I had two days left in Boston before returning to Germany, and I didn’t know anybody in the city. The year was 2009 and, as far as I knew, the internet hadn’t been invented yet.
For dinner, I got a pizza and a copy of the Boston Globe. I went to Boston Common, a park, to sit on a bench and eat and read. Alone, as I often do. I had already finished half of the pizza and decided to leave the rest for later (American pizzas are made for American stomachs), when a young man walked by. He continued for a few meters, or yards, as he would call them, paused, turned around and came up to me. I quickly analyzed the situation, saw that it had gotten dark, that I was rather alone in the park, and that I hadn’t even taken a plastic knife from the pizza parlor. There are about 50 homicides per year in Boston.
“Excuse me, Sir. I am sorry if I am disturbing you.” He sounded and seemed polite. I was ready to hand over the rest of the pizza, should he pull a gun. (Americans are crazy about guns and pizzas.)
In my repertoire of facial expressions, I have one that says “I’ll give you a few seconds to explain what you want, and depending on what you say, I will be your best friend or I will tear you to pieces.” It was the moment to use it.
The young man, whose name I have sadly forgotten, and whom out of journalistic integrity I cannot simply refer to as David, Michael or Jonathan, although it would make the story much easier than these convoluted insertions, was either quite honest or quite clever in his approach. “I was wondering if I could ask you a question, because you look intelligent.”
I had to laugh before I could say “thank you” from the bottom of my heart. “Why do you think I look intelligent?”
“Because you are reading a newspaper, Sir.”
I was still smiling and pointed out that reading a newspaper may not qualify me to answer any question, but I asked the young man to take a seat. I did not offer any pizza yet because that would depend on the type of question. If it was a stupid one – yes, there are stupid questions – I wanted to be able to get rid of him and return to the pages that made me look so erudite.
“So, I have this problem with a girl,” he began. How convenient that I was a family-law specialist, although he couldn’t have possibly known that or known that I was a lawyer at all. Would the lawyers of Boston Legal ever sit in a park late at night to eat pizza? Probably not. In any case, I was relieved. This was my area of expertise and I had already helped hundreds of men regain their freedom. I could liberate this young man as well.
“She likes me and she told me that she wants to be with me. I also like her as a friend, but I am just not that attracted to her.” So far, it sounded like a surprisingly teenage problem for someone who looked like he was at least 21 or 22 years old. “But I am attracted to another girl. Now the matter gets complicated: the girl who likes me is white, and the girl I like is black. The white girl now accuses me of racism. And I find this thought quite disturbing, because I never thought of myself as a racist.” And, ending with a poignant question like a high-school essay paper: “Do you think I am racist for liking a black girl and not the white girl?”
That was a new question, which I liked. (One reason why I quit my lawyer job later that year was that clients rarely came up with new questions. I was getting bored.) A question that deserved a lot of thought, but I couldn’t let the young man wait, or he would sign up with the wrong girl. And I wanted to give him a positive answer, to be honest, so my thoughts were not swirling around completely free, as they should have. I also realized that he wanted practical advice, not a sociological discussion about race. After all, one could argue that everyone is a little bit racist, at least sometimes. (Just stop for a moment to realize how you have been imagining me and the young man in this story, although I haven’t given you any indication about the color of either.)
“I don’t think that you are racist. First of all, if you are in love, I am not even sure it’s your own decision. Sometimes, it just happens, and we don’t really have any control over it.” In the 16th century, love was seen as an illness by some, necessitating medical treatment. And who hasn’t ever wished that there was a vaccine against it?
“And then, I assume that your attraction to the lady in question is not based on the color of her skin, but on her character, on her smile, on her intellect, on what she says, does and thinks,” I possibly extrapolated from myself to him. “Maybe the way she kisses,” I thought, but didn’t mention it, because it seemed to me that he hadn’t gotten that far yet.
“And lastly, you might want to ask the white girl if it wouldn’t be equally racist against all other colors if you became her boyfriend. Whenever we choose one person only, we are disappointing dozens of others. Relationships are not the realm for anti-discrimination laws.”
“Say, do you want a slice of pizza?”, I offered, far too late.
“Oh, thank you very much, but I should actually be going. I am staying at a shelter for homeless veterans and I need to be there by 10 p.m.” It was already ten past ten. He thanked me again, visibly relieved.
It was a warm night, I had gotten hungry enough to finish the pizza, munching it while pondering thoughts about race, about love, and about how a rich country treats its military veterans.
I don’t know what became of the young man and the girls in Boston, and chances are low that either of them will read this. (Unless you widely share the article with your friends.) But even now, ten years later, as we have Couchsurfing and Tinder and Bumble and lots of other apps to meet people, I am still thankful for that chance encounter. Because it taught me a lesson that I turned into a strategy.
Since then, whenever I have more than a few days in a city (and weather permitting), I will go to a park and just sit there for a few hours, open to any surprises that fate may throw my way. I like to read a book or a newspaper, so people see that I am not in a hurry. You don’t see that many people reading in public, so it also makes me more interesting, I imagine. And to someone who is curious, a book or a newspaper is a good conversation starter.
Once, in Belgrade, I was sitting in Studentski Park, enjoying a few sunny hours and a copy of Süddeutsche Zeitung, bought from the well-stocked newsagent just on the other side of the street, who is always my first stop after a few weeks without news in the Balkan countryside. A couple in their 60s, Miro and Maia, two chemical engineers, thus saw that I spoke German and started telling me their life story, which included working in East Germany. They were so happy to meet someone willing to listen that they were almost fighting with each other about who got to tell which story. (They were also in heated disagreement about many of the memories, as well as about the industrial policy of the GDR.)
In Targu Mures, I sat outside, reading again. On the next bench, there was an elderly man, looking as if he had just finished a hard day’s work at the chemical plant, holding on to a bottle of beer instead of a book. After a wile, apparently recognizing me as a foreigner, he asked if I happened to speak Romanian, Hungarian, English, French or Russian, for he would like to ask me a question, if I permitted. We settled on English, and he said: “I was just wondering if I could take a look at the book you are reading, because I noticed you smiling and chuckling repeatedly.” The book was “Scoop” by Evelyn Waugh, a truly funny read.
It turned out that the gentleman was a retired engineer, a good-humored fellow, and had published a collection of stories himself. (Romanians love books and writing as much as Americans love pizzas and guns.) We had a wonderful conversation, realized that we lived in the same neighborhood, and when we exchanged business cards, as old-fashioned people do, I realized that Vasile was also the chairman of the local Jewish community. Noticing my interest, he said without hesitation: “If you have time this Saturday, why don’t you come to our synagogue at 10 in the morning? I will give you a tour of the building, it’s quite beautiful, and then you can celebrate shabbat with us.” I felt the need to point out that I was not Jewish, but he cut me off, “And why would that bother us?”, as if it was the silliest excuse he had ever heard.
I did show up and met a very welcoming community of mostly elderly gentlemen and a young family from the United States, living in Romania at the time. To cut this long-winding story short, they later moved to Vienna and I became their house/cat sitter for two summers. So, if I had stayed at home that summer evening in Targu Mures, or played on my phone instead of reading a book, or ignored the gentleman’s question, I never would have had the chance to live in Vienna for a few months and I wouldn’t have discovered what is probably my favorite city in the world.
A city with quite some cute little parks, too, coincidentally.
The people who approach me are usually older, the ones who are lonely and have time to talk. Often, it’s people walking their dogs. But I have also met interesting young people that way. They are often intelligent individuals who appreciate the sight of someone reading or writing. And of course there are the homeless and the beggars, but they have the best stories of all.
Only the Jehovah’s Witnesses can be annoying. But when I lived in Cochabamba, I even spoke with those freaks, using them as Spanish tutors sent from heaven, as much as they were threatening me with the prospect of going to hell.
There is a reason why I am tapping into these memories now. We probably won’t be able to travel far and wide for the next year or two. But, as you have seen, it’s not necessary to travel far and wide. Once you can go to the park again, just listen to people, and you may be surprised by how many beautiful souls and stories have been living around you all your life.
Luckily, my way of reporting doesn’t cost much, just a newspaper and a new pencil from time to time. If you enjoy stories like this, you can make sure that there will be more of them by supporting this blog. Thank you!
I have hitched rides a few times already, but merely short distances. Usually on the way back from hiking in the mountains when I didn’t feel like stumbling through the night any longer. But even my hitchhiking record so far was less than 50 km.
For a long time, I have wanted to take up serious hitchhiking and cover longer distances that way, but I have never dared to. And I don’t mean that I have been afraid of getting into cars of strangers or of getting killed. I am just not as spontaneous as I would like to be. Not knowing where I am going to spend the next night, that thought bothers me a bit. I always had excuses: too cold, too much luggage, I have to be somewhere on time.
And then, one Saturday afternoon in February, the university field trip to Ypres is over. I haven’t got a bus or train ticket, and I decide, quite spontaneously, that I shall attempt to hitchhike home to Bavaria. (The train was a bit expensive, and I can’t really endure 12 hours on a bus.) No round-the-world trip, but still quite a trip. From the west of Belgium to the south-east of Germany.
I am excited.
Actually, I start by cheating a bit. A fellow student lives in Ghent and I ask her if she could take me there. Why should I stand next to World-War-I trenches for a few hours, holding up a sign, if I can ask someone? And compared with the whole distance, the way to Ghent is really just a tiny bit.
“Of course,” she says. Once in the car, she recounts stories of when she was hitchhiking all over Europe. In the good old real-adventure times before the internet and Google Maps. For her retirement, she is planning to drive a truck to Tajikistan.
Lesson 1: The real adventurers are often the quiet people who don’t make any fuss about their experience, nor annoy the world with their blogs and Instagraph photos.
When she points to a village next to the highway, saying “this is where I live”, I realize that she wouldn’t really need to drive all the way to Ghent. But she takes me directly to South Park, where the cars get onto the highway. “Here is a parking lane, cars can easily stop. Up there, you see the traffic lights, so the cars will come to a stop there, too. The highway from here goes to different directions, so it’s better to use a sign. If you want to go to Germany, just write ‘Aken’, that’s Dutch for Aachen/Aix-la-Chapelle.”
