We just had this one day in the year, whence everything will improve. Eat more healthily, get up earlier, study harder, work more productively and of course plenty of exercise.
All of these endeavors require the right kind of music to put you in the right mood!
Because of states’ rights, the Federal Department of Education is barred from producing student-motivating songs in the United States. And the National Conference of State Education Secretaries hasn’t been able to agree on one song either, mostly because Texas has been insisting on something with lots of “yeehaw”s, which understandably does meet some opposition from the musically adept states. The situation in other countries is similarly dire.
And thus, students around the world must avail themselves of North Korean propaganda for their morning motivation. (Activate the subtitles if you don’t understand Korean!)
At work, too, everything flows better, faster and more productively when several times a day, the loudspeakers spontaneously call you away from the desk for a few minutes of relaxing exercise. This is the Labor-Motivating Ballet of the Patriotic Textile Factory in Wonsan.
The workers know exactly how to move to the swinging rhythm, because from early childhood on, they have been following the morning exercise routine on North Korean television, which keeps the whole country fit and agile. (Or have you ever seen a fat North Korean? Okay, that one guy. But he does have a lot on his plate and has no time to watch TV.)
Now we know where Jane Fonda stole the idea for her workout videos.
Or do you generally find it difficult to motivate yourself in the morning and start the day with enthusiasm? That’s no problem, either. Simply call the Central Coordination Office for the Provision of Motivational Music for Commuters, tell them the time and route, and the drive to the office or factory will turn into a celebration of joy.
Just a few photos from today’s walk in the area of Baden-Württemberg, in which I am currently house-sitting.
Today was my weekly “secular Shabbat walk”, the day chosen not because it was the last day of the year, but for the warm and sunny weather. But I am happy I have installed this routine of at least one internet- and work-free day, to be spent in nature. – If you are still thinking about a New Year’s resolution, that might be a good idea.
The whole world is making fun of Germany, because it took us over 20 years to build a new airport for Berlin. There is a podcast about this, aptly named “How to fuck up an Airport“.
Malicious voices point out that even the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal were completed within a mere ten (1859-1869) or eight (1906-1914) years.
But that comparison is not really fair. After all, those were only 162-km and 82-km long excavations through stony, impassable terrain or the desert, where part of the digging was done by hand and camels, with outbursts of malaria, where enormous differences in altitude had to be overcome and a new railroad had to be built for workers and equipment. You have to realize that this is a piece of cake, compared with the highly complex concreting of a flat field in Brandenburg in the 21st century.
For a more suitable comparison, let’s look at a canal construction project in which Germany proved that it can very well complete such a moat in almost no time.
No, I don’t mean the Qattara project. (Although that’s a really good story. Highly recommended reading!)
Today, I want to talk about the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal. That became necessary because although Germany is blessed with the mightiest rivers in the world, the Rhine and the Danube, one of which flows into the North Sea and the other into the Black Sea, these two rivers, unfortunately, do not cross paths.
So if you wanted to sail from Cologne to Constantinople or from Regensburg to Rotterdam, you had to take the long way round via the English Channel, the Bay of Biscay, the Atlantic, the Strait of Gibraltar, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Because of corsairs and submarines lurking behind every corner, this was a dangerous and long journey. That’s why even today, there are still containers floating everywhere in the sea, ramming innocent sailboats on their world record attempts.
As is well known, Germany invented environmentalism, and when the Green Party got into the Reichstag, it was clear that this practice of losing containers in the sea could not continue.
On the above map, you see that the Rhine has a tributary river, completely insignificant by itself: the Main. Its water is so undrinkable that it can only be used to irrigate second-rate vineyards. But, spurred on by news of the Panama and Suez Canals, engineers soon had the idea of bridging the 172-km gap between the Main (and thereby the Rhine) and the Danube with a canal, thus creating a continuous waterway from the North Sea to the Black Sea.
As this is not merely a history, but also a travel blog, I should point out to the friends of canal culture that there are hundreds of canals in Europe, all of them perfectly suited for beautiful hiking or cycling trips. It’s wonderfully relaxing to travel along a canal, as you can hardly get lost. Instead of checking the map or a cell phone, you can devote your full attention to the rippling of the water and the chugging of the ships.
Small canals like those in the Czech Republic, which were built 500 years ago for drainage and irrigation, for operating mills and for transporting timber (see chapter 31 of my report from Marienbad).
Shipping canals that have crisscrossed the whole of Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and France since the Industrial Revolution.
Two canals that cut through France, connecting the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
The somewhat more bombastic Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, which connects the North Sea and the Baltic Sea (see my article on crossing this canal with the very train steaming into the picture in the top right corner).
And of course the canals throughout the Spreewald, in the German state of Brandenburg, where I spent this year’s beautiful autumn.
Seriously, folks, just find yourself some canal and go hiking, strolling, cycling! (And be even more amazed if your path leads you through a nuclear power plant.) But now back to the shoals of canal construction history.
