excuse to
leave. The rain had eased off a little, so I took a stroll to
the nearby Olympic village, built for the 1972 Olympic games (on the right, behind that rather well-fed family). This had
been an expensive and controversial undertaking, and then, just at the
start of the games, it was the target of a terrorist attack.
The period immediately preceding this attack had been plagued by airline terrorism, including the blowing up of a Swiss airliner, killing all 47 passengers and crew, and dozens of deadly hijackings.
This time eight Arab commandos from Black Semptember (an offshoot of the mainstream Palestinian Fatah faction) broke into
the Olympic compound. They shot and killed two Israelis outright,
one a wrestling coach, the other a weight-lifting coach.
They then took nine others of the eighteen-member Israeli
Olympic team hostage and settled into the compound for a siege.
A flight was negotiated, but when they arrived at Munich airport
gunfire broke out.
When the shooting was over, all nine Israeli hostages and
five Arab commandos were dead, with three commandos
wounded. Germany released the surviving Black September terrorists less than two months after Munich, when Palestinians hijacked a Lufthansa plane--they were probably glad to be rid of them! Mossad later gunned down at least 13 alleged Arab conspirators in such cities as Paris, Rome, London, Stockholm and Beirut.
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