The wealth of professional advice is both calming and motivating at the same time. “Do you want to take some food?”, she asks and I am overwhelmed by her caring helpfulness. I decline the offer, which I shall soon regret.
Lesson 2: Being too timid is always a mistake.
The spot seems rather perfect to me, too. I hold up my sign, put on a friendly smile, and stand there for half an hour. The cyclists turn around to read my sign, but they can’t help me. A car with “AC” on the German license plate shows up and I am already celebrating. But the driver winds down the window and apologizes. He is going in the other direction, unfortunately. No one else stops.
I change the waiting spot, from Jules de Bruyckerdreef to Franklin Rooseveltlaan, just across the street. After less than five minutes, a BMW station wagon sounds the horn from afar and signals with the lights that my waiting has come to an end.
Lesson 3: If nobody stops, it’s usually the fault of the location, not your fault. The best spot is one where you can be seen from afar and where drivers can stop without blocking the traffic. Set yourself a time limit, after which you change the location.
The driver is a friendly and distinguished gentleman who looks the way I would look if I was still working as a lawyer: white-blue-checkered shirt, burgundy sweater and glasses.
He is going to Eindhoven. That’s in the Netherlands, where I don’t really want to go. “Well, it’s somehow in the direction of Germany,” he insists and it’s obvious that he is very keen on taking a hitchhiker. Okay, after all, Maastricht is on the way to Aachen, I remember. The main goal is going east for now, I can always turn south later.
He tells me that he used to hitchhike a lot when he was younger and laments that there are far fewer hitchhikers around today. And it would be so good for the environment to share a car, he adds. But an environmentalist he is not. For that, he is too critical of restrictions, like the prohibition of diesel cars in some areas or the speed limit. And he deems it disappointing that teenagers nowadays don’t drink as much alcohol anymore. “My teenage children don’t even know what it feels like to be drunk. What kind of life is that?” In his view, the obsession with health has replaced the church, which also operated with the fear of the unknown. It used to be the devil, now it’s diabetes.
He praises the Trappist beer of Westvleteren. When I tell him that I have tried it, he doesn’t believe me at first, until I describe the bottle and the process of purchasing it. But Jan, the Couchsurfing host in Ypres, had kept calling the Abbey of Saint Sixtus until he was finally allowed to pick up two crates of the beer, which has been voted the best in the world several times. The bottles have no label, and you can only get two crates per quarter, if at all. Resale is prohibited.
“Wow, that must have been a really nice guy that he presented that beer to you,” the driver is visibly amazed. And jealous, it seems. He himself has been applying for one crate, but hasn’t received anything for over two years. We come to the agreement that Belgium has far better beer than Germany. He explains that it’s due to the German “Reinheitsgebot”, another one of those stupid restrictions.
I talk a bit about my trip to Ypres, which he knows quite well from cycling tours. As he talks about the tough ascent of Kemmel Mountain, I can even give him a new tip for his next trip there: the former Belgian Military Command Bunker deep inside the mountain, which is now a museum and quite interesting.
The driver is indeed a lawyer too, but now working as a banker and in real-estate, building shopping malls from Bucharest to Moscow. From millionaire to student, we are having an excellent conversation. Maybe he is generally a nice and open guy, maybe it’s because of a similar habitus. And then he already has to drop me off at a highway intersection. He has to visit his parents in the countryside and a few bottles of red wine.
Lesson 4: Some people give hitchhikers a ride because it reminds them of their own lighthearted youth, I believe.
I have no idea where I am. But the afternoon sun is shining with verve and beauty, allowing me to get my bearings towards east. That’s where I need to go and I position myself on the ramp leading onto the highway in that direction. It’s not a good spot, the cars are coming around the bend fast, and there is not much space to stop. I guess I should find a better position.
But there already stops a car with “four intellectual women”, as they introduce themselves. They are psychologists or something like that. The two in the backseat squeeze together to make room for me and my backpack, and one of them tells the story of having hitchhiked from Spain through France to Belgium, just recently.
Lesson 5: Everyone says they don’s see hitchhikers anymore. But when you ask around, quite a number of people practice it. Maybe you never spot them because they rarely have to wait that long?
The driver introduces the lady in the passenger seat as the singer of the band Smooth Wing. They are on the way to a party party in Eindhoven, but today only as guests, not as musicians. Hence they have enough time to take me to the highway towards Maastricht, dropping me off at a service station, although it means a huge detour for them and there is already a little bit of grumbling in the car. They are quite worried how I am going to survive the storm Dennis. Because I have been on a trip with university, I hadn’t found time to read the newspaper all week and thus learned nothing of the impeding end of the world. Damn. Or thankfully. Because had I known, I probably would have used it as yet another excuse to cancel the hitchhiking plan.
As we say goodbye, they ask me to tell the world that four Belgian – not Dutch – girls have helped me out, because they want to fight the alleged stereotype of Belgians being unfriendly. I have to say, I know Belgium quite a bit and I have found people very friendly everywhere. Okay, the thing in the Congo was not quite correct, but that’s not really the fault of contemporary Belgians, is it?
So now I am at Haasje service station on the highway A2. It’s getting darker quickly, not because of the storm, but because night is falling on this February day. I can still use the sign “Aken – Germany”, which shows that I haven’t come very far. I place myself under the light of a lamppost and smile. For at least an hour.
I remember lesson 3 and walk closer to the gas station, where the cars have to slow down. An elderly gentleman stops, only to tell me that he will leave the highway at the next exit. He is so sorry. Other than that, nobody stops.
Well, I guess I finally have to do what I loathe: walk up to strangers and talk to them. In the parking bay, there is a car with a Swiss license plate and an Asian boy sitting in the passenger seat. The driver, another Asian boy, is just walking out of the gas station. That’s my chance.
“Excuse me, are you going to Switzerland?”
“Yes.”
“Could you give me a ride to Germany?”
“Yes, sure.”
And he invites me to get into the car. No questions asked who I am, where I want to go, and not a second of hesitation. He doesn’t even ask his friend. It soon turns out that they both live in Sankt Gallen, so we can even converse in German.
Lesson 6: If I hadn’t addressed the driver, he would have walked past me. But he was absolutely willing to help. Often, even the most helpful drivers won’t initiate the contact.
But we aren’t talking much, because the two boys are driving back from Amsterdam, are still in party mood and are listening to very loud and terrible music. Hip Hop, Macarena and such things. I should have bought a CD from the Smooth Wing ladies. The two are talking with each other in some Tibeto-Burman language and don’t pay any attention to me.
Lesson 7: As a guest in someone’s vehicle, you respect the driver’s rules. If the driver wants to talk, you listen. If they want to listen, you tell them stories. If they are listening to the radio, you shut up.
But the ride is going very well. The young Tibetan is driving one of those 350-horsepower Mercedes cars and is chauffeuring me through Germany at 200 km/h (= 125 mph). And he is a really good driver. Fast, but not aggressive, never insecure. I would really love to fall asleep on the backseat and stay with them all the way to Switzerland.
Lesson 8: Without a fixed destination, hitchhiking is even more fun.
Approaching a service station, the driver asks if I want to stop here. I decline, for I am happy to keep going with them for a while. I won’t progress so fast and in such a relaxed manner in any other car.
He keeps going, asks again at the next service station. “If you don’t mind, I would be happy to go a bit further south,” I try to extend the ride. And thus he keeps speeding across highways that are almost empty by now. I don’t speak Tibetan, but some of the words remind me of Sanskrit, and I seem to understand that the driver is the next Dalai Lama, who has been parked in exile in Switzerland for his own safety. The friend is his bodyguard, who should really be driving, but whom the boss doesn’t allow to take over the wheel.
By now, we are already in Rhineland-Palatinate, and the driver asks again if I want to be dropped off at the next service station. Well, I really shouldn’t overstrain their hospitality. “Oh yes, here it’s perfect,” I reply with typical Asian politeness, although I have no idea where we are. And thus, we all get out of the car at Hunsrück service station. “I need a break too,” the driver explains, “I can’t drive to Switzerland in one go.” And only now do I understand that for about an hour, I have been delaying his rest, thus endangering the safety of us all. Oops. The two boys wish me plenty of luck.
It’s 10 pm, there are fewer and fewer cars, although it’s one of the larger service stations. But I am not panicking yet. I go to the parking bays and address an elderly man, wearing a typical elderly-man hat, who is just about to get into his car, although he is limping so badly that I am not sure he should be driving. “TR” says his license plate, and if that stood for Traunstein, it would be perfect. But it stands for Trier, of which I didn’t even know that people still live there after the retreat of the Romans.
He would like to give me a ride, he says, but he is going to Mainz, which wouldn’t help me. “This will be hard tonight, because it’s the main carnival night,” he explains the meager traffic. Great. For once, I am hitchhiking long distance, and I run into a combination of storm and carnival. And then I miss the few cars because the gentleman with the hat is talking to me for a full hour! He is from the Egerland, which I know quite a bit, and we speak about Marienbad, Prague, Plzen and Cheb, which he insists on calling Eger. He is a scholar of German and linguistics with a particular interest in comparative literature. As the tempest is closing in, we discuss novels in different language families, Finno-Ugric and Baltic languages and the Illyrians. “Oh, now it’s so late, there won’t be any more cars coming by,” he remarks as he finally bids farewell at 11 pm. “If you want to go to Mainz, you are welcome to stay at my house. But I have no electricity and no heating at the moment, because the roof collapsed. Oh, damn it, I don’t really want to go there myself.” I had kind of noticed that already.
Lesson 9: Maybe I should have terminated the conversation, using the time to talk to other drivers. But hey, this is not a race.
I am standing all alone in front of Hunsrück service station. I really wouldn’t have thought that there can be that little traffic in the middle of Germany. At least I am not cold. But a bit bored. If the professor hadn’t alluded to some Pan-Germanic fantasies, I might even have accepted his invitation.