This series is called “One hundred years ago …”, so today it must be about an event from December 1921, if you and I have calculated correctly. But because it’s Christmas and the presents you ordered from China are floating in one of those containers in the sea, never to be unpacked, I’ll give you the backstory for free.
For this, we have to travel back in time quite a bit. To the Middle Ages. To Charlemagne. He was still king at the time, but already suspected that, sooner or later, he would be crowned emperor of practically all of Europe (which did indeed happen in the year 800). As the founding father of the European Union, he wanted to establish navigation from the North Sea to the Black Sea and asked the court geographers to study the map in order to find a suitable location.
Because in those days, ships were smaller than they are today, they could also travel up and down the thin tributaries of the large rivers. Near Treuchtlingen, the Rezat and the Altmühl rivers flow only a few kilometers past each other. One flows into the Rhine, the other into the Danube, so all that was needed was to hook them up with each other.
And thus began the construction of the approximately 3-km long “Fossa Carolina”. This was in the year 793.
Now you must be thinking: “Whoa, a canal that was built 1228 years ago??”, but this was not the first one. Not by far. Egyptians, Persians, Chinese and Romans had already built canals long before. The world record was, as always, set by China, with the 1800-km long Grand Canal.
I am just saying this, in case anyone still believes that Europe or even Germany is the birthplace of engineering. It isn’t. Because Fossa Carolina was never completely finished. Not even the tiny 3 kilometers of it. The Chinese, had they cared, probably would have written a sarcastic newspaper column about it. But they didn’t, because Germany was some unimportant backwater to them.
Perhaps Charlemagne had lost interest and turned to other projects. Perhaps he had seen “The Poseidon Adventure” in the cinema and was no longer too keen on boarding a ship. Or maybe he remembered that Columbus, Magellan and Vespucci would invent seafaring only 600 years later, so there was really no hurry. Or there was some corruption at the construction site. Or maybe the soil in Franconia was just too soft, so the excavated ditch always silted up quickly.
The village near the soon abandoned project is still called “ditch” (Graben in German) today, and you can actually marvel at a piece of the historic attempt to connect the world. If you are ever in the area, that’s a nice idea for a short hike.
And then came the Middle Ages. Long, dark and boring. No canals, no construction projects, no creativity. Just sitting in the monastery and copying Bibles. (I know that if one tried, one might find something interesting about the Middle Ages, too. But there are other blogs for that. I suppose. If they didn’t end up burned at the stake.)
Anyway, nothing happened with our canal for a long time. Ships sailed around the world, “discovered” India, Australia, Hong Kong, Madagascar and America, but couldn’t nobody care less about no connection between Rhine and Danube no more. (This is how English grammar worked back then.)
It was not until the 18th century that a few engineers and economists remembered the idea of building a canal. But these discussions silted up like the Fossa Carolina. Lack of money was the new problem, because the sinister Middle Ages had been replaced by sinister capitalism.
Napoleon, who had replaced Charlemagne as Europe’s supreme emperor, also got involved a bit, but was soon distracted as well. Writing a civil code, going on a crusade to Egypt, battling at Stalingrad, enjoying the beach on Elba, that sort of thing.
It wasn’t until Bavaria, once elevated to a kingdom by Napoleon, became independent of the latter that things gained momentum. King Ludwig I knew that his grandson Ludwig II would one day build nothing but magnificent castles and opera houses and such. This was to prove good for tourism in the long run, but none of this was foreseeable in the first half of the 19th century. At the time, tourism was actually illegal.
If you are interested in my very personal hike to Neuschwanstein Castle, including an introduction to Bavarian history, I highly recommend my 9-part series on the subject.
Unlike the later fairy-tale king, Ludwig I was a practical man. On the occasion of his wedding in 1810, he established the Oktoberfest. In 1821, he founded Greece, to which he gave his son Otto as king in 1832. (In return, Germany received the promise that a Greek restaurant would be opened in every German town, no matter how small.) In 1835, he built the first railroad in Germany. Not surprisingly, he also pulled old Charlemagne’s canal plan out of the drawer.
Between 1836 and 1846, the Ludwig-Danube-Main Canal was built over a length of 172 km. This time, it was actually completed. And even put into operation! Between Bamberg and Dietfurt, the merchant ships were chugging along over this masterpiece of engineering, praising everyone involved, from the king to the kebab guy, from the construction crew to the currywurst cooks.
And today the cyclists are praising the Ludwig Canal.
It’s a bit sad, really: You build a marvel of engineering, with 100 locks to overcome the difference in altitude, connecting the entire continent, revolutionizing world trade, and now, some old geezers are riding their electric bikes from one pub to the next.
The problem for the canal was that the railroad was built at the same time. First, it was faster. Second, the rails could be laid directly onto the factory sites, eliminating the need for reloading at the port. (The harbor workers thus made redundant then launched the revolution, which led to the end of the Kingdom of Bavaria. But that’s another story.)
