The Murder of Absurdity

Hallo Friends and Neighbors.  I am sitting at my keyboard on a lovely summer morning.  The sun is shining into my Garten, a wee patch of green located on a quiet street in Vienna.  While the smoke from my cigar rises gently, I contemplate the seeming peace.  Outside the tall hedges that surround my oasis the world seethes in chaos.  As Kurt Vonnegut writes repeatedly, "So it goes."  For me, Vonnegut is a sort of modern Samuel Clemens.  He illuminates the foibles of the modern world and human reactions to that world.  Kurt Vonnegut is also one of the pillars of Absurdist Fiction.  Creeping into my sunny peacefulness, as if on the feet of small furry creatures, is the nagging thought that the last nail may have been banged into the coffin of the Absurd.

 In the movie "Brazil" Terry Gilliam offers us a horrific vision of a dark dystopia where the bureaucrats have won, shadowy terrorists explode random bombs, and talking-heads assure the citizens "We've got the buggers on the run."  Sound familiar?

The Hollywood folks were horrified with the movie's dark conclusion.  They proceeded to chop and edit the thing until they managed to cobble on a happy ending.  Gilliam prevailed in a battle over film rights, a battle that mirrors the absurdity of the film.  Thankfully, when the legal dust settled, the full-length director's cut survived.

What does this have to do with anything?  Good question.  Which brings us to a better question.  How can human beings create a personal sense of meaning in their lives when faced with the chaos and absurdity of the world around them?

Enter Literature, Theater, and Film of the Absurd.



But wait a just a darn minute, you exclaim.  What exactly do you mean by Absurdism?  Another good question.  Born of the philosophical writings of Søren Kierkegaard, and brought to fruition by Albert Camus, Absurdism is a philosophy dealing with the human struggle to find meaning in a world that is beyond human comprehension.  Absurdism posits the idea that humans can, just maybe, construct meaning in their own lives, but only if that meaning directly recognizes the absurdity of the world in which we live.  The important caveat is that, while we are struggling to create meaning in our personal lives, we must acknowledge and confront the basic absurdity of the outside world.

Towards that end, humans have created works of fiction that highlight the absurdity of our world.  These fictions serve as a coping tool, if you will.

My question is this:  Has our world moved so far beyond the representations of the absurd as to make those representations invalid?  Has the modern world murdered the absurd?  Perhaps a look at some examples will shed a bit of light on this question.  Or perhaps we can only muddle everything beyond all hope.  Regardless, here are a few of my favorites:

Alices' Adventures in Wonderland is the grandpappy of Absurdist Literature.  Lewis Carroll wrote this children's classic in 1865, and it remains a part of our modern culture.  Woven through Alice's adventures, one can see the modern world pushing hard against the Victorian world inhabited by the  author.  There is the Caucus Race, where everyone runs willy-nilly in all directions, everyone is declared a winner, and all will be awarded prizes.  Characters refute factual information by simply turning the argument on its head.  "Tut tut, my child" says the Duchess.  And when all else fails, the Queen calls for everyone's heads to be lopped off.   Alice attempts to make sense of this bizarre world and fails, eventually returning from the dream of Wonderland.  Awake once more, she contemplates what she has experienced.   

In Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa awakens one fine morning only to find that he has been turned into a giant dung beetle.  And you thought you had problems with the outside world.  Written in 1915, this novella has been called the most Kafkaesque of Kafka's work.  To this day, the adjective is still used to describe the dark. twisted aspects of the modern world.

Rather than simply giving up and dying on his back, horrible insect legs stuck up in the air, Gregor tries to make sense of his new environment.  The attempts to sort out his world do not go well.  Everyone is horrified by Gregor's metamorphosis.  When Father Samsa finds Gregor scuttling around the kitchen, he whacks his own son with a thrown apple.  Succumbing to injuries caused by apple abuse, Gregor eventually dies.  The family is relieved by his death and life goes on.

Outside World 1 -- Gregor's Search for Meaning 0.

Enter Albert Camus, the Godfather of Absurdism.  The Plague (La Peste) was written in 1947, when France was reeling in the aftermath of World War Two.  In the novel, Camus lays out the fundamentals of Absurdism.  Life is absurd and there is only death.  Camus posits three choices.  One can recognize the absurd nature of life and commit suicide, however the act of taking ones own life is absurd in and of itself.  One can make a "leap of faith," ascribing meaning to a higher power, but this is characterized as "Philosophical Suicide."  The last choice, Camus' choice, is to accept the absurdity and move on to the end, while working to find meaning in the process.