There is only one car stopping in front of the service station. It’s a taxi. That doesn’t help. I am not even withdrawing my thumb from the warm pocket for that futile attempt.
But the taxi driver, who just picked up a cup of coffee, stops right in front of me, rolls down the window and asks: “Can I take you to Frankfurt?”
“Ehm, I can’t really afford the price of a taxi.”
“No, no, I’ll take you for free.”
I am totally perplexed.
He asks me if I wasn’t afraid to get into cars with strangers. He would never dare to do that. I cannot appreciate it enough that he offered me a ride nonetheless. “It’s okay, I still have time. It’ Saturday night, the business in Frankfurt will only start at around 1 in the morning.” He just drove two Spanish women to the airport in Hahn, which calls itself, most deceivingly, Frankfurt-Hahn Airport, and where tourists are then stuck in the middle of the forest. They had to pay 230 € for the taxi. For that money, they might as well have taken the train to Spain.
“If I had known that I will pick you up, I would have brought you a coffee as well,” the taxi driver apologizes, and I notice that, once again, I have come across an extremely kindhearted human. But the taxi entrepreneur has to get one diatribe off his heart. He rants about Uber, about electric scooters, about the city trains which are even going at night now, and about Frankfurt: “It wants to be a metropolis, but it doesn’t have a single taxi lane.” In the last two years, his revenues have gone down by 50%. He is sorry about the Uber drivers, they are being exploited too, but he cannot understand why a company that keeps breaking laws is allowed to put up its advertising all over the city. “Capitalism has gone too far. Students and pensioners are driving cars, and the corporation isn’t even paying any taxes in Germany. If someone cannot drive anymore, they simply drop him. People are judged only by their productivity nowadays, that’s inhumane.”
“If you need to go towards Bavaria, then it wouldn’t make sense if I take you into Frankfurt, would it? I’ll take you to the other side of Frankfurt then, onto the A3. From there, you will definitely catch a ride to Aschaffenburg, Würzburg, Nuremberg.“ He knows everything without GPS, the Uber drivers can’t match that.
Lesson 10: A paper map is useful. Most people have become such unquestioning believers in their navigation tools, that they have no idea of the general direction of highways and cities.
He asks me where my trip began. I tell him that I have been to Ypres for a seminar about World War I. “And it all began where I come from,” he replies. He is from Bosnia, and from then on we speak about the Yugoslav wars, the clear water of the Drina and the Sava, the political situation in Bosnia and the books by Ivo Andrić. He is so excited to meet a German who knows the Balkans that he misses the first service station after Frankfurt. And he will soon need to start his night shift. In the end, he drives me to Weiskirchen service station near Hanau. 100 kilometers in a taxi, for free, and in likable and intelligent company.
I still can’t believe my luck. Now I am confident that it will continue like this. But Weiskirchen South will be my Bermuda Triangle. To make short what took very long: I’ll be standing in the cold from midnight until 7 o’clock the next morning.
Too late I am thinking of food, Burger King has already closed. I still get one bagel, but it’s lukewarm and tastes like plastic. I could probably just sit down in a corner of the empty restaurant, there are no other guests anyway, but I don’t want to miss any car.
So I stand right next to the petrol pumps, addressing the drivers directly. There aren’t many. Most cars are from Holland and full with children, apparently on the way to a skiing holiday. I always check the license plates and greet the drivers in their language. “Goedemorgen.” “Bună dimineața.” “Good morning, Sir.” The strategy yields no result, but it keeps my brain awake. The Lithuanian driver whom I welcome with “labas rytas” is mightily impressed. But he doesn’t have any space.
Hour after hour passes, very slowly and very boringly. What if nobody will give me a ride? There is no bus or train stopping here either. Could I be stuck at the service station for days? Like Tom Hanks in Terminal? There is a shower here, I already checked that. And food, albeit at inflated prices. And they get the daily newspapers. I guess there are worse places.
Lesson 11: At the end of this adventure, I will have spent zero money on transport. But because I failed to prepare the trip properly, I had to buy drinks and food at the expensive gas-station shops. Always go to the supermarket before!
There are so few cars that I take a book from the backpack and start reading. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. Maybe drivers are more open to accept a hitchhiker who appears to be intellectual, I am hoping. They are not.
Lesson 12: At night, it’s definitely harder than during the day. I guess I should simply have slept and begun the next morning somewhat rested.
From 6:30 on, traffic picks up noticeably. Yoohoo! And it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful, sunny day. At 7:15, I ask the young driver of a stonemason van if he could take me towards Würzburg or Nuremberg.
“If that’s on the way to Hungary, then yes.” It is, and I am relieved. The driver is from Romania, his wife even from Târgu Mureș, where I once lived. He has a stonemason business in Cologne and is on the way to Budapest to pick up a machine which cuts stone, using water and sand. Incredible, this modern technology.
“That’s quite a long way,” I say.
“Oh, that’s nothing. I should be there by 4 in the afternoon, at the latest. I often drive to Romania, that’s even farther. And once, I drove 3000 km in one go, 36 hours, to Turkey.” Because he won’t be able to speed in Austria and Hungary, he wants to win time now. He is getting 150 km/h (= 93 mph) out of the van, even as we go across bridges, where the gale-force winds are hitting hard. During that race against time, he keeps the right hand in his pocket, only taking it out from time to time to show me some videos on his YouTube gadget.
Lesson 13: If technology was really intelligent, so-called smartphones would switch off automatically once the car is moving. One day, this stupid distraction is going to kill somebody.
I am terribly sleepy, but luckily, the Romanian likes to talk about his life and even more about his business. Now he is a stonemason, but he used to organize bus transports between Germany and Romania. 80 € door to door, nobody could beat that price and service. And when he went to visit his family in Romania, he announced that on the internet before and delivered parcels and packages from the diaspora to the homeland. He received so many that he had to buy a trailer. After each trip, he sold the trailer in Romania, making yet more of a profit.
Rarely have I met someone with such business acumen. When he was 13, he always took the train from Bistrița to Bucharest, bought clothes there and sold them at his home-town market at a profit. That way, he earned enough to buy a car. Of course he was way too young, so he registered the car in his father’s name and rented it out to teenagers who had just gotten their driving license and who wanted a car to impress girls. The business worked so well that he owned several cars before he could drive himself.
Lesson 14: The guy was unshaved and wearing a tracksuit. Yet, he was probably cleverer than most business consultants with MBAs. There are millions of interesting people whom we would overlook if we judged them on first sight.
But then, the local authorities in Romania wanted too much “profit-sharing” and he moved to Germany. He still can’t quite believe his experience here: “When I go to a government office in Romania, they ask how much I pay before I even know if I receive what I need. When I go to a government office in Germany, they seriously want to help me!”
At the Ludergraben parking area, our ways need to part, because the business mason continues on the A3 to Regensburg, while I need to turn east on the A6 towards Amberg. Unfortunately, this here is only a parking area next to the highway, no gas station, no restaurant. So there is less traffic. There are plenty of trucks parked. Based on their license plates from the Czech Republic, they should all be going east, which is very useful for me. But it’s Sunday, and most truck drivers are forced to take the day off.
After a few minutes of holding up a sign “A6 => Amberg”, I realize that I won’t leave this godforsaken place until I will be more proactive. I walk up to the first parking vehicle. It’s a small car, and in front of it, a Mediterranean-looking young man is engaged in some yoga stretching exercises, enjoying the warm spring day.
“Excuse me, do you happen to go towards Amberg on the A6?”
“Yes.”
“That’s perfect! Could you give me a ride?”
“I’d be glad to.”
Lesson 15: It seems people are in a better mood when the weather is nice.
He apologizes that he has an appointment in Cham at 10:30, otherwise he would drive me all the way home. But given his pressing schedule, he has to drop me off at Oberpfälzer Alb service station. That’s actually very helpful, I hadn’t dared to hope for anything else.
He works as a construction draftsman, although he used to be a civil engineer in Syria. But Germany doesn’t recognize his diploma from there, wasting his time and his talents. He is working Saturdays and Sundays, not only to remedy the lack of housing in Germany, but also to collect enough vacation days. He wants to go to Turkey, hoping that his parents and relatives who still live in Syria can also come there to meet. He hasn’t seen them in four years.
“My mother has died in the meantime,” he says and his eyes fill with tears. Mine too.
Saying nothing or talking of trivial things, we reach our destination just before Ursensollen. Once again, the Syrian apologizes that he is pressured for time and therefore unable to drive me to my village.
Lesson 16: You may have noticed that it was mostly people with migration backgrounds who gave me ride. Not only because of that, but because of the conversations I had with them, I realized once again how much poorer Germany would be without immigration.
I know the way from the highway service station to home. I am often going for hikes in this area. It’s a 5-km walk, not a problem really. But, to continue the experiment as long as possible, I stick out the thumb each time a car comes by. Outside of Ritzenfeld, a hunter in his small off-road vehicle stops. He is going home from the hunt, but luckily, there is no bleeding deer in the back of the car, just a well-behaved dog.
He doesn’t actually need to go to Ammerthal, but he takes me all the way home. And at 10:30, the Odyssey is over. For 888 km, it took me 20 hours. If I had been driving myself, I would have needed to sleep at night and would hardly have been any faster. And I wouldn’t have noticed how many good people are out there.
Lesson 17: Even if you are totally broke (like me), you can experience a much more interesting day than you could on any package holiday. And you can start just outside of your house.
Lesson 18: Now that I know how well hitchhiking works, nothing can stop me. Why wouldn’t it be possible to go all the way to India like this, for example?
If you enjoy reports like this one, I would appreciate your support for this blog. That will allow me to go hitchhiking again, returning with yet more stories for you.
The German Supreme Court, or Federal Constitutional Court, to translate its name literally, has approved the anti-Corona measures. At least for the time being.