Even on contemporary photos, the railroad was cheekily pushing its way into the picture.
Third, the canal soon became too narrow. This is now a problem even for the largest of canals. The Suez and Panama Canals have to keep widening their belts because the ships are getting fatter and fatter. (Thanks to you, who are ordering ever wider flat-screen TVs from China and Korea.)
And even after widening, some ships still get stuck, because the Greek captain thought that the whole bottle of Ouzo was his alone.
When you see the pretty pictures of the charming Ludwig Canal, you can easily see that it’s not suitable for ships with 14,000 containers or more. After World War I, when all the battleships and aircraft carriers were converted into cargo ships, it was already clear that the time of the small canals would soon be over. And that brings us to 1921, as behoves this series “One hundred years ago …”.
In May 1921, the State of Bavaria and the German Reich concluded a treaty in which they committed themselves to building a new, larger, more beautiful and all-around better Main-Danube Canal. Markus Söder, the Bavarian Minister of Big Announcements at the time, promised “a canal like the world has never seen – and we will never allow the leftists to impose a speed limit on it!” Then nothing happened – because they had forgotten to arrange the funding.
Now, as everybody knows, there are only two alternatives for financing the construction of a canal:
One, like they did for the Stalin White Sea-Baltic Canal, you can launch a brand of cigarettes, allowing the people to contribute to the financing of the canal’s construction with every breath they take. Incidentally, that’s where the phrase “give me another one for the canal” comes from, used to bum cigarettes in Russia. (Yes, you can learn something of prcatical value on a history blog.)
Belomorkanal cigarettes are considered the strongest cigarettes in the world. This may be due to the fact that – another marvel of engineering – their factory can be converted, within a few hours, to produce 7.62 mm ammunition for the Kalashnikov. When the machines return to filling cigarettes, some residue of black powder and uranium dust may get into the tobacco. And now you know why life expectancy for men in Russia is 10 years lower than in Germany.
The second alternative is to set up a public corporation and sell shares. This is what happened, exactly one hundred years ago, on 31 December 1921, when the Rhein-Main-Donau-Aktiengesellschaft was founded. And thus the building and digging, dredging and cementing began.
At some point, it dawned on the Germans that the Danube was not entirely theirs, so they annexed Austria in 1938. This was followed – always in line with the progress of construction – by the conquest of Serbia, Hungary and Romania, where they finally reached the Black Sea, the destination of everyone’s dreams. The shareholders of the Suez Canal (the United Kingdom and France) and of the Panama Canal (the USA) did not find this funny at all and declared war on the Rhine-Main-Danube Corporation, represented by the German Reich. And that’s how World War II started.
If all of this is news to you, it just goes to show that economic history is very much neglected and overlooked in school. But thanks to this blog, you have the chance to surprise your teacher with a refreshing presentation. And remember: with an A on your report card, you can ride the train for free. At least in Bavaria.
The Rhine-Main-Danube Canal was finally completed and opened in 1992. A mere 1200 years after Fossa Carolina. That has to be a world record, for sure.
Since then, naval traffic between the North Sea and the Black Sea has been flourishing. Or rather, it could flourish. Because there is still one small problem. The Danube port on the Black Sea, the gateway to Europe and the world, is the Romanian city of Constanța.
“Beautiful city,” you are thinking, rightfully so, “where is the problem?”
The problem is that Romania is a member of the European Union, but not yet part of the border-free Schengen area. Despite the fact that the European Parliament and the European Commission have long since agreed to its accession.
“So, what’s the problem?” you ask once more.
Well, there is one small EU member state that keeps vetoing Romania’ membership in Schengen: the Netherlands.
“Why would they do that?” you ask. The answer is simple: Rotterdam is in the Netherlands. The largest port in Europe. And as long as the extra border checks, waiting times and paperwork make the trip through Romania more cumbersome, many shipping companies prefer to take the detour via the Mediterranean, Atlantic and English Channel – to Rotterdam. (Another reason is that ships can use dirtier fuel and dispose of their waste when traveling by sea. Also, the bridges across the Danube are a bit annoying.)
Oh, by the way, the new airport in Berlin is still not working properly and has already announced that it will go bankrupt in spring 2022. Germany and major constructions projects, a match made in heaven, ever since the time of Charlemagne!
And that was it for 1921.
Tune in again next year, when we travel back exactly one hundred years at least once a month. In 1922, so much happened, from the discovery of Tutankhamun to the independence of Ireland, from building Brasilia to the fight against alcohol in Scandinavia, from complete chaos in Lithuania to the founding of the Transcaucasian Federative Soviet Socialist Republic. And a bit of family history.
Hundreds of topics are already on my list, competing for attention, but requests, suggestions and guest articles are welcome. As are your donations, which make this blog possible in the first place. Thanks to all supporters, and let’s have an exciting 1922/2022 together!
Links:
All articles of the series “One Hundred Years Ago …”.
