Sunday, November 30, 2008

Over the Pond – Part 7

From Hitler’s Horror to High Alpine Splendor – Tiefencastle at last.

This was to be a long day. It shouldn’t have been, but the most memorable travel adventures very often are wrought by those misadventures that conspire to throw a wrench in the best-made plans.
The previous days headlight issue turned out to be no more than a switch problem. Did you know that euro bikes have a standard equipment on/off switch for the headlight? I didn’t either. Duh!!! Problem solved.

Allow me to jump back to the previous day and our gas stop at Linz where we parted company with Walter. This is the very same Linz which was the childhood home of Adolph Hitler, and is where his parents are buried. Needless to say, there were no plaques commemorating this fact. My sense was that even 65 years later, Germans generally would prefer to put that whole era behind them - if not out of mind, at least out of sight.

This historical factoid is a perfect segue to our next stop, Hitler’s infamous detention facility at Dachau.

I will not wax eloquent about my experience at the site of the Dachau camp memorial. I will only say that, if you have a chance to go there, don’t miss it -it will expand your social conscience. I have done some reading about the camp since I have returned. There is a foreboding sense of evil there that I could not explain. Since we arrived on a Sunday, the facility was not open. We did not need to walk the yard to feel what we all felt. Our little group became very quiet as we came to the wrought iron gates upon which was sculpted that infamous phrase Arbeit Macht Frei (work makes free – this sentiment is meant ideologically rather than literally).

This was not a place that I would have sought out to visit. It was only through the encouragement of fellow traveler Phil Tarman that we added Dachau to our itinerary, and I’m glad we did. Phil returned to Dachau after the rally and spent some time inside the facility. I’m sure if prompted, he could offer up a far more detailed dialogue on the place. I will say only that throughout history, there are places where pure evil has walked the earth. This was one of those places. I was glad to see it fade in the rearview.

An appropriate antidote to the horror of Dachau, our next stop of interest was to be probably the best-known castle in Germany - Neuschwanstein. This is the most fanciful of Bavarian King Ludwig’s three castles, and is the castle upon which Walt Disney modeled his Sleeping Beauty castle.

We proceeded south along picturesque secondary roads in the direction of Hohenschwangau. Near Swangau, Phil’s bike lost power and rolled to a stop on the side of the road.
The Connie is pretty simple. Problems are either spark or lack of ‘go juice’. It didn’t take too long to establish that Phil’s battery was as dead as last week’s roadkill. The next half hour could have been a National Lampoon skit as the four of us took turns trying to bump start Phil’s bike. Now with no disrespect toward Phil, it became quickly clear that the good Reverend lacked the finesse to qualify as a likely candidate for bump starting the Connie so the task fell to the kid of the group - our tour guide Gie. This left the task of pushing to the remaining two old guys (that would be me and Harry). We definitely got our workout that day. Repeated efforts to get some charge into the battery were in vain.
As long as we could keep the motor spinning at high revs, we had drive. Any drain on the battery beyond maintaining basic life functions killed forward momentum immediately. This included such things as brake lights and turn signals. Once again, only the deft touch of Gie was sufficient to keep Phil’s loaner bike moving. So with fingers, toes and whatever else crossed, we headed off for the nearby town of Fussen with Phil riding Gie’s Connie.

While the others scouted around in search of a shop, I took time for a run up to Neuschwanstein. Although I didn’t take the official castle tour, I did get close enough to see this German landmark firsthand and that was worth something. The full tour is just one more thing to add to my “to do” list for my return trip.

Upon returning from my little side trip, I rejoined the crew in Fusson. They were having no luck at repairing Phil’s bike. They had acquired a new battery but it still wasn’t holding a charge, and it was decided that the problem was the alternator. The plan now was to switch out the battery from Gie’s bike, which was fully charged. With Phil’s stone cold battery recharging in Gie’s bike we proceeded – after bump starting Gie – onward to Teifencastle, a distance of about two hours. Once there, abundant technical assistance would be available. If the charge died before Tiefencastle, we would simply have to repeat the process of swapping the batteries again.

Of course we didn’t make it.

By halfway, Phil’s power was fading fast. Of course this had to happen after sundown. So there we were on the side of the Autobahn, somewhere in southern Bavaria, with tiny flashlights trying to swap batteries. “Shit, I dropped the battery terminal nut. Everybody on your knees and find that sucker or we ain’t going nowhere.”

Eventually, after much cursing, we did get going again. – two old guys bump starting a young guy on a Connie – again. At this point we were running along the Switzerland/Germany border very close to Leichtenstein. Teifencastle couldn’t be far now.

One memorable thing did happen while we were stranded on the side of the Autobahn. A Lamborgini Diablo blew by us at warp speed. The intoxicating effect of the sound of twelve very exotic Italian cylinders at full boil had us all grinning like 12 year olds looking at their very first pin up centerfold. The pilot must have been having fun because he circled back and blew by us twice more over the next three quarters of an hour. That’s a sound you just don’t forget.

Being dark now, the necessity of running headlights drained Phil’s battery faster and we rolled into Teifencastle as his lights flickered their last spark. I don’t think he would have made another mile safely and we were not real excited about standing on the side of the road again. Of course, none of this was Phil’s fault, but I’m sure he did not view any of this as a propitious start to his great alpine adventure. Regrettably his sick bike compromised his first couple of days in the Alps but some good fortune and creative thinking had Phil back in form within a couple of days. I’ll leave that story for him to tell.

We arrived in Teifencastle at approximately ten thirty. The bikes were parked, the gear was stowed and now it was time to meet and greet. In this crowd of faces speaking nearly every language but my own, it was good to see some familiar faces. Walter had arrived the day before. Ad and Marc were there from the Netherlands. Hans from Sweden, the grand Poobah of OTP, officially welcomed me. Then from across the room came a hollered greeting in a familiar American voice. I turned to look as Jim Pavlis and Sean O’Donovan, still fully geared up from the road, burst into the room – Jim tends to do that –having just arrived from Frankfurt. They must have been just 20 minutes behind us on the road coming in.

Tomorrow held promise of alpine adventures beyond what we could imagine but right now was for socializing and settling into what was to be home base for the next five days. With laughter, animated greetings and the steady flow of new arrivals, the Hotel Albula was “party central” in full swing. What a wonderful welcome. We had arrived.

Tomorrow would begin a whole new chapter.

2 comments:

HarryvdLaan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
HarryvdLaan said...

Hi Dave, This is the old man, tnx.
Pls proceed your interestng way of writing your blog.
Yes,driving through Dachau gave the kreeps (hope this is right).
The 2nd thing at Dachau are the signs (^^Î^I with smoke coming out of the chimnies) to indicate there Industrie area.
I can imagine driving in EU gives you THAT feeling, my wife (Coty) says I do not know an expression for it.
I think (hope) the right word is it makes you feel thrilled.
We experience that feeling every year again when we start riding the bike in the USA.