The measures to fight the pandemic in Germany are not the strictest in Europe. For example, there is no general curfew and a lot of businesses are still open, but there are restrictions in place against leaving the house and meeting in public. Because of its federal system, there are actually 16 different regulations in place, issued by the respective states. This confuses people because they read something online about what is allowed or not, without realizing that the news are from a different state. Well, that’s the problem when people don’t read their local paper and trust the internet instead.
In the German legal system, you can challenge state laws before state courts and/or before federal courts. (I have published FAQs on how to do this before the Federal Constitutional Court.) In this case, someone challenged the Bavarian regulation, specifically the ban on meeting friends, visiting his parents, staging public protests and meeting new people. (Maybe he matched someone on Tinder an didn’t want to lose any time, not realizing that not meeting women was the best way to keep one’s sanity.)
On 9 April 2020, the German Supreme Court denied the petition for an injunction against said ordinance. Usually, cases before the Supreme Court take years, so the petitioner brought a case for interim relief. In such a proceeding, the court doesn’t have the time to look into all the evidence, nor all the legal arguments. Instead, it weighs the consequences of different scenarios. On the one hand, it has to consider the disadvantages to the petitioner if the law in question is upheld, although it will later turn out to be unconstitutional. These disadvantages, i.e. the restrictions on his civil rights, are quite severe, as conceded by the court.
But, on the other hand, there are the disadvantages caused if the court suspended the application of the law in question, yet it would later turn out that the law is constitutional. The consequences of that scenario, which would include more people than just the petitioner going outside and mingling with others, thus greatly increasing the risk already inherent in the pandemic, are much more dramatic than the temporary suspension of some civil rights. The protection of life and health weighs more than the protection of liberty in this case.
In denying the petitioner’s request, the Supreme Court pointed out that the measures are temporary (opening the possibility of a different decision at a later point in time), that they allow for a number of exceptions and that fines can be reduced or waived by the state in special circumstances.
It is important to keep in mind that this decision is merely based on a comparison of the consequences of two different scenarios. This does not provide any guidance on how the Supreme Court will ultimately rule, which it will certainly be asked to do at one point, for example by someone refusing to pay a fine for meeting friends in a park, or maybe claims for state liability due to lost income.
(For my lawyer friends: I think the main question won’t even be about substantive issues, but about formal constitutional law, because most of the anti-Corona measures have been imposed by the executive branch, based on very wide powers granted by the parliaments. It is however long-standing case law by the Federal Constitutional Court that especially in areas that touch upon civil rights, as these measures heavily do, the main decisions need to be made by parliament and only the details can be left to the executive branch. – On the other hand, the German Supreme Court has a tradition of ruling something unconstitutional, but saying that it was OK to apply the law for a time, or even keeping unconstitutional laws in effect until a new law has been enacted within a deadline imposed by the court.)
In a second decision on 10 April 2020, the Supreme Court used the same reasoning to uphold a ban on religious services in places of worship in the state of Hesse. Again, the same arguments would apply in all other states. The case was brought by a Catholic who wanted to attend church on Easter, but the court specifically mentioned that it would – for the moment – rule similarly in case of other religions and other religious holidays. (Passover is happening currently, and Ramadan and Orthodox Easter will happen in the following weeks.)
And then there was that one lawyer, obviously not versed in constitutional law, who petitioned the Supreme Court to declare that the government response to Covid-19 was threatening the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany, democracy and the rule of law and asked that all measures be suspended. Well, the court had to point out that she hadn’t even met the formal requirements of filing a proper constitutional complaint. Since then, she is running amok, screaming of tyranny, proving that some people do indeed crack under the slightest pressure.
In somewhat related news, it’s interesting to note that Germany has not declared a derogation from the European Convention on Human Rights, as several other member states of the Council of Europe have done, referring to Art. 15 of said convention. Links:
More about German law, most of it of much more practical use for you. And more entertaining, too.
To fight the Corona virus pandemic, Romania has imposed a very strict curfew, which is being controlled by the police and by the military. Now, the happiest people are those living in the countryside and those who have at least a balcony, from which to marvel at the super moon and the sparkling stars in the skies, as clear as never before since the invention of the jet engine. (One of many Romanian inventions, by the way.)
But yesterday, Romanians were wondering when they looked up: What’s with all the planes? Where do they come from? Where are they going? Why? What about the curfew and the travel ban?
Even at a small airport like Cluj, the flight plan looks very full these days, albeit with a narrow choice of destinations.
These are the flights for the people who are supposed to save the asparagus harvest in Germany. Apparently, asparagus is very important there. (I am German and I hate that vegetable.) Or maybe it’s the profit of the asparagus farmers which is really important, hence their refusal to accept the help of German workers, preferring to charter planes, flying vegetable pickers from Romania and Bulgaria directly onto the plantation.
Because these people are already used to working hard, working long hours, being housed in crammed conditions and getting paid the lowest possible wages, if at all. I guess this is what the asparagus barons mean when they say that the Romanians are already “experienced”. By the way, most of the other fruits and vegetables which we buy at the supermarket are only so cheap because they are produced under conditions which haven’t improved much since “The Grapes of Wrath”.
The only good thing about it? If you never wanted to eat vegetables, you can now decline them on moral grounds. Let’s hope the conditions on chocolate and tobacco plantations are better.
When it comes to asparagus, all the safety rules on keeping distance are scrapped, it seems. Well, if the Romanians get sick in Germany, they will at least be able to communicate in Romanian there. Because the German healthcare system relies on thousands of Romanian doctors and nurses, too.
How naturally some peoples or nations are regarded as a pool of labor for Germany (and as nothing else beyond that) does raise the suspicion that the image of the “Ostarbeiter” is still in the minds of many.
Somehow, this leaves a bad aftertaste. Like asparagus itself.
Links:
More from Romania, a country that is so much more than cheap labor.
Now that you are going to boycott asparagus, maybe you can spare a few of the dollars/pounds/euros thus saved to support this blog? I guarantee that my articles are far more nutritious than that strange vegetable.
Just as I leave the courtyard in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, walking through a small gate, there are two Muslim men waiting. One of them is wearing a white jalabiya, the long and wide-cut gown, and the type of beard brought into disrepute by Salafists. The other one is clothed casually, but also with beard and prayer cap.
They approach me in a friendly way. Of course I know what their end-goal is, but for curiosity’s sake, I play along. “Do you hear this sound?”, he asks, pointing upward with the finger. And, before I can even reply: “This is the call of God. God is calling for you, my brother, to follow him.” I point out that it’s probably the muezzin or maybe a recorded tape that is filling the Old City with its charming chants.
He laughs, extends his hand and introduces himself as Musa, the Arabic name for Moses and not dissimilar to my own name. I better keep this to myself, because I don’t want them to consider me a prophet. In the end, they might even ask me to deliver the sermon this Friday.
What follows is a back and forth of religious and atheist arguments and questions. I have gone through this with the Jehovah’s Witnesses a dozen times. It’s no longer intellectually challenging. These conversation all run so similar that I am getting the suspicion that both the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Muslim Brothers have taken the same correspondence course in converting non-believers. They should both ask for their money back.
Musa’s sidekick hands me a small box of tasty strawberries, which he just bought at the nearby market, visibly excited that a bearded brother is sticking around for a longer discussion. But after ten minutes – the muezzin is still singing -, they are becoming restless. They hand me an English translation of the Quran, apologize for their hasty departure – “It’s the call for prayer.” – and then run off towards the Temple Mount.
They also gave me a business card, which asks “What is the religion of Jesus?” on one side and “?מהי דת הנביא משה” (“What is the religion of the prophet Moses?”) on the other. For me, this symbolizes the allure of Jerusalem: two Muslims waiting in front of Christianity’s holiest church in the capital of the Jewish State, trying to convert Christians and Jews to Islam. In the evening, at the appropriately named Abraham Hostel, I discover several identical copies of the Quran in the bookshelf as I place mine there.
The next morning at breakfast, Jessy from Tennessee wants to convert me to Christianity, claiming that chariots of Moses had been found in the Red Sea, which was proof of the parting of the sea. He apologizes to me and to God each time a “damn”, “bloody” or even “fuck” comes across his lips, which happens quite often. I don’t really mind, I am bothered much more by the Bible quotes.
After a few days in Jerusalem, all those religious nutters are becoming too much for me. I take my backpack and jump on the bus north, where I want to go hiking for a few days. From Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee. The hiking trail is called Jesus Trail. In Israel, it’s hard to escape religion altogether.
And if enough readers seriously request it, then I will finally write the article about the four days of hiking the Jesus Trail. Actually, that will probably be a series of four articles.
The Azores are also known as the Flower Islands, probably because belladonna lilies, bougainvillea, hydrangea, crane flowers, agapanthus, goldenrods and hibiscus are everywhere.
But the language is at least as flowery. Everywhere in the world, there are signs informing us that premises are “Closed due to the Corona virus”. But in Portugal, this would come across as rather rude. Here, citizens are informed in detail about the reasoning behind every decision, and in convoluted syntax which I had hitherto deemed exclusive to German:
Given the importance of preventive action to minimize the collective risks that are inherent to the spread of the outbreak of the disease COVID-19 in the region as well as the importance of the protection of the population, the Autonomous Government of the Azores has decided and hereby announces that the public shall, until March 31st, 2020, no longer be permitted to enter and enjoy this Recreational Forest Reserve.
The officials tasked with the security and information of the public wanted to write much more, but unfortunately, it had to fit on one page. When I read the announcements of the Azores Government in the newspapers, however, their verbose prose hasn’t changed much since the communiques issued by the court of João VI.
By the way: The vast majority of the forest which is not explicitly designated as a recreational reserve and equipped with barbecue areas is still freely accessible. Unless you life in a village that is especially hit by the virus and where special limitations are in place, you can still go for long cross-country walks here – and make some surprising discoveries:
Everyone coming to the island of Pico wants to climb Mount Pico. Of course. It’s the highest mountain on the island. The highest peak of the Azores, even. Oh, what am I saying, the highest point in all of Portugal!