The Neckar in southwest Germany is a lovely little river.
Not as boisterous as the Nile. Not as artificially straightened as the Panama Canal. Not as raging as the Zambezi. But also not as boring as the Avon.
Just a regular river with many loops and bends, with steep vineyards on the banks, and here and there a small town with pretty half-timbered houses.
In the morning, the weather is nice, and I walk upstream on the west bank of this waterway, somewhere between Heilbronn and Bietigheim-Bissingen-Besigheim. I don’t know where exactly, to be honest. The nice thing about hiking along the river is that you can’t really get lost, so you don’t have to focus on the path too much.
In the afternoon, the weather turns gray and uncomfortable, so I decide to turn back. Because I want to get to know the east bank as well, I still walk to the next bridge in Kirchheim and cross the river there, making my way back on the eastern shore.
I had already seen it from the other side, but managed not to think about it: There is a power plant in the way. A nuclear power plant. Right on the river, because these power plants constantly need fresh water to cool the reactor.
I don’t have a map with me because, as I said, how can you get lost by the river? But now, the path becomes narrower and narrower, more and more undergrowth, more and more hidden, more and more scrubby. I haven’t seen any signs for a long time, nor any other hikers.
But there is a fisherman coming towards me. (They like to fish in the waste water of nuclear power plants, as someone told me in Ukraine. Because they catch bigger fish there.)
“Excuse me, sir,” I inquire, “if I follow this path, will I be able to walk past the power plant?” I remember that in civilized countries, even military installations keep a strip of coastline clear for walkers. (See chapter 37 of my article on Cornwall.) Or that in progressive German states, walking along the river enjoys constitutional protection. (See chapter 131 of this article on a hike to the royal castles in Bavaria.)
“Ain’t no path around the power plant,” says the local fisherman. “But you can ring the bell and some fella is gonna come and take you across the premises.”
“Oh,” I say, amazed and flabbergasted. “Thank you.”
I actually feel rather uncomfortable about ringing the power plant operator out of his office. I am generally very reticent when it comes to inconveniencing other people. I’m the kind of person who would rather die than force the night duty pharmacist to leave the crossword puzzle for a few minutes. At the pedestrian crossing, I wait for all the cars to pass instead of pushing the button. And 30 minutes before closing time, I don’t enter any shops because I know the clerks want to start cleaning up. That’s probably why I feel more comfortable in polite societies like Japan or Persia.
Besides, I can’t discount the possibility that the fisherman was joking.
Well, at least that second issue is resolved once I find myself in front of a concrete wall with rolls of barbed wire and a heavy iron gate. A small sign indeed calls for hikers to interrupt the staff’s afternoon nap: “Users of the shore path, please ring bell.”
All right, then. The detour around the entire site would really be too long, I have to concede. So I ring the bell.
“Yes, good afternoon?” A friendly voice.
“Hello, good afternoon, I find myself at the southern entrance to your impressive nuclear installation and was wondering if it was at all possible to hike on north, toward Lauffen.”
“Do you have a vaccination certificate with you?”
“Yes, sure.” (Great, maybe I can get a nuclear inoculation here, that will last longer.)
“And an ID card or something?”
“Yes, I happen to have that with me, too.” (I even have business cards with me when I go hiking, but unfortunately the gentleman doesn’t ask about them.)
“And a dog?”
“No,” I reply innocently, as if it was the most normal thing to forget one’s dog at home.
“Okay, then I’ll send a colleague down. But it may take a few minutes, is that okay?”
“Yeah sure, absolutely no need to rush,” I reply. Not only out of politeness and because I’m never in a hurry. A nuclear power plant is really the last place where you would want someone to rush and hurry.
After a few minutes, a security guard shows up, and – because I don’t have my own – even brings a dog. Now, that’s a visitor service! Dogs apparently act as early indicators of radiation in nuclear power plants, like canaries in the coal mine.
Through the barred gate, he checks my vaccination certificate and my ID card and then mutters a few code words over the radio, which I politely fail to memorize and which open the gate remotely.
And poof, I’m in a nuclear power plant for the first time in my life.
“That’s because there is a centuries-old right of way for a towpath here on the Neckar River,” the armed guard explains in response to my question. “When the nuclear power plant was built, maintaining the right of way was a condition for the construction permit.” As a historically minded hiker, I find it fascinating that I can walk past pressurized water reactors, cell coolers, hybrid cooling towers and steam generators because of an equitable servitude from the time of the Holy Roman Empire. It’s amazing how a medieval bridleway easement has survived over the centuries with all their wars and revolutions.
“In the summer, we get more people, of course,” the guard tells me. “Sometimes whole groups of hikers show up, as well as cyclists and even horseback riders.” And he adds: “The horses, I find that a bit over the top, to be frank.” Maybe dogs and horses don’t get along very well. But that’s the way it is. Because the right of way explicitly included horses. After all, it was a towpath. And how else would you pull the barges from Rotterdam to Reutlingen?
