Four days in Germany · 2008-08-28
A salutary moment has arrived in the world of train travel. There is a second way of getting from France to Germany. The land of Goethe, Schiller and Hitler is now only 3 hours and 1 minute from the Gare de l’Est. Or at least, Karlsruhe is. Karlsruhe is famous for little except the layout of its streets, which fan out geometrically from the 18th-century palace of the local prince, Karl Wilhelm. This feature turns out to be more striking on a map than on the ground, but since I’m here I take an hour to wander around the Schloss and then another to absorb the explanations of it all in the Stadtmuseum.
I spend the first of four nights in German Jugendherberge, the Volkswagens of hostelling. In my room are Christian, 21, who has almost finished cycling from Wuppertal to Lake Constance and back (1500 km), and Oscar, a Venezuelan student about to spend a year at a local business school. Oscar has the hairstyle and temperament of an Argentinian footballer. We dine at what appears to be the only lively restaurant in town, and I try to console him about his chances of having macho fun in Karlsruhe. Afterwards we play pool at a local bar, with the 4 other people in Baden-Württemberg still up at 11pm.
I catch the 8.27 tram from the town square, direction Baden Baden. The tram stops in front of Karlruhe’s station, and then does a funny thing: it slips through a gate and metamorphoses into a train. A minute later we’re bowling across fields at 100 km/h.
Baden Baden, the original German spa town, is a strange place: hilly, woody, picturesque, silent. Too silent. I wander into the entrance hall of the Friedrichsbad and gaze at the photos of sumptuously decorated baths and assorted steamy facilities. I suspect that the customers within might turn out to be somewhat less young and suntanned than in the pictures. After an hour or two I discover where Baden’s youth are: on the platform waiting for the train to Karlsruhe.
I go one better, and take the InterCity to Munich. The capital of Bavaria is buzzing and visibly rich, but underwhelming to behold. I climb a church steeple for a view, but nothing much stands out except other church steeples. Worse, I quickly notice that at least one cliché of the Germans turns out to be true after all: the pedestrians won’t cross empty streets until the light goes green! As someone who doesn’t even use pedestrian crossings, I know I could never live in this town.
Home for the night was the local YMCA. I got myself cleaned and had a good meal, and would have hung out with all the boys, except there weren’t any around. On the other hand there was a Bible in every room and orange juice for breakfast.
For yet more wholesome refreshment I head to Munich’s Olympia Park — a surprisingly attractive Teletubbyland of rabbit-infested hills — and then to the Englischgarten for a spot of botany. Unfortunately the famous nude sunbathers are nowhere to be seen, so I must content myself with the park’s other natural beauties: a seemingly endless patchwork of meadows and woody glades, all bisected by a gorgeous trickling stream.
After a quick look at Maximilienstrasse, supposedly Munich’s Champs-Elysées (but more Dark Valley than Belle Epoque), I take a train to Germany’s real sinister heart. That’s unfair, of course. Nuremberg is the country’s venerable cultural capital, host to the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. But I confess that as a Brit my interest doesn’t stretch much further than the Luitpoldhain, the macabre suburban themepark of Nazism, the scene of goose-stepping rallies and of the propaganda masterpiece Triumph of the Will. On the menu is the arena used for rallies; a 2km-long runway used for processions; and not least a monster coliseum in disturbingly good condition. But the arena seems now to be a vast skate park: kids are doing half-pipes under the Führer’s rusting rostrum. And the parade ground is partially occupied by a seedy funfair. I try to imagine what the founders of the 1000-year Reich would make of it all, and with this satisfying thought return to my hostel.
Germany’s trains are frankly a disappointment. Breakdowns, cancellations, delays; sometimes they even crash like British ones. But above all they are slow while claiming to be fast. The flagship ICE is always hailed as a “330 km/h” marvel, when in fact it only does 280 km/h on two short stretches of track. However, it must be said that for a fake high-speed train the ICE is exceedingly comfortable. On my trip to Leipzig I have a pleasant surprise: it’s an ICE-3, with cockpit fully visible to the first carriage — and I am directly behind the driver’s seat! Disappointingly the driver never shows, the train pulls out of the station in reverse, and for three hours I watch Bavaria disappearing onto the horizon. Slowly.
Leipzig, the last city on my quick tour, is the money capital of East Germany and a major trade hub. Looking down on it from a 30th-floor observation deck, its train station seems almost the size of the rest of the town centre. The Stadtmuseum does a surprisingly good job of depicting the town’s former importance, but as usual bombs and communism have obscured the facts on the ground. A better bet turns out to be the local Stasi museum. It is overflowing with recent history, which is somehow so distant: typewritten files on traitors to Marxism, bizarre spy gadgets, propaganda posters denouncing American imperialist bloodsuckers.
And that surely makes enough dictatorship for one trip.
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