However, I am more a hunter of pleasures than of records, and thus the mountain plays a subordinate role in my plans for Pico. I prefer to go for relaxing hikes, sit by the coast, discover the small towns and talk to people – and to invite you to join me on this journey. A journey which took place from the 11th to the 17th of March in the ominous year of 2020, when the Corona virus spread through Europe. Was I going to notice anything about it on the Azores?
1
I missed the first bus from the port in Madalena to São Roque. The second bus only goes late in the afternoon. So I have to try hitchhiking. The smaller the island, the easier it usually is. From west to east, Pico measures 46 km, putting it in the category of medium-sized islands. Getting around by thumb should work alright.
I have only been waiting by the roundabout for a minute. The second car stops. Two elderly gentlemen are going to São Roque and are happy for me to join them. They are both from there and they have been friends since childhood, they emphasize. The driver is telling me all of this with an American accent, so I cannot but ask him if he ever lived in North America.
“I actually live in California, in San Diego,” he explains, “but every year, I return to Pico for a few months.” The small Portuguese island in the Atlantic receives daily flights from New York, Boston and Toronto, that’s how many Azoreans have migrated there. “And last year, my friend visited me in California for a month,” he adds proudly.
We are speaking about this and that and stopping here and there. They show me some hiking paths leading to the sea, point out a bakery where I can get fresh bread in the morning, and stop at the supermarket so I can get some food. They also inform me that they definitely wouldn’t have stopped, had they known that I am a lawyer. (“I can’t believe that. You look like such an honest person!”)
São Roque is not a big town. I could easily walk to the youth hostel, wherever they drop me, but the two gentlemen insist on driving me to the former monastery.
“This is where all the government buildings used to be, remember?”, the driver asks his friend. And then he tells the story of walking into the grand old building when he was young to register for military service.
“I hope this doesn’t bring back any bad memories for you now,” I am trying to make a joke.
“Oh no, quite the contrary. It was a wonderful time. I was stationed in Africa for 27 months, but I can’t say one bad word about it.” If the Angolans or Mozambicans would say the same?
2
I am not planning to remain deployed here for quite so long, but converting the former monastery into a youth hostel was a good idea. It is situated on the edge of the small town and slightly above it, with a view over the sea. It’s a beautiful and tranquil place. Now, with the combination of off-season and limited travel, they don’t have much business. Not much is still euphemistic, to be honest. I am the only one walking through the cloister or sitting under the trees. People who can’t be alone and therefore seek out hostels while traveling would be on the brink of despair now. But I am clever enough never to travel without books.
Only the door to the church is locked, unfortunately. I will have to ask if somebody has the key. (If you can’t wait for that, you can jump ahead to chapter 28, but I hope that you will return.)
3
The next morning, at breakfast, I meet the only other guest, a young man from Germany, as we discover after speaking in English for about 10 minutes. He was supposed to attend a conference in Lisbon about standardization of charging stations for electrical cars, but it was cancelled due to the Corona virus. He made the best out of the situation and flew to the Azores.
Yesterday, he climbed Mount Pico, all 2351 meters (7713 feet), and he tells me about the strenuous, but not overly challenging climb. You have to register with the mountain rescue at the foot of the mountain, where you receive a GPS gadget which is being monitored. “Once, I veered off the path quite a bit because I lost track of the markers in the fog. Then the radio rings and someone puts you back on track.”
Total surveillance, even on the mountain. That’s not quite my idea of adventure. I’ll rather go out unsupervised and relaxed, walking along the coast, where I can’t get lost anyway.
4
The enemies of leisurely pace don’t walk up Mount Pico, by the way, but run to the top as part of some ultra marathon.
This event usually takes place in early summer and I did bring my running shoes. But, again due to the Corona virus, it has been postponed to late autumn. Too bad. Another summer with more chocolate than jogging.
5
A path on the north coast is hugging the cliffs as close as possible, at times merely a stumbling way of lava rock, then again well-developed like a road built by the Incas or the Romans.
The waves are crashing and smashing on the island as if in clamorous rage. It’s a surprise that there aren’t chunks of the island breaking off every day.
6
But the real disaster doesn’t come from the sea, it comes from above, from Pico. Again and again, usually when you need it least, it erupts and spews lava, stones and ash, on the remnants of which I am walking now. Some rocks still display signs of flowing or of being pushed slowly along the surface before the embers from the mouth of hell finally froze.
7
For centuries, Pico was a wine-growing island, the best of the world. Verdelho wine was exported to the royal palaces of Europe, and Tolstoy found it worthy of being product-placed in “War and Peace”. The walls, once erected from lava stones to protect the grapevines against the wind and to store the warmth, are still standing. Hundreds, thousands of them divide the landscape like a board of chess. Amazingly, they are still warm.
Now, the vineyards look rather fallow, but they have been compensated by being awarded UNESCO world heritage status. The internationally recognized consolation prize for destroyed industries. Well, at least something that Detroit can look forward to.
Some of the wine cellars are still standing, with bright red doors, as if being kept alive to serve as objects for photographers.
8
Someone must have ordered more buckets of that red color than necessary, because everywhere on Pico, doors, windows, fences and even ships are painted in the same color.
9
Back to the former settlements along the north coast, destroyed by the volcano. Sometimes, a small church, more of a chapel, marks the spot where once a village stood.
On the way back, I am walking through the vineyards cross-country, simply in the general direction which I assume to be right, and by accident I meet an ancient road. It looks as if the lava had flown and frozen in the exact way necessary to build it. And it looks as if it hasn’t been used for decades.
One could probably use an 18th century map and discover the best hiking paths, as well as deserted farmhouses and buried pirate treasures.
10
What happened that evening, I published as a separate story, because it was just too bizarre. If you have already read it, simply advance to chapter 11. If not, be prepared for quite something!
After an exhausting, but sunny day on Pico, the way back to the quarantine cloister leads past a bowling bar. In front of it, a scruffy and shady-looking man approaches me, all agitated, asking for 5 euros, so he can put some gas in his car. Then he would drive home, get the money and pay me back. I cannot detect much sense in this plan, even less for me than for him, and I can already hear two camps of readers screaming: “Don’t be that stupid!” and “Come on, it’s just 5 euros”, although the latter group may overestimate my financial condition.
And anyway, I only have a 10-euro bill.
The fuel fox would accept that too, no problem: “I will be back in five or ten minutes, for sure. You can also ask the folks in the bar, they all know me.” I rather ask myself why he doesn’t direct the loan request to his friends. But as I can already imagine the answer, I ask for his name, admittedly without checking its veracity.
The people in the bar look at me with pity, while I am sitting on a bench outside and reading about science in the age of colonialism, pretending not to be worried in the least.
Five minutes have passed.
How could he actually drive off with his car, when he had run out of gas?
Ten minutes have passed.
If he had enough gas to go to the petrol station, why didn’t he drive home and get the money first?
Fifteen minutes have passed.
Any anyway, there is an ATM just across the road from the bar.
Twenty minutes have passed.
I didn’t even think of memorizing the license plate number.
Twenty-five minutes have passed.
As I am just reading about Bronisław Malinowski and his field studies on Trobriand Island, I treat the self-inflicted situation as a scientific experiment about the honesty of the Picorians.
There is Immanuel in his dark-blue banger! He drives past me, taking the corner so that he hardly could have overlooked me, and speeds up the hillside.
Thirty minutes have passed.
Did he want to check if I am really naive enough to wait? If I had been gone, he probably would have joined his friends at the bar and they all would be laughing at my expense, both literally and figuratively.
But there he is again, racing down the mountain, shouting “oh, there you are,” as if he had been looking for me all over the island, and informs me: “You’ll get your money right away, don’t worry. I just need to go to the bank.”
So why is he cruising around instead? And didn’t he want to get the money from home?
I have had enough: “OK, then I will join you to the bank,“ and with that, I simply get into the car.
He didn’t expect that.
“That’s not a good idea,” he explains, “because quite honestly, my mother is the bank.” He seems to be my age, by the way, which would make the mother a bank working well into retirement age.
“No problem, then I will join you to your mother,” I reply, on purpose in a way as if I had time all evening.
“But she won’t like that at all.”
“Then you park the car around the corner and I will wait there for you.”
“I could take you up to the mountains. You have a fantastic view over the whole island from there.”
“No, thank you, let’s rather go to your mother.”
“I can also drive you to Madalena. I can drive you anywhere, for very little money. Much cheaper than a taxi. You can call me anytime and I will pick you up.”
“Thanks, but let’s go to your mother first.”
“My mother is very sick. I have been taking care of her for years,” he says with as much schmaltz as if he was in a soap opera.
“As long as she still got 10 euros,” I am thinking, but I don’t say it.
“Did you already have dinner?”
Oh, I shouldn’t have answered that in the negative.
“I will take you to the port, there is a good restaurant. All of my friends eat there.”
“No thanks,” I say, but he drives to the port. Luckily, the restaurant is closed. Immanuel drives like a madman, jumping the curbs, always with maximum acceleration. But he is the only driver I met on Pico who doesn’t insist on me wearing the seat belt. Maybe he is hoping for an accident and the early demise of his stubborn creditor.
“I will take you to the supermarket, it’s cheaper there anyway.”
“No thanks, I really don’t need anything.”
As if deaf, he still drives there. Luckily, the supermarket is closed too.
“If you always drive around so erratically, I am not surprised that you run out of gas.” This time, I don’t only think it, but I say it. I am beginning to get angry.
He drives to another bar, which I already know from walking past and where the most dubious characters hang out, drink and shout at passersby. “These are my friends,” he introduces three shady guys, all of whom look like prison and drugs. “Why don’t you stay with them for a few minutes and have a coffee? I will be right back.”
“It’s too late in the evening for a coffee, thanks.”
“A tea?”
“No, I would really much rather have the 10 euros.”
He realizes that he won’t be able to shake me off that easily. We walk to a building that looks like something municipal, but has seen better times. “This is where my mother lives. Oh shit, it’s closed!”
“What is this building?”, I inquire.