And therefore, without a dispensation from the Imperial Court in Wetzlar, which was prematurely dissolved in 1806, horses cannot now be barred from crossing this otherwise high-security enclosure.
After 440 meters, we reach the northern end of the complex. The guard radios again, the gate opens, and he wishes me good luck in getting to Lauffen before nightfall and rain. And that was it, my first encounter with nuclear power, very friendly, but also rather bizarre.
You hopefully all remember my dreamy plans of the longest possible train journey? From Portugal via Spain and France through Central Europe to Russia, then branching off to Mongolia, through China and finally to Vietnam. All the way to Saigon, from where the older ones among you will remember the relieving feeling of having hopped on the last helicopter in 1975.
No, wait, that was Afghanistan in 2021. Well, it’s easy to confuse those things if history keeps repeating itself.
Anyway, back to train travel, the rail-bound trip around the world thus far found its end in Vietnam, because there were no trains from there to Cambodia or Laos.
I guess I should include a map at this point, because for us white folks, all South-East-Asian jungles look the same. So, please, orient yourself in the Orient:
There is still no train from Vietnam to Cambodia or Laos.
But China, which as a country is something like that neighbor who goes to the hardware store every few days because he is bored and then builds new carports, dormers, gazebos, swimming pools and hatchways, is not only covering its own country but also its – very generously defined – neighborhood with large-scale projects that make the DIY guy burst into flames with envy.
A few days ago, a new railroad connection between China and Laos was inaugurated. So now you can get from Kunming via the border town of Boten to Vientiane, in the very south of Laos. Everything on one cozy express train!
As you can see, you can then take the train from Vientiane to Thailand, where you have to interrupt the trip for a couple of years because you’ll be in prison for lèse majesté. But if you survive that, the train will continue to Malaysia and finally to Singapore, the small independent tip of this long peninsula.
Actually, I have been to Singapore once, on a stop-over on the way to Australia. That was in 1992. Back then, planes were still unionized and had to take breaks on such long flights. The boring passengers went into the duty-free shops and marveled at those new telephones without a cable. The brave passengers, like myself, got lost in the hustle and bustle of underground markets selling monkeys, turtles and bats with all sorts of zoonotic diseases, dropped in on opium dens, and found their way back to the airport just in time, all without a smartphone. And all in constant fear of the notoriously strict Singaporean police.
The same strict Singaporean police will probably arrest me when, after 20,000 leagues on the train, I just want to sit in the park and enjoy the first cigar after months of deprivation. Well, people have been fried and died in the electric chair for more boring stories. (A reader informs me that in Singapore you don’t get electrocuted, you get hanged. Thanks.) Either way, in Singapore the journey will be over, because there is no train to Indonesia or Australia. Yet.
Honestly, isn’t it fantastic how far you can travel without having to get off the eco-friendly, comfortable and romantic railway?
And even if you live in an unknown village behind the forgotten forest, as long as it has a train station, you are connected with the world. (At least if you live in Europe or Asia. For other continents, I have to come up with other ideas.) From Blackpool to Bangkok, from Milton Keynes to Kuala Lumpur, from Siracusa to Singapore, everything is possible!
Now all that’s left to do is finding a newspaper that is willing to finance this little endeavor in exchange for a weekly report from the rails…
The best site for planning international rail travel is Seat 61.
If you know some of my train-travel stories, you have an idea what I would make out of such a journey. And if you find that a worthwhile project, I would be very thankful for your support.
Apparently, publishers are trying to cash in on that trend. It’s the only explanation I have for why some stuff gets printed. Like Slow Trains to Venice, in which Tom Chesshyre recounts a 30-day train journey from London through Central Europe to Ukraine and then south through the Balkans to Italy.
And recounting really is the right word. Half of the book is a boring listing of departure times, train stations, speed, distances and engine types. It’s like his notebook, jotted down during the trip, was then published without any revision. And without any editing. Or if there was an editor, he/she quickly fell asleep, which is no surprise when you read paragraphs like:
A red and white train pulls in. I board the red and white train. Belgian Rail is what I am calling the train service of Belgium, and its website is indeed belgianrail.be. […] (page 61 et seq.),
or the countless detailed descriptions of the hotel rooms he is staying in. It’s okay to describe a hotel room once in a while, but if you do it every night, it just shows that nothing else is happening. And maybe that’s no surprise if you only give yourself 30 days to travel through half of Europe. Mr Chesshyre comes across as a decent and nice guy (quite unlike Paul Theroux of incomprehensible train-travel-writing fame), and on the occasions when he gets off on a whim and spends a night in a small town, like in Vrbas in Serbia, in Slavonski Brod in Croatia, or in Zidani Most in Slovenia, the reporting can be good and interesting.
But with a little more time than a few hours here and there, he would have really gotten to know places and people. And with some research and editing, the book wouldn’t be full of annoying mistakes. Just a few examples:
When he tries to explain the language situation in Belgium (page 62), he completely forgets the third official language (German) and totally misses the point about Belgian language policy. I know it’s complicated, but you could have read all about it here.