In The Plague, a small town beset by disease represents the outside world, the absurd universe.  The characters in the novel wrestle with the choices of how to deal with the pestilence.  They are trapped within Camus' three options of suicide, faith in a divine being, or continuing to work and struggle with the situation as it is.  Eventually, three of the characters find meaning in healing others, regardless that the disease has doomed them all.

“Nothing happens, nobody comes … nobody goes, it’s awful!”       

                                                                        

And wonderful.  Waiting for Godot was first performed in France in 1953.   Samuel Beckett strands his characters in a bleak world that makes no sense, a world from which they cannot escape.  Vladimir and Estragon (Didi and Gogo) wait for something, anything, to happen.  When anything  does actually happen, it is disturbing and seemingly without meaning.  Or painful.  Or both.  Godot never does show up, but Theater of the Absurd now has a place in the world.

Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 was published in 1961.  Often cited as one of the great American novels, as well as one of the great anti-war novels, Catch-22 is a study in absurdity.  The pilots and crewmen of a WWII bomber squadron are the "little guys."  They are being systematically crushed by leaders who are morally bereft, leaders guided only by greed and ambition.  The core absurdity is the Catch itself, Catch-22.  Flying a bomber in World War Two is crazy.  Only a crazy person would do so.  If a pilot wants to stop flying, all he has to do is ask permission to stop flying.  But if he makes that request, he is not crazy, and therefore has to continue flying missions.  As the protagonist Yossarian says, "That's some catch!"

Modern capitalism is embodied in Milo Minderbinder, who says "What's good for M&M Enterprises is good for the country."  He hires the USAAF bombers to bomb their own base, with the Germans paying Milo for the bombing.  Everyone seems to be in on the scam except for Yossarian.

Throughout the novel, the characters employ circular reasoning and inverted logic to justify the insanity of the world around them.  The same inverted logic is used to justify their own actions as individuals trapped in that world.  Eventually Yossarian flees, paddling off in a tiny inflatable raft.  He takes with him the knowledge that he will have to fight the crazy bastards every step of the way.

What happens when two insignificant human beings struggle to make sense of the events unfolding around them?  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead takes two minor characters from Hamlet and casts them as protagonists. 

Written in 1964, published in 1967, and performed on Broadway in 1968, Tom Stoppard's masterpiece of Theater of the Absurd is all about death.

Things are not going well for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (or is it the other way around?) and they don't know why.  They don't really know how they got to gloomy Elsinore Castle, and they don't really like it much.  Swept up in the action of Hamlet when other characters appear onstage, they are left to their own devices when alone.

What is waiting for them is death.  It is the death of a pair of Untermensch, two men swept along on the tides of a story that they don't understand and cannot control.

Sometimes called a great anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse-Five is a monument to the absurdity of the modern world.  It is the story of one character's struggle to transcend that absurdity.  Even the notion of an anti-war novel is lampooned, as one of Vonnegut's characters says "Why not write an anti-glacier novel instead?"  Whichever type of novel it is, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five was published in 1969.

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.  Throughout the course of the novel, he travels back and forth to different points in his life, birth to death, but not necessarily in that order.  From the firebombing of Dresden (something Vonnegut experienced in his own life) to being held prisoner on another planet, Billy Pilgrim is able to live and re-live all of the moments in his life.  He bounces between them like a time-traveling ping-pong ball.  Does he find a meaning or purpose for his life?  Maybe, as any good Absurdist would say.  So it goes.

Last, but not least, we come to the trials and tribulations of Arthur Dent.  First the local Council wants to knock down his house to build a bypass.  Then the Vogons blow up planet Earth to make way for a much bigger bypass and, well, things go downhill from there.

Originally a radio show on BBC, Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was published as a novel in 1979.  Subsequent adventures were added to the original until it became The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. 

Winging around the goofiness of the galaxy, Arthur Dent learns a great deal.  Sometimes happy, sometimes very angry, he struggles to find his place in a universe that is totally insane.

There is an answer by the way, but you're not going to like it.



When the world in which we live in is too crazy to comprehend, what are we poor humans to do?  How do we cope with madness that is outside of our control?  Absurdist Fiction serves to create an alternative universe that is crazier than our own, thus making the actual universe a bit more palatable.  But is this concept still viable?

If I think that my world is nuts, contrasting it with an even crazier world helps put things in perceptive.  Arthur Dent was worried about his little house being bulldozed by the council.  Then the Vogons blew up the whole damn planet.  Ha!  That poor clueless bastard.  And I thought I had it tough.  This morning I am pecking away at my laptop.  I have not been transformed into a giant bug at whom folks hurl apples.  Well bless me, this ain't so bad.