“The nursing home. But now I remember that my mother wanted to go to a party. That could take a while. It’s better if I drive you to the hostel and will bring the money later.”
Nice to hear that the mother has recovered.
“Just call your mother and ask her where she is.” São Roque is not big, she can’t have gone far.
“I forgot my phone at home.”
“No problem, you can use mine.” That way, I am also hoping to get hold of a number, in case I will have to use the services of the Polícia Judiciária after all.
“I don’t know her number.”
“You don’t know the number of your mother, for whom you care so lovingly because she is very sick, although she can go to parties?”
It’s the first time he doesn’t have an immediate response. At least for two seconds. Then, a pick-up truck with cropped shrubs in the bed is driving past.
“Hey, that’s my cousin.“ He calls after the driver who, to my surprise, does indeed stop.
The two men are talking through the open window. I have been speaking English with Immanuel, so he has no way of assuming that I understand some Portuguese.
The man in the truck seems to be a farmer or so. They both agree that Immanuel will work for him tomorrow and will receive an advance of 10 euros. The driver pulls out a 10-euro bill, as smooth as if it had just been ironed. Immanuel hands it to me ceremoniously, and when he hugs me for a goodbye, I make damn sure to keep one hand on my wallet.
11
Life on Pico takes place by the coast. But I also want to see what the interior of the island looks like. That’s not as easy, because nobody goes there, nobody lives there, steep mountains block the access, and clouds are hiding the path.
Nonetheless, I start walking and soon find a network of paths in the tropical forest. They are wild and full of moss, suggesting they haven’t been used in a long time. Probably since the automobile was introduced on the island and Picoreans prefer to drive once around the island instead of walking straight across it
The path is quite steep, and because I am engulfed by trees with arms like monsters, I have no way of knowing how far I have already ascended and how much lies before me. I am walking like this for about three hours, always uphill. If it is flat for a few meters, I have to wade through water. Anyway, as long as there are no pygmy whales in the pond, I will survive it.
I am beginning to doubt whether this hike was a good idea, but I am simply not the kind of person to turn around.
12
And then, when I finally reach the alpine plateau, I witness a fight between dampness draped in clouds and the joyful sun. The score changes by the minute.
Only the Lagoa do Capitão, the Captain’s Lagoon, doggedly remains shrouded in fog, not revealing his ship.
13
The descent takes just as long, but it’s easier, especially as the forest opens up to views of sea from time to time. And with my fast pace, I also seem to have gotten rid of the clouds.
One of my hiking rules is to always choose a different way for returning home, and thus I end up at Parque Florestal da Prainha, adorned with flowers and wonderful views. It’s a picnic spot, but there are no hamburgers on the grill, sadly. Only drinking water, which is welcome enough. As so often these days, I have the whole paradise to myself.
But I really don’t feel like walking back all the way to São Roque. I am lucky, already the third car stops. Two Brazilian ladies give me a ride, also insisting on taking me exactly to the youth hostel. They work at the restaurant Adega Açoriana in Prainha de Baixo and invite me to visit them one day. But on the flyer that they hand me, there are these crazy crabs that have already scared me in the days before.
14
Oh, I guess I should explain the issue with animals on the Azores:
I was excited to come to these islands because there are no snakes. Until I found out that there is something much worse. I see them scampering under rocks or into cracks in the wall, and once, when I left my backpack open, one of them even climbed inside. They are little snakes with four legs, black and super fast.
And when I sit on top of the cliff and a large wave sprays the Atlantic spume into the hair, sometimes crabs and clams land on my head. Eeeew.
If you collect enough of the shells, however, you can build a house. Not only figuratively, but literally:
15
The next morning, the sun wakes me up. It’s a picture-perfect day, and I can see Mount Pico beckoning through the window while showering. It would be a good day for a climb, if only I was ambitious or athletic.
At breakfast, again, I meet the only other guest. Today he is a guy from Hungary, planning to visit all islands of the archipelago in 12 days. He is under a strict schedule and has to run down to the port to get to the neighboring island of São Jorge.
I want to cross the island again, to Lajes in the south, but I am not going to walk again. At the roundabout in São Roque, the first car stops. It’s a young man working for the water works. He is on the way to one of the lagoons up on the plateau to inspect it or whatever one does with lagoons. Where he has to leave the road to get to his remote workplace, he drops me off: “Just follow this road, and you will get to Lajes!”
That doesn’t sound as if he believes there will be any other car passing by. Nor does it look like it. But it’s beautiful, green all around, the birds are singing and the sun is shining.
16
I have no other option but to start walking. A stone marker by the side of the road indicates 9 km, which I should be able to make in two hours. It’s just downhill from here. And if a car will come by, I am of course trying to utilize my experienced thumb.
A van passes by, it’s already full. But the next car, after maybe 15 minutes, stops. A young man and his father empty the back seats. We have quite a lot in common, it turns out. Pedro is a translator for Portuguese and English, albeit with more interesting work than my legal translations. He translates dialogues and subtitles for television.
As I am telling him that I am going to be house-sitting on Faial, he nods, not at all surprised: “Oh, I have done that too, in Europe, in Asia, in South America.” He too didn’t have his own apartment for years, staying with his father in Porto between travels, but never managing to stay there too long before the world called him. But now he has settled on Pico with his wife because they have a baby. As I always tell you: Once the baby pops up, life is over.
And now it’s the father visiting his son, for his first time in the Azores. That’s my experience too: When you live on an island, suddenly all the people who never contact you in years remember you and want to visit. I will have to investigate this widespread fascination with islands one day, because in reality, the Carpathians or the Caucasus are much more interesting.
17
Pedro tells me that Lajes used to be the most important and largest town on Pico. Because of whaling. It was in Lajes where the settlement of the island began in 1460. Now, it’s only third behind Madalena and São Roque, he laments.
We are talking about towns with a few thousand people, but which – as I have seen in so many countries – feel a hundred times more alive than similarly sized places in Germany or North America. São Roque for example has 1300 inhabitants, but a port, a museum, several parks with free WiFi, plenty of restaurants, taverns, bars, a soccer stadium, supermarkets, gas stations, bakeries, butcheries, a helicopter pad, banks, a library, a post office, a hospital, a shop for animal food, shops for painting equipment, for sewing equipment, for anything you need actually, a youth hostel, a radio station and both land and maritime police.
In Germany or the United States, a village of that size doesn’t even have a post office anymore.
18
And some towns have public swimming pools:
In former times, swimmers had to leave the water when the whalers came back into the nearby port and the beluga whale was being cut up, because the blood attracted the sharks.
19
Lajes really shows that its heyday is over.
The whaling port is almost grown over, although it remains the harbor with the greatest view on the whole island.
As you see, Mount Pico is engulfed in clouds once again. Good that I didn’t embark on that torturous tour.
20
The doors of the monastery Nossa Senhora da Conceição haven’t been opened in decades.
The factories, where the whales were once turned into oil and fat, are all closed.
The houses are decaying.
In the cemetery, half of the graves don’t even have a stone with a name. Probably anonymous sailors who were killed on whaling missions. Out of respect for the unchristened Queequegs, no crosses are put up either.
21
Even the smallest village on the island has a memorial with the names of the local soldiers who fought in Angola, Guinea, Mozambique and Timor. Each time I walk past one of those stones, I am reminded of the two friendly gentlemen from chapter 1.
And one of them, the Californian, is also symptomatic for a phenomenon through which the Azores have lost much more of their population than in tropical wars: migration. Nowadays, there are less than 14,000 people living on Pico. 200 years ago, there were almost twice as many.
Although the Azores have been part of Portugal (with an interruption of 60 years that I won’t get into for now, because readers already dread my digressions into history) since their discovery – and for once, the term discovery is justified, because nobody lived here before -, the emigrants often went to the USA and to Canada. There were always close ties with the United States, first because of American whalers and later due to US military presence during both World Wars. And migrating westward seemed to be more promising than going to the motherland. Each time a volcano erupted or an earthquake flattened a town, it caused a new wave of migration.
All over the island, empty houses have been left behind, missing their former owners who don’t even bother to send a postcard.
22
The whaling museum is closed, too. Since yesterday 2 pm, until further notice, says a notice on the door. Damn. One day too late.
I can’t tell if the harbor is so empty because of the situation or because it’s Saturday.
As the museum refuses to be of any help, I have to unpack the whaling compendium that I brought myself. Published in 1851, “Moby Dick” praised the Azorean whalers as tough guys whom the American ships liked to take on board when they stopped here. A great book, by the way!
I could let you in on a little secret. In that situation, many travel bloggers would simply collect information from the museum’s website and pretend that they visited it. Sometimes, I read blogs where the trained and traveled eye notices that the authors have never been to the place they write about.
On my blog, I won’t have any of this. This is no space for deception or deceit, nor for swindling or lying. Here, I look truth directly into the eye, as ice-cold as the harpooner looks into the eye of the killer whale before the metaphor dives into the depths of the Atlantic, reeling from its heavy wounds, never to be seen again.
But the church is still open. They must believe that they can pray the virus away. And if it doesn’t work, they will blame the Jews again.
Strolling through the town, I bump into Pedro and his father. As I said, these are small towns. They would be happy to take me to their village if I happen to travel in that direction. “It’s about 3 km east of here. But there is really nothing to see there.” Well, then I’ll rather explore the town which does also have some nice and colorful corners.
And at the Aromes e Sabores Bakery, they have the crispest and yummiest rolls with sausage that I have ever eaten.
24
For five minutes, I have been standing where the road forks off to São Roque, hitchhiking unsuccessfully, when the Hungarian from breakfast comes my way. The boat to Velas didn’t leave today because the ferry schedule has been reduced, so he had to spend another day on Pico. “I am sure they still have a bed at the youth hostel,” we make fun of the situation. He declines my invitation to hitchhike together. He wants to walk the 20 km across the high mountain plateau. Actually, as fit as he looks, it wouldn’t surprise me if he will walk a detour across the volcano.