I really have no idea what Mr Chesshyre means when he calls Bonn “Germany’s de facto capital from 1949 until the reunification in 1990” (pages 74 and 80). Bonn was the capital city of West Germany. There was also East Germany, whose capital city was (East) Berlin. Not de facto, but de jure. If there was anything de facto about Bonn as a capital city, it was from 1990 to 1999, not before. I know, that’s really petty stuff. But I always think: When I spot such glaring mistakes in the sections about one country that I know about, how can I trust anything he writes about Serbia or Slovenia?
A more serious error, especially considering that Mr Chesshyre heralds himself as rather knowledgeable on all things train-related, publishing a train-travel book every year: When he complains (on page 92) that “it is really quite difficult to take a slow train in Germany”, I wonder if he has ever been in a train station in Germany for more than half an hour. Or on the website of Deutsche Bahn. You can take a slow, by which he means regional, train from any station in Germany at least once an hour in any direction. From 5am to midnight. Every day. Everywhere. All across the country.
But he probably had simply run out of time and needed an excuse to take the fast train, cutting through Germany as fast as he could. Which is maybe better, considering how little he knows or cares to learn. In Leipzig, he muses that the protests towards the end of the GDR began in that city because it had no Stasi headquarters (page 95). Well, you can already guess by now: It had. It’s a museum now.
By the way, I’ve just been to Leipzig, interviewing for a house/cat sitting job, and it has a seriously impressive train station.
But then, what to expect of a Brit who crosses the Channel tunnel with this attitude?
I am on European Union soil, with its funny rules written by funny bureaucrats with funny accents. (page 25)
Well, people with accents at least speak a foreign language, often two or three. And they know that the European Union is not run by bureaucrats, but by elected politicians. And as to funny rules, I can’t possibly imagine anything funnier than the rules in the United Kingdom.
Lazy reporting, lazy writing, lazy editing.
Seriously, you can gain more insight into Europe when I am on the train for only two days, whether wild awake or sound asleep.
Oh, and I got the job in Leipzig, so I will be spending the summer of 2022 there!
Illyrian wars. Eritrean War. World War I. War of Independence. Samnite Wars. World War II. Italian-Turkish War. First Battle of the Isonzo. Alexandrian War. Second Battle of the Isonzo. Italian-Libyan War. Third Battle of the Isonzo. Cimbrian War. Fourth Battle of the Isonzo. Italian-Greek War. Augustan Alpine campaigns. Fifth Battle of the Isonzo. African campaign. Sixth Battle of the Isonzo. Sardinian War. Seventh Battle of the Isonzo. Gothic War. Eighth Battle of the Isonzo. Jugurthine War. Ninth Battle of the Isonzo. Italo-Ethiopian War. Tenth Battle of the Isonzo. Marcomannic Wars. Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo. Pyrrhic War. Pyrrhic Battle of the Isonzo.
And that’s why Italy is dotted with fortifications, trenches and bunkers.
If this has escaped your notice thus far, it’s only because there is lots of other interesting stuff in Italy to catch your attention. Or because you are only heading to the beach, which is really a waste of Italy, in which case you should give up that seat on the coach for travelers more interested in history. Or because you have never been to Italy, which is a deficit that should be remedied anyway.
Most of these bunkers are just sitting around, waiting for their next deployment. But in the Vinschgau Valley, I have met a few bunkers which have been recycled for civilian use. Like this one, now integrated into an apple orchard. But then, these are special apples here in Mals, they are always in court, arguing about pesticides and stuff. Maybe that’s why they have to be protected against the aerial forces of the district court.
Walking from Mals to Schluderns, I had somehow gotten lost between the forests, fields and apple plantations. But I didn’t mind, because first of all, I am a staunch advocate of getting lost. If you never get lost, you have a dull life. Secondly, I was in Vinschgau for the first time, so anything would be new and interesting to me, regardless of where I would end up.
And suddenly, above the village of Tartsch, I found myself in front of a bunker, you ain’t never seen nothing like that!
“An artist,” I am guessing like a hot-shot-Sherlock detective, not only because of the caravan and the creative roof terrace with its palisade fence and playground, but also because no one answers the door bell. Those artists often sleep until noon. (With the exception of travel bloggers, of course, who are up early every morning, hiking through the countryside and collecting stories.)
On the other side of the valley, above Tartsch, I spot a little church, equally Romanesque and romantic, which I choose as my next hiking destination and which, for once, I do not fail to reach.
And there happens one of those chance encounters which enrich travel so much: I am sitting in front of the closed and locked churchyard, smoking an Italian Toscano cigar which I had discovered that morning in the newspaper shop in Mals, when a gentleman walks by, holding not only the key to the church, but also an encyclopedic knowledge and great patience with an uneducated audience like me. I leave the cigar outside, and he shows me the frescoes in the church and tells me about the history of St. Vitus, about Tartscher Bichl, as the hill is called, about Romanesque and Gothic artwork, and about the Swabian War that once swept into the valley.
