Position: 50°59’05.4″N 11°19’10.3″E

We are in pursuit of Chamonix! I use the term pursuit lightly. Chamonix has not in fact moved. It is right where it was 1,000 years ago. However, after a lot of driving in the past week we are 2,400 kilometres closer to Chamonix, for it is there that Emma and Jarno’s wedding celebration will take place on July 6th.

But, let’s wind the clock back two weeks and take things in order. We arrived in Gothenburg midday on Friday June 14, just in time for the weekend to start. That gave us a couple of days to sample the city’s sights and various means of public transport, including pedal bikes and electric scooters. The bikes are standard communal rental fare. Big, clunky, with somewhat serviceable brakes and gears. The scooters have a host of learning opportunities all their own, but require only quick thumbs to move them: no beefy quadriceps necessary.

Botany

Saturday morning we hired bikes and rode down to the botanical gardens. Even in the gloomly drizzle, the gardens turned out prettier and more interesting than either of us expected. Laid out among rocky crags, sections are globally themed, with Asia taking a dominant role. The rhododendrons were past their flowering prime, but wildflowers and stands of bamboo made up for them.

Feeling lazy after our exploration, we hired a couple of scooters; Carol’s new favourite form of transportation. It took me a few minutes of nervous kangarooing for my thumb to smooth out the overly sensitive throttle. These were not, I was assured, like the ones Carol and Ginger had hired in Oslo. We rode up to the Haga, a restored district of old Gothenburg. There were a few interesting eateries and shops, but the area was fairly lifeless for mid-afternoon on a Saturday. Later, after a turn through the nicely presented Gothenburg City Museum, we scootered home.

Side note: All public transport in the Gothenburg area is cashless and managed by apps on your phone. Of course, nothing is integrated. Each mode has multiple companies, each with its own app and payment system. It’s a bit like watching television these days. More choices and more administrative burden on the user. The term ‘balkanized services’ comes to mind. Other than walk, I don’t know what you do if you don’t have a smartphone.

Hybrid

Carol booked a car through Hertz for pickup on Tuesday evening. Our plan was to leave early Wednesday. Given the distances and time involved, we upgraded from a Yaris, a tiny, under-powered Toyota, to a more comfortable Volvo XC40 mini-hybrid. (I don’t know what a mini-hybrid is other than a car with two motors that is constantly confused about which one to use.) That done, the immediate challenge was finding the damn thing. Hertz in Gothenburg collaborates with a local car dealer network that goes by the dubious name of Bilia.

Hopping on rental bikes we headed off towards the south side of the city. Naturally, it was the wrong location. The one we wanted was another five miles away. No problem. We each swung a leg over our bikes and slowly coaxed the 25kg monsters up a long hill until we arrived at the Bilia Volvo Hertz office. Sweaty, and a little bilious, we abandoned the bikes (just outside their service area, incurring a $20 fine for the convenience) and went in. Having paid all the surcharges, border crossing fee, second driver fee, Volvo hybrid smugness fee, we were on our way.

Wednesday morning bright and early we left Aleta moored to a rickety dock near our rigger’s workshop and headed south. Our timing was good. The lunacy of Midsommer Festival was about to take Sweden into its grip. An event, I learned, that is celebrated with gusto and copious quantities of pickled herring and aquavit. (A volatile combination in the wrong hands, surely – ed.)

Not Berlin

One of the joys of travel in Europe is that mass transportation is an option that functions and functions well on many levels. Our first stop was to be Berlin. The shortest route was due south to Trelleborg and onto a ferry bound for Rostock, Germany. The crossing takes about six hours, and costs about $120. It cuts out a 10-hour, thousand-kilometre drive that would end up in roughly the same place. In other words, the ferry was no more expensive than driving, saved time, and was much less tiring. Under clear skies, strong winds ripped across the Baltic lofting a salty mist that left a thin rime on the car. A day later it washed off during a thunderstorm. Thanks Nature.

Stopping overnight in Rostock, we woke bright and early and judged Berlin too much of a hassle for a 24-hour visit with a car. The entire city centre is a low emission zone with a complex process for gaining access. That kind of administrative burden deserves a minimum 48-hour visit. Instead, we sped past and headed to two must-see sites on my list, Wittenberg and Dessau.

Wittenberg

Standing at the door of Wittenberg’s All Saint’s Church where Martin Luther kicked off the Reformation in 1517 by nailing 95 theses to it is a little mind-boggling. Nestled in this sleepy town still shaking off 50 post-war years of Soviet/East German neglect, the Schlosskirche, despite the long odds against it, stands tall. This turning point in European history was something I first learned about in 7th grade, and later revisited in high school. It was a moment where the right person came along at the right time and in the right place and a revolution was ignited.

Like many revolutions, the spark was seemingly small. In this case, a reinterpretation of existing dogma. One that led to questioning the orthodoxy of the Holy Roman Church (with its attendant corruption). It helped that Doc Martin had the nouce and presence to effectively convince his sponsors of Rome’s self-serving logical failings. And that moving away from the Church was in their interest. A Diet of Worms, excommunication, revolting peasants, marriage, and a new church soon followed. From there, Lutheranism spread like dandelion seeds on the wind and brought Carol’s relatives to the United States.