Over the next half-hour, dozens of cars are driving past. None of them stops. What’s going on here? This is very untypical for Pico.
But, as so often in life, the longer you wait, the better the surprise: An old couple with a pick-up truck invites me to jump on in and make myself comfortable in the hay. It’s a windy and wonderful panoramic ride.
A true hitchhiking highlight!
25
Saturday evening, 5 pm, I am sitting in the park in front of the municipal administrative building. Both the park and the offices are empty of people, it’s a good spot to soak up the evening sun while reading a book. But then, cars with crests and sirens and people with uniforms and papers come racing from all directions. A crisis meeting. Probably the island will soon be shut off completely.
I regret not having gone to the whaling museum in São Roque earlier. Every day, it attracted my curiosity. Every day, I thought: “But it’s such beautiful weather, I’ll keep the museum for a rainy day.” Now it’s too late. Maybe there’s another lesson for life here.
In this case, I am really angry because this museum is in an old factory, where once grey whales, blue whales and pilot whales were dismembered and processed to oil, wax and fat. You can still see the original machines. The oil was then exported and mainly used in the production of soap and margarine. All of this sounds like ancient times, but the last whales were killed off the Azores in 1987.
In case the Corona virus will bring all international trade to a standstill and there will be no more supply ships coming to the Azores, it actually gives me some peace of mind to know that there are still men among us who know how to catch humpback, dwarf or sperm whales. My own contribution to our survival will be rather limited. As a lawyer, I could only try to interpret the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling from 1946 to present some appearance of legality. Will I be able to earn a narwhal steak that way?
26
In a way, Pico still lives off the whales. But now it’s tourists who are being shipped out to the bottlenose whales, baleen whales and beaked whales to observe and photograph them.
Because of the virus, all the whales can finally take a break from that circus. I am left to keep my eyes open and stare out into the sea, hoping that a fountain in the sea will reveal the position of a right whale at the right moment.
27
I wonder if it makes sense to close the museums where, especially at this time of year, there might be four or five visitors a day, while the bars and taverns remain open. Even more so as people tend to hug and kiss far less in museums than in alehouses.
The next day, even the city park, where I had always been the only person to sit on a bench and to read, is closed. The park in front of the municipal building is not closed because it’s not an official park, but just benches under trees. Some of this looks like taking action for the sake of taking action.
And when someone is indeed knocked out by Covid-19, half the town is gathering to debate the deceased’s life and to share some cigarettes.
28
Ten minutes before 7 pm, the lady from the youth hostel knocks on my door. Luckily, I am neither in my pyjamas nor down at the bar in the harbor, instead studying about the scientific aspects of Napoleon’s crusade to Egypt. “You had asked to see the church, haven’t you?”
That’s true. She must be thinking that I am a Christian, when in reality I merely have a cultural interest in the church of the monastery where I am spending a week and where I might well be spending a few months if the ferry service will be suspended.
“A few people have just arrived, so there seems to be a mass.” Hurriedly, I gather the camera, the notebook and a pen and run downstairs.
I take a seat in the last row, so I can imitate the standing, kneeling and crucifixion of the others. It doesn’t help, I still stand out because I am the only person not old enough to have fought in the colonial wars. And anyway, I am sure everybody knows everyone else.
Only ten old people show up. The church has been built as overdimensioned as the youth hostel. I wonder if the monastery was full at its time. Two women arrive late and the wooden floor is creaking so loud that the mice underneath hurry outside, directly into the trap waiting for them in front of the church. God isn’t too picky when it comes to the constant supply of yet more souls for his purgatory.
The sanctuary is adorned with gold, its splendor a stark contrast to the simple Franciscan monastery. Two chandeliers are hanging low from the wooden ceiling, which looks relatively new. Maybe the old one crashed in due to earthquake or neglect. The walls are covered with tiles instead of frescoes. Sadly no tiled stove, though. It is so cold that I will probably catch a cold instead of the Corona virus.
The priest in a purple gown and his assistant in a white monk’s habit reel off the standard Catholic program. Something about sheep and snakes and the sea (Micah 7:14-20). Father Mapple’s sermons are better.
A woman with a small fabric bag affixed to a long fishing rod is walking through the pews. I don’t want to be the only one not to participate in financing the show. At least I can get rid of all the small change. Money is a powerful transmitter of viruses, by the way.
To spread yet more viruses among the populace, the priest distributes wafers from his unwashed hands, coughing in between. I am the only one who remains seated and refuses to get poisoned, for which I receive poisonous looks from the Christians. The verbose mumbling actually did make me hungry. For a slice of pizza, I would let down my guard, but not for a cheap and tasteless biscuit.
Only at the very end, the priest finally mentions the epidemic. The assistant hands out instructions for the second, third, fourth and fifth fasting week, from which I deduct that they are not planning any further services until Easter. The Portuguese word for Lent, quaresma, already sounds a bit like quarantine, and I wish more people had the idea to forego work, football, church and – I say this with all due self-criticism – traveling. Regarding the latter, you are lucky because you can simply refer to this blog while you are at home, safe and cozy.
29
The lady from the youth hostel tells me that the monastery São Pedro de Alcântara dates from the 17th century. But already in the 18th century, the monks disappeared from one day to the next.
Some suspect a pirate attack. But then why is the golden altar still here?
Maybe they emigrated to North America, like so many Azoreans.
Or they were all killed by a virus. A bad omen.
The mystery keeps me awake and thus, at night when once again I am the only guest in the historical building, I sneak into the library through a labyrinth of secret staircases and towers. But the most recent chronicles I can discover in the light of the full moon are from 1717 and reveal nothing about the fate of the monks. Maybe they had a feeling that Enlightenment was on the horizon and they self-secularized in time.
30
On Sunday, I want to go east, to the lookout point at Terr’alta. Hitchhiking doesn’t go very well. The streets are like dead today. Finally, a very old and wrinkled woman wearing wellies comes to my rescue. Twice, she stops on the way, indicating that I should stay in the car, leaving the key in the ignition, and she carries a bucket with crabs or so into a house by the road. So that’s her tough job.
She shouldn’t really be driving at all. She keeps the same speed, whether on the open road or going through villages. In the bends, she doesn’t slow down, but complains about the road. Instead of guardrails, there are hedgerows of hydrangea separating the road from a steep cliff, descending straight into the ocean.
We cannot really communicate very well, I just keep repeating where I want to go and thanking her profusely. In a village on the road, she stops to show me where she lives, but then she continues. “For you, otherwise you will arrive too late.” Too late for what, I don’t know, because I just wanted to look over the sea.
Thus, the poor seafood huntress drives me for half an hour and I realize that the way back will be hard. At least on Sundays, there is hardly any traffic in the eastern part of the island.
31
As we come to a halt in Piedade, I notice that we went too far. She took me as far east as possible, and now she has to return home for another half-hour. “A good journey!”, she wishes me cordially. I just hope she won’t drive off the cliff on the way back.
Piedade seems to be haunted by tourism much less than the rest of the island. In the bar, the guys are more rustic. I order a Coca Cola, and the innkeeper has to rummage all the way to the deep end of the cupboard to find something so sissy-soft between all the beer and rum and whiskey. The men who once sought their luck hunting whales are now buying one lottery ticket after the other.
Rumor on the island has it that in the forests around Piedade, the best marijuana on the Azores is being grown. I remember an episode from Bolivia, where I, by complete accident, once hiked for a full and long day through the mountains where the cocaine producers worked, always wondering why the people were so different than in the rest of the country, more mistrustful and hostile somehow. But that has nothing to do with Pico, sorry. I don’t think the marijuana mafia is quite as terrifying.
32
Because the helpful lady overshot the mark, I now have to walk back. Calhau and Baixa and Ribeirinha are the names of the villages that I come through. Again, each of them has the memorial for the local soldiers, and each time, just opposite from it, there is a recruitment poster for the Portuguese Air Force (“Become part of this family”) in the window of the municipal building. In between, there are fields, cows, horses and great views.
And there is quite a long and tiring way to Terr’alta, where, according to the guidebook should be a particularly beautiful view across the sea. Why I am making the effort, I don’t really know, because I can see the water quite well from anywhere else on the island too.
But I have to concede that there is really a particularly steep drop at the viewpoint. 415 meters down to the sea. Only now do I realize how good it was that I didn’t slip while climbing up here through the forest.
Unfortunately, it has begun to rain, so I can’t stay and enjoy the view. No dramatic rain, but definitely not the kind of weather to walk back 25 km to São Roque. So, once again, I use the tired thumb. The road leads exactly to where I need to go, after all.
33
As I had guessed, it’s not easy.
And who ultimately takes pity on me? Two Germans. “We already thought you might be German, because who else stands by the side of the road in the rain?”, they say in jest. Apparently, we are known for not sparing money for rental cars or taxis.
The driver lives in Piedade, long enough to play in the local football team. The girl was visiting for a few days. She was doing workaway, which is something similar to house sitting, but is now terminating her stay on Pico because there is a Corona case in her family in Germany. I personally don’t quite understand why one would want to fly to Corona and the family, when one could be as far away as possible from both. I much rather stay in the middle of the Atlantic.
34
The next morning, I am happy when I spot the freighter in the harbor. The esteemed readers may be concerned about sub- and railway trains. But freight shipping is much more important that the trip to work or traveling for pleasure.
I want to go to Madalena, the island’s capital, and it’s palpable how much harder it is getting every day to get picked up. As an obvious foreigner, I am associated with the virus much more than someone looking like a local.
Finally, a truck driver allows me to come aboard. He has just picked up supplies from the port, keeping the island running and alive. I ask him what kind of merchandise he is transporting, hoping for cigars or newspapers. “Oh, everything: beer, tiles, batteries, toilet paper.” If he holds on to the latter, he can soon sell it for twice the regular price.
35
In Madalena, most of the shops are closed. There are long lines in front of pharmacies and cash machines. A barber has the “closed” sign in the door, but inside, he is cutting a customer’s hair.