However, I’ll skip that for the moment and save it for the comprehensive Vinschgau article that, God willing, I will get to write in the coming months. Because the clergyman also knows about the bunkers on the opposite side of the valley.
“Those are from World War II,” he corrects my assumption that they must be remnants of the Alpine front from World War I.
“But there was no fighting on this front in World War II, was there?”
“Mussolini had them built because he didn’t fully trust the alliance with Hitler. That’s why this Alpine Line is also called the ‘linea no mi fido‘, the ‘I-don’t-trust-you line’.“ If I knew where to look, I could discover many more bunkers and anti-tank barriers up here in the mountains. Each of them more megalomaniac than the other, as we know from fascist construction projects.
During World War II, however, the bunkers were not as easily recognizable as they are now, but were – fitting for the rural area – disguised as farms or barns.
The artistically designed bunker did indeed belong to an artist, but he died three years ago while handling old ammunition. Since then, the giant studio has stood empty. Perhaps it could be turned into a refuge for vagabond writers, if I am permitted a hint as broad as a bunker.
In Mals, I am also staying in a bunker, in a way. The former barracks of the financial police have just opened as a hostel. The financial police in Italy are a combination of customs, anti drug-trafficking police, coast guard and the police combatting economic and financial crimes. They are organized and equipped militarily, with frigates, submarines, planes, helicopters, paratroopers, mountain rangers, scuba divers, snipers and even lawyers.
(Photo from La Maddalena, an island in the north of Sardinia. Oh, I actually still have a few stories to tell you from there as well… But for the moment, let’s stay in northern Italy.)
Well, and that’s why the financial police have barracks for their financial police officers, for their weapons depots and to store confiscated illegal wealth (and what wealth is not illegal?). The walls of the building are so massive that they can withstand rocket-propelled grenades, explains Sascha, the hostel director, and because he explains all sorts of other things and invites me to dinner, I will stay for a few days, feeling right at home. Sascha tells me so much, it must be reserved for the definitive Vinschgau article, because today I want to focus merely on the civilian follow-up use of military buildings.
FinKa, as the former financial barracks is now called in what constitutes a pun between German and Spanish, manages three things at the same time: not denying its former purpose, being very cozy and avoiding the standard global hostel flair. The old wooden folding chairs still stand in the entrance area, and the barred doors still squeak in the hallways. The police dining room is now a guest dining room, the officers’ lounge is now the guest lounge, and so on. Really, tourists don’t need anything else than policemen, although I hardly dare to write this in the times of austerity, as it might lead the government to disband one of those groups upon hearing that some money could be saved.
Well, that’s what happened. The financial police barracks in Mals were indeed closed in 2005. Because of the Schengen Agreement, border controls were no longer necessary in the mountains. And thus, even rookies like me can smuggle cigars into Austria. The financial police now mainly cruise around the Adriatic Sea to catch bigger fish.
I have actually taken the drug-smuggling route from Albania to Apulia myself, albeit with perfectly innocent intentions and dozing harmlessly on the deck of the steamer.
One or two weeks ago, I was sitting under a tree, smoking a cigar.
When out of nowhere came a young man, one of those cool guys with a hoodie and a charming smile: “May I sit next to you?”, he pointed to a second bench. “Because this is my Bodhi tree.”
Naturally, I said yes and offered him some gingerbread. I had bought more than I wanted to eat anyway. Because the large packs are much cheaper than the small ones. It’s like that with a lot of products, have you noticed? As a consumer, I always feel a bit cheated by this.
He offered to share his kebab, which I gratefully declined. Because honestly, how would you share a kebab in pita bread? That’s just gonna be one huge mess, making the rodents in the field happy.
“You know what a Bodhi tree is?” he asked and there I was, caught in my ignorance by the young fellow. He explained something about awakening and awareness and enlightenment and salvation and that Buddha Siddhartha Gautama had found all this under a Bodhi tree. Well, you can discover all kinds of things when sitting under a tree like that, I can confirm that myself.
Somehow it was lovely to listen to someone talk about Buddha in Swabian. Even if I didn’t understand everything. People think that German sounds harsh because they once watched a Nazi film. That’s like judging English based on “Full Metal Jacket”. (Which really does sound better in German.) But German has some rather soft and melodic dialects where you can listen to people for days on end, no matter what they are talking about. Swabian, Swiss, North and South Tyrolean.
And he was not overbearing in any way, not like those who want to hit you with all 84,000 teachings for the path from Samsara to Bodhi, as you experience with other Buddhists. Actually, he talked more about his own life, which I will not reproduce here, because that ain’t nobody’s business. I have a rule: When I sit somewhere and I’m writing and someone comes along and tells me his life story, then I’m allowed to use it. Because honestly, what do people think I’m doing when I’m loitering in the park with a notepad and pen? But if I’m just munching on gingerbread to attain at least the physical shape of a Buddha, then really no one can suspect that there’s a roving reporter sitting under the Bodhi tree.