How Now Dessau?

A little further up the road we visited another revolutionary flashpoint. Dessau is the site of the Bauhaus School of Design’s former campus. Established in Weimar, the Bauhaus School was, and remains, the 20th century’s most influential centre for representative art. Its founders rewrote the rules for artistic expression by (initially) creating architectural spaces that fuelled Montessori-like, self-directed collaborations. Throw in a few hundred of the most talented and artistically competitive men and women and cool things started happening.

Just as this creative cauldron was reaching its boiling point, the heavy jackboots of the neo-classical Nazis came down and crushed the life out of the place in 1933. The best and brightest scattered. Many to America where their genius was embraced and given succour. Names like Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and László Moholy-Nagy floated around my house while I was growing up. Chicago, that eternal petri dish of creativity, was a fan of these intellectuals and embraced them for the teachers and leaders they were. Today the radical modernism of Bauhaus design is integral to our daily routines. From IKEA furniture to arresting graphic and industrial design, so much awesomeness disseminated from the Bauhaus that its hard to believe the school is over 100 years old.

Halle Pass

Our day ended with dinner near our Airbnb in Halle, a city just north of Leipzig. Thirty-four years and billions of euros invested after the fall of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, the east maintains its own energy and vibe. It is grittier, greyer, and noisier than the former West Germany. The DDR’s central planners and their politics drained every ounce of independence out of its citizens for two generations. Now, nearly two generations on, this part of Germany still suffers economically from the brain-drain that occurred after reunification. Hard right-wing politicians have found a ready toehold in the poorer parts of the region and scapegoating immigrants is standard fare. As the populist threat rises, Berlin wrings its hands.

Our walk from our penthouse suite to Halle’s baroque city centre took us past a brothel and bar and under the main railway tracks. Outside the centre everything was concrete tower blocks with no redeeming qualities. Purely functional. The only highlight was the delightfully weird wasserturm (watertower) just north of the railway bridge that was built around 1910.

Crossing the ring road and walking into the city’s commercial heart we were presented with an uncomfortable mix of 1960s communist architecture set alongside imposing, presumably restored, 18th century buildings adorned with ornate terra cotta flourishes and graffiti. Nothing was as pin-neat and tidy as we found in busier Regensburg two days later.

Weimar

Before crossing the invisible border back into the old West, we stopped in Weimar. Perhaps one of Germany’s most historically important cities, Weimar was a crucible of the enlightenment with luminaries like Goethe, Schiller, and Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt in attendance. Close ties between Weimar and Jena’s university gave rise to the anti-enlightenment German Romanticist movement. After the end of the First World War, Weimar became Germany’s first constitutional federal capital – Berlin being judged too dangerous. A year later in 1919 the Bauhaus School was established in Weimar, before moving to Dessau in 1925. It is also, cynically, the location of one of Nazi Germany’s first concentration camps, Buchenwald.

So rich is Weimar’s history, you could spend a week exploring ancient libraries, admiring Goethe’s gingko trees, and listening to organ music in the local churches. Walking the lush forests surrounding the city in the footsteps of some of history’s greatest philosophers so close to abject cruelty is to fully experience humanity’s essential dichotomy.

Regensburg

Carol wanted to see everything on this trip. I explained there wasn’t time for that and asked her to prioritize. Salzburg, she replied. I want to see Salzburg. Easy enough, but we’ll stop in at Regensburg on the way, I said.

Back in the bosom of Bavaria, alles in beste ordnung war (everything was in perfect order). Regensburg is an ancient city situated at the nexus of the Danube, Regen, and Naab rivers. Its location established it as a strategic trading port in the Middle Ages. Money flowed in and the scale of the buildings reflect its wealth. A 12th century stone bridge opened a path across the Danube for crusaders heading to the Holy Lands. More money and cultural riches flowed in. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage site and crammed with tourists. The loudest of which are the Americans, both in voice and clothing (think neon spandex). Go figure.

Clover

Our last stop before crossing the border into Australia (Carol: sic) was in the foothills of the Berchtesgadener Alpen. These rugged, high mountains on the German side surrounding Berchtesgaden are not part of the Bavarian Alps. They are their own thing. The foothills are all Sound of Music with rolling green pastures and forests. Here the air is fresh and redolent with the fragrances of cows. Untilled swaths edging the fields are full of buttercups, clover and bees.

Outside the door of our Gasthof we turned left for a three mile walk through a nearby ‘wild’ preserve. A month of heavy rains had left everything damp and humid under the canopy of trees. The mosquitoes were lively. But who needs DEET when you’re walking with Carol? No one. She is so good at attracting the little bloodsuckers, I always come out of the woods unscathed. After a hearty dinner in the hotel’s restaurant, we retired. The sounds of a genuine oompah band playing at a small festival along the river a few kilometres away drifted softly in. By midnight all was quiet except for the burble of the river and the occasional squeak of a bat in search of prey.

To be continued…


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