But here's the rub.  What happens when the insanity of our own world exceeds our ability to create fictional insanity?  Without a blink, I can think of three examples where fictional portrayals of a dystopian world have become disturbingly prophetic.  1984 has come and gone, but George Orwell's dark society of "Ignorance is Strength" and "Black is White" is eerily similar to the bizarre concept of "Alternative Fact."  The film "Idiocracy," released in 2006, has evolved from a black comedy into a prophesy.  Piles of garbage become landsliding mountains of garbage as citizens sit at home watching reality television.  The third example is the aforementioned film "Brazil."  Reading the news on a typical day, I often feel that I have become a very minor character ensnared in that movie.  So it goes.

This is the point where I should trot out a pithy, erudite conclusion, but I confess the lack thereof.  I have no answers, only questions coupled with comparisons.  Short of the absolute supernatural (and who knows how long it will be before the supernatural becomes the natural) modern society is at least as insane as anything humans can conjecture.  Let's say I write a novel about a host of a failed TV reality show and have him become the President of the United States.  That book is obviously dead on arrival.  How about a nuclear holocaust story set in our own time?  Unthinkable?  Note even sort-of-kinda.  Corporations are people too?  Nah, that's been done.  How about a dystopia in which humans can only view their world by means of small hand-held communication devices.  Bah!  Old hat.  What is a poor author to do?

But wait, you say, what about Science Fiction?  Sure,  I am forced to admit that the imaginations of Sci-fi stay ahead of the advances of our crazed modern technology, but by an ever lessening margin.  If we use the handy 'Jetsons Measuring Stick,' we see that most of the futuristic gizmos from that 1960's cartoon are commonplace items.  Video screens for communication:  yawn.  Robotic housekeepers?  Hell, we have robotic households.  The only thing George Jetson had that I don't is that cool car that folds into a briefcase.  Lucky bastard.  And jet packs!  There was an implicit promise of Jet Packs!! Jet packs exist, but the government frowns on the proletariat soaring freely above the surly bonds of earth, the dirty bureaucrats.  All I can say is that I do not believe that Science Fiction shares the same function as Absurdist Fiction, even though it may eventually suffer the same fate.

Without a ribbon to tie around this less than pretty package, I am left to drift.  If this were a well written murder mystery, there would be some clever plot twist that uncovers the killer.  The gasp of the reader as the truth becomes clear.  Instead of a murder, I see an inexorable grinding force.  That force is the world we humans make manifest, a force outstripping any attempt to fictionalize it. Woe betide the poor scribbler come to grips with the reality that truth is indeed become stranger than fiction.  Or, as the wise man once said, "You just can't make this shit up."

Circles of Tail Chasing -- Part Three

On foot in Franconia

With the misadventures of travel planning behind, and a good night's sleep past, Friday dawned cool and damp.  Breakfast was a feast worthy of Rabelais, something to suit Gargantua and Pantagruel.  The hotel buzzed with folks preparing for a day of moto adventures, but I, being on foot, must make other plans.  I sat on the terrace overlooking the narrow road past the hotel, drinking coffee and smoking a good morning cigar.  Members of our group appeared, clad in riding gear, as folks queued up for the Friday ride.  As I was sans moto, my time was to be spent on foot, wandering about the woods and fields.

Franconia is a region of knobby hills, woods, fields and valleys.  The locals fall prey to the same vanity as the Viennese, naming hills Alps.  While not possessing the craggy splendor of the genuine article, the Franconian hills are laced with hiking and biking trails that offer fine wandering.  There is no need of motorized transport to find a hiking route.  One simply leaves the hotel, climbs the steep lane above the hotel, and in five minutes is ascending the rocky outcropping to the upper reaches of the valley.

Quiet roads and solitude

The path climbed wet stairs through dense undergrowth, topping out on a fine vista from the rock outcropping above the hotel.  The valley stretched out below me, dappled in clouds that threatened rain.  The air was cool and damp.  A perfect day for exploring.  I walked past an aerial obstacle course strung through the forest canopy.  Kids in climbing harnesses were negotiating the zip-lines and wire walks, all under the watchful eye of adult guides.  I passed out of the forest and edged along open fields, entering a rolling countryside.  Up here, on the lonely trails above the valley, I would not see another hiker.

Grain and Clouds

Meandering along trails and gravel farm roads, I traipsed from field to wood.  Passing now and again through tiny farming hamlets, each neat as a pin, the day was spent as if in a picture postcard of tidiness.  There was no litter, no disorder, seemingly nothing out of place to mar the sense of rural peace.  Every now and again I was greeted by a friendly farmer out stacking wood or tending to the fields.  