The young man said that I looked like a spy, by the way. Which I understood even less than the thing about the four noble truths, because we were sitting on a hill above a small village in Baden-Württemberg. There’s really nothing to spy on around here.
It was November and no pleasant temperature, but suddenly there were people coming by every five minutes. Walkers with dogs, walkers with wives or husbands, walkers who said hello, walkers who said nothing, walkers who stopped and also talked about their lives. It reminded me of the movie “The Trouble with Harry”, where the paths of all the protagonists keep intersecting on a hill above the village. Have you seen that one? It’s a Hitchcock movie, but a funny one. Some people are afraid of Hitchcock because they think his films are cruel or something. Not at all. Even mild-mannered Buddhists can enjoy it.
Then he drove me home, because the Buddhist had a car and I didn’t. And he told me to go to the kebab store downtown and tell them that I was a friend of Yalçin. That would get me a free kebab.
I should really pick that up soon. After all, kebabs don’t get any better with time. They are very un-Buddhist that way.
But then – rather fittingly for the anniversary of the Spanish Flu – a small pandemic intervened, limiting my world travels quite a bit. As if I would have guessed, however, I had set up a treasure trove of travel tales, from which I can now draw. This month’s story, for example, I can illustrate with photos taken personally on the World War I battlefields in Flanders, where I went with a university field trip in February 2020. This unusually, almost frivolously, brief episode shall only serve as a teaser for the soon to be published full travelogue from Ypres.
But today, we focus on flowers.
If you’ve ever been to the UK in November, you’ll have noticed that corn-red poppies suddenly pop up everywhere. On the subway, in Parliament, on the evening news. And anyone who dares to walk down the street without a poppy on their lapel is stopped by soldiers who will urge you to patriotically wear a poppy. Because soldiers are well organized, they always have an extra poppy with them, which they are happy to hand over for a small fee. If you’re old, frail and can’t fight back, it’s quite possible to come home with as many as five of those plant patches, even if you only wanted to walk the dog around the block.
The heyday of this flowery season is November 11th, the anniversary of the armistice that ended the fighting in 1918. But, when I came to England first, I didn’t know that and refused the poppy. By nature, I am skeptical of everyone doing the same thing. And even more skeptical of ostentatious displays of patriotism. So I preferred to give my money to the homeless, who, appropriately enough, were often war veterans. Colleagues of Mr. Lawrence of Arabia, it seemed, because they spoke of Iraq and desert warfare and such.
This novemberly custom is not only celebrated in Great Britain, but also in many countries of the happy and large Commonwealth family. In 1914, these countries were still too young and inexperienced and were “persuaded” by King George V to enter World War I. But then, Britain can’t always do everything on its own. Except for Brexit, of course, but that’s a different topic.
It was a poem written by Canadian military doctor John McCrae, In Flanders Fields, which turned the poppy into a famous symbol, already during the war. In May 1915, he buried a comrade and friend who had fallen during the Second Battle of Ypres. The blood-red poppies sprouted around the grave as soon as he was buried, and poof, the poem that would become the most popular English-language poem of the First World War was born. In Canada, it is something of a national poem.
In Flanders Fields, the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
John McCrae himself died in January 1918. But after the war, two women, Moina Michael and Anne Guérin, had the idea of using the poppies mentioned in the poem as a symbol of remembrance for the Allied casualties of the war. (Women had attained a wee bit of independence and freedom during World War I. Unfortunately, this only lasted as long as the men were away or the economy needed women’s labor. As soon as the men returned, the women were relegated to the kitchen again. As a small compensation, they got the right to vote and – in West Germany already in 1977 – the right to enter into an employment contract without the husband’s signature. Yay!)
For the festivities in November 1921, the lapel flowers were mass-produced for the first time and sold by veterans’ associations. The Chinese factory workers who churn out the plastic flowers today are probably thinking it’s for a New Year’s celebration or a birthday party. By the way, this division of labor is nothing new either, as I learned in the “In Flanders Fields Museum” (named after the poem) in Ypres.
Some 140,000 Chinese served on the Western Front. Not as soldiers, but as laborers for the British and French armies. World War I was even more of a world war than most people think.
But this and much more I will tell you in the detailed report from Ypres. As you have already seen from the photos, there will be a lot about war and death and commemoration. But also about a city rebuilt true to the original after its complete destruction and about the people now living there.
And about a bunch of students from the University of Hagen, getting high on Belgian beer. Except for that one weird student who stealthily absconded and discovered a secret underground NATO command bunker.
If you are interested, just give me another week, month, year or two. Soon, there will be plenty of news from the Western front!
Links:
All articles of the series “One Hundred Years Ago …”.
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The Happy Hermit 