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DOUBLE DEUTSCH1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Itinerary | Home
The hills weren’t sun-dappled but were covered by a light drizzle – and they were definitely hills. In German, Berg means mountain and a Burg is a castle, and when you’re cycling, it helps to know the difference. Erik breezed casually ahead. I was too far back to tell if he was quoting Goethe (perhaps “over all the mountaintops is peace”), but if this were the Tour de France, I’d be losing points for holding up traffic. I was exemplifying the B&R motto: “Slow down and see the world.” Good advice when cycling through beautiful countryside, rain or no rain. The paths were so far from any main road that, except for our pneumatic tires, we could easily have been in the 19th century. Even the villages we passed through – barns on the main streets, villagers out sweeping the sidewalks, modest public fountains with water gurgling from the mouths of cement frogs – looked like a set from The Sound of Music. Before leaving home, I’d done some research. “You know,” I began breathlessly when I caught up to Erik at the top of a hill. He’d stopped to look at a roadside marker with a cross at the top and a painting of Christ being carried on the back of St. Christopher. Black-and-white cattle stared placidly at us. A distinctly modern wind generator turned slowly in the distance. “I’m not really your stepfather.” “What?” he said, startled. “In Old English, steop meant orphan. A stepfather was a man who married a widow and, therefore, became the father of an orphan. You’re not an orphan, so I’m not your stepfather.” “What are you, then?” he asked. I hadn’t thought it through that far. On a hill across the valley, we could see the stone castle that had once belonged to Götz von Berlichingen, the 16th-century knight who, having lost a hand in battle, had it replaced with a mechanical one made of iron. He’d literally ruled his domain with an iron fist. Goethe had written a play about him. I hadn’t been that kind of stepfather. Stepmothers don’t fare so well in folk tales – Cinderella’s wicked stepmother is a case in point – but stepfathers don’t come off well in literature either; think of Claudius, who kills Hamlet’s father and marries his mother. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve always thought of myself more as a wise counsellor.” Erik laughed, took out his sketchbook and pencils and began sketching the valley. Dinner that night was at our hotel, a converted 14th-century sheep farm that still made its own schnapps in 13 different flavours. We sampled all of them. “This afternoon,” Erik was telling our guide, Meike Hannig, “we stopped in one of the villages and thought we’d find a pub and have a beer. So I asked someone on the street if there was a Kneipe nearby. The guy looked offended.” “A Kneipe isn’t a pub,” said Meike. “It’s a sleazy kind of bar. You should have asked for a Gasthaus.” “Oh,” said Erik, looking at me sheepishly. I guessed that Kneipe was one of the words he’d picked up in Berlin. |