Only the health-food shop has its gates wide open, profiteering from the pandemic panic, selling some “vitamins” and “natural immune boosters” at horrendous prices.
36
If I want vitamins, I prefer to go to the whaling factory at the port of São Roque. Because apparently, the little health gizmos are also squeezed out of the massive marine mammals.
I actually go there every day, picking up a large portion, because a healthy diet is really important during the Corona crisis. And in accordance with a recommendation by Herman Melville, I also use “tobacco smoke as a sort of disinfecting agent against all mortal tribulations”.
37
The largest hotel in Madalena looks closed, too.
I have already written a separate article about this, detailing the effects on tourism and expressing some of my thoughts and modest hopes. Objectively and neutrally as always, I recommend you to peruse it. But if you have a subscription to this blog, you have already received it a long time ago. During the Corona crisis, I am offering this subscription for free, by the way, so that nobody caught in the quagmire of quarantine has to survive without entertainment and information. Of course I am still very thankful, more so than ever, about your appreciative support.
38
The post office only allows one customer at a time, locking the door after I have entered. One meter from the counter, there is a line taped on the floor. As I approach, the official screams at me: “Stay behind the line!” But then, his more relaxed colleague hands me the change directly into my hand.
The tuna-fishing fleet is still being repaired or painted. In red, of course, the color of which there is still enough left for a few years, although it has been used extensively island-wide, as shown in chapter 8.
The ships will only go out in May, if at all. In 2008, the central Atlantic was declared a marine reserve, and EU regulation 2016/2336 bans bottom trawling. The hunt pays off less and less. Especially with ever-present alternatives of emigrating or going to war (see chapter 21).
40
The houses in Madalena are not as colorful as the ones in Lajes, but for that, dozens of them sport artistic murals. If the tourism information was open, they would have a city map with information about the paintings.
You must not underestimate these towns, just because they are small. There are a lot of cultural projects and arts festivals every year, most famously the Fringe Festival.
The two islands are only 6 km apart, but the relationship doesn’t seem to be overly harmonious. Whenever I have a longer conversation with people from Pico, I mention of course that I am going to spend the next three months on the neighboring island of Faial. I have never received any reaction of excitement, rather a mumble or icy silence. When I ask them if they have been to Faial, many say “no”, although the ferry only takes 30 minutes and costs only 3.60 € (even less for Azoreans, I believe).
People seem to prefer to keep to their own island. Or maybe the dialects on the islands are so different that it makes communication hard. Friends from Lisbon told me that Azoreans receive subtitles when they appear on Portuguese television, which is probably one of the jobs performed by Pedro, whom you met in chapter 16.
Maybe Pico is angry that the district capital is in Horta, on another island, and that one has to take the ferry to Faial if one wants to petition parliament or go to university. Until 1982, Pico didn’t even have its own airport. (Today, each of the Azores islands has one, even the teeny-tiny ones like Corvo with 430 inhabitants.)
42
And then – can you already spot it in the distance? -, I have found the most famous bar on the island, Cella Bar, designed like a wine barrel. Or like a boat. Or a whale. Either way, very hip and cool.
But closed.
43
In the afternoon, trying to hitchhike back to São Roque, I can tell the difference caused by the Corona virus. At exactly the same spot, one week ago, the second car stopped. Now, hundreds are driving past me.
It takes a depressing half-hour for one van to stop, ironically full to the brim with face masks, plastic gloves, cleaning material and disinfectants.
“Where are you from?”
“From Germany,” I reply, being too honest to make something up.
“Ok, then. I was worried you might be from Italy.”
Nuno is a supervisor for a cleaning company and is really busy at the moment. His mobile phone keeps ringing with new jobs or with requests for masks or sprays. “And it’s already hard in normal times to find enough personnel for cleaning, because everyone wants to work in an office. Now, it’s impossible.”
He explains that the islands are well isolated, so that the risk of contagion is lower than on the mainland. But if the virus were to reach the islands, then the effects would be more serious because the health system would be completely overwhelmed. Portugal has the lowest number of intensive-care beds per capita in all of Europe.
In the end, the friendly disinfectant specialist heartily shakes my hand.
44
Sometimes, the clouds around Pico look as if the mountain is boiling and about to erupt.
And it would be about time. The last large eruption on the Azores was in 1957, on Faial. Maybe another reason for envy and jealousy between the islands? But nobody needs to worry, the two Picos, the mountain and the island, are both so young in geological terms that they will still erupt and earthquake many times.
By now, the ascent to the summit has been banned as well. I really can’t imagine how anyone would catch the virus up there.
45
The next morning, there is an armed police officer in front of the pharmacy.
In a tavern, I am ogled with suspicion, but I still get a sandwich. People are watching the news on TV. A Dutch tourist brought the Corona virus to Madeira, another Portuguese island in the Atlantic. Under the glances being thrown at me now, I feel like a kaffir wearing a kippah in a Ku-Klux-Klan coffee bar in Kentucky.
“Where are you from?”, one of the men at the bar asks.
“Germany.”
In their minds, they are going through the news of the past days and a map of Europe, I can read that from their eyes.
“Not a good time for tourism,” the same man says, and it sounds like an encouragement to move my ass. To prevent being lynched, I should play the tough guy now and say something like: “I just came on the boat from Newfoundland. Any work here for a harpooner?” But I just stare at the television set, as if I am shocked about the recklessness of tourists myself.
When she comes around to collect the money, I notice that the waitress has put on blue plastic gloves.
46
When I hand in the key at the youth hostel one last time, the two ladies lock the heavy gate and set the building on fire.
47
From the last ferry, I take a last long look at Pico, where I felt better than the locals felt with me. But once this virus story is over, I would be happy to visit again. And maybe I’ll even make it to the summit of Mount Pico then.
Practical advice:
The youth hostel in the former monastery is really great, and I am sure it will be rebuilt after decontamination (see chapter 45). You can book either directly or through Booking.com. There, you receive a discount of 15 € if you register using this link.
Azores Trails has plenty of ideas for hiking routes.
The ferry connections can be found at Atlânticoline.
You don’t really need a car, as you have noticed. In normal times, hitchhiking works really well all around the island.
The most comprehensive guidebook for the Azores is probably the Bradt guide.
If you are interested to read someone else’s impressions of Pico, I can recommend this beautiful blog.
Sometimes, I am accused of writing so much that you don’t need to travel yourself after reading my report. Well, you should be happy about that! Planes crash, ships sink, volcanoes explode, it’s very dangerous out there. And with the millions that you save, you could even donate a little bit to support this blog, so that I can continue to bring the world into your living room.
And I have been working on it. I still am, feverishly even, to use a timely word.
But I wrote the German version first, and now I’ll have to translate more than 6000 words into English for my esteemed international readers. Yeah, it’s going to be one of those long articles that you dread, sorry.
This will take a few more days. But to shorten the wait and especially for my readers working in the medical profession, who all wish they were on a remote island right now, I am going to give you a preview of Pico, using some photos that didn’t make it into the final story.
Now that you have seen so much already, I wonder if anyone will even bother about the article once it comes out.
Links:
There are actually more photos on my blog, in case you have just discovered that you are not always expected to read a short novel here.
To pass the waiting time, I have introduced an innovative random generator for this blog. Check it out!
Und wie immer gibt es diesen Artikel auch auf Deutsch.
One of my more popular posts is the one on how to become a millionaire. It has helped hundreds of readers to fulfill their dream!
But what now, in times of the Corona crisis? When we can’t go to work, can’t leave the house, and, worst of all for capitalists, you can’t even go to the bank any longer?
So, I have been thinking hard. After some sleepless nights, devising and discarding plans, I think I have adapted my original strategy to a new fool-proof quarantine-possible strategy for becoming a millionaire.
It’s a 4-step plan:
You need an initial investment of 15 US-dollars. You will find that in some drawer. If not, ask your mom or your government for a bailout.
You go on eBay and look for Zimbabwe dollars. That’s the official currency of Zimbabwe. If you are in doubt, you will see that the Zimbabwean Central Bank is one of the sellers.
For your 15 US-dollars, you can order at least 500 million Zimbabwean dollars. Including shipping. (Because you can’t pick it up in person during the quarantine.)
Now you are happy because you are a millionaire.
In step 5, you will realize what a silly, shallow and pointless goal you had set yourself. Depending on your personal level of wisdom, the time between step 4 and step 5 may vary from 30 seconds to 30 years. The same applies to the time that is required to recognize the deeper meaning behind this article. Some will die without getting it.
Lisbon, in the garden of Palácio Fronteira, on a late afternoon.
Under a canopy of wisteria, there is a girl reading a book. It is both a beautiful and a soothing sight. How nice that people find leisure to escape the hectic and stress of everyday life. How wise of them to rate solitary reading more highly than superficial socializing. Oh, if only more people realized that a book raises one’s attractiveness far more than expensive cell phones or shoes ever could.
Furtively, I take a photo.
I don’t want to disturb her, but the lady has inspired me, and the flowery roof hides the only bench in the whole park. Thinking of myself as quite considerate, I sit down at the very other end of the bench, taking out a book as well and reading the romantic ending of Remarque’s “The Night in Lisbon”.
We exchange not a word.
We exchange not a glance.
Although I am curious to know what she is reading.
Just once, I can hear her mobile-phone camera clicking. She probably took a photo of me, furtively as well, for otherwise nobody would believe her that there are more public bookworms. I pretend not to have noticed it and keep reading unmoved.
Thus, we spend half an hour in the sinking sun, not too strong after having blown most of its energy earlier that day, but still providing sufficient warmth. We soak up every ray and every page. Until the lady who owns the castle comes by and proclaims the imminent closure of the park as it’s shortly before 5 pm.
The girl walks through the labyrinth of hedgerows in front of me, turning around curiously just once as she steps through the grand gate onto the street. Again, I pretend not to notice it. Then she walks off into one, and me into the other direction.
Rarely do a man and a woman part so happily and fulfilled. Maybe all our encounters should be like this. Then we wouldn’t have a problem with overpopulation, either.
The Happy Hermit 