If you seek the quaint and lovely, this is your spot

So it went for the course of two days.  Companionable mornings and evenings separated by daytime hours of solitary hiking.  I am obliged to describe the reasons for this small trip.  This gathering of moto-oriented folks was EuroPrez22.  As the name implies, it is the twenty-second gathering of this group, which comprises motorcycle aficionadi from across the continent of Europe and beyond.  There is an overlap between membership in the EuroPrez group and the Village Idiots.  As a long-standing Idiot (read into that what you will) I have come to know some of the EuroPrez folks.  Several of my friends in the USA are regular guests to the EuroPrez gatherings.  

It came to pass that my friend and erstwhile riding companion, Darryl, was leaving the confines of California to make his annual pilgrimage to Europe.  While casting about for a suitable rendezvous, we hit upon the EuroPrez gathering as an ideal solution.  Not only would I be able to spend some time with Darryl and Steve, but Carlo, my Belgian friend, would also be in attendance.  Lastly, I would be able to put faces to folks that I have only known in the virtual world.  There would be many mischievous birds, as it were, hit by the same stone.

The gathering was a fine thing, full of laughter, food, drink, and tall tales.  My tales, at least, were tall.  I cast no aspersions on the tales of others.  This would be the suitable place to offer my thanks to all of the EuroPrez members who welcomed me into their group.  I would particularly like to thank Dieter and Irene for their skillful organizing and hard work putting this event together, not to mention finding me a spare bed.  And, of course, to Alessandro for sharing it.  

Who could resist a photo of a vintage fire engine?

I slept soundly, ate massive breakfasts, and roamed the hills and valleys.  Mornings and evenings were spent laughing, swapping tales, and groaning from to much food consumed.  The lines of motos roared out of the tiny hamlet of Veilbronn, returning in the late afternoon.  While walking the lanes and trails, I would occasionally catch a glimpse of motos twisting up a small road.  I waved to all of them, not knowing if they were part of our group of some of the many other riders who come to this region for a weekend of exploration.  Thus passed the time, swiftly, as is its wont.  

There is no conflict to this story, no thread to bind it into a narrative.  This would be the appropriate point to introduce some plot twist, perhaps a chase scene or some complete breakdown of civility and violent riot on the terrace, but nothing of the sort transpired.  Sometimes life is like that, peaceful and without incident.  Better, I think, not to look for too much excitement when things are peaceful.  The Universe has a funny sense of humour and might grant my wishes in unexpected ways.

Thus and such:  Walking in a Postcard

So passed the time.  Sunday morning dawned, cool and bright.  I was up and about before the dining room opened, walking out to savor the quiet.  Today there would be one more hike, this time retracing my steps back down the valley to the little town of Ebermannstadt.  From there, I would take the tiny two-wagon train to Forcheim, then Nuremberg, and hence the ICE speeding back to Wien.  I had the luxury of time, time to enjoy a leisurely breakfast, coffee on the terrace, a last cigar smoked amongst friends.  Then the motos would line up and depart, spreading out across Europe, heading back to homes scattered across the continent.  And I, I would shoulder my pack and walk down the green valley.

Morning on the last day

And so it came to pass.  The walk down the valley was lovely.  The Deutsche Bahn was on time and uneventful.  I stepped off the ICE and onto the platform at the Wien Hauptbahnhof.  There was My Heart, waiting for me.  Home again, home again, jiggity-jig.

There are the memories to be savored and a new gathering of friends to look forward to.  Next year it will be Italy!  What a fine excuse for a trip.  Perhaps by then I will have a new moto, some trusty steed to whisk me from Wien to Italia.  Again, a hearty thank you to each of the EuroPrez members that made me welcome, made me laugh, and shared their gathering with me.  

Circles of Tail Chasing -- Part Two

The path from Ebermannstadt.  Picturesque is the norm.

I am standing alongside a small pathway.  The pathway runs along a lazy creek in a green wood.  To my left, behind low stone walls, is the village of Ebermannstadt.  Stepping off of the tiny two-wagon electric train is to step into a postcard.  The scene is made less picturesque by interposing the image of myself, clad only in my underwear, donning my hiking shorts and shoes.  If you were watching, sorry for that.  

Bavaria, that is where I am.  Bayern in Deutsch, Bavaria is the largest state in Germany.  Located in the southeast of the country, it borders the Czech Republic on the east, and Austria to the southeast and south.  The Volk will tell you, in a direct and polite manner, that they are not German, but rather Bavarian.  But wait, I am not really in Bavaria.  I am actually standing, in my underwear, alongside a small brook in Franconia.  The Volk here will tell you, in a direct and polite manner, that they are not Bavarian, but rather Franken.  So, if I was offending anyone, it would be the Franken Volk.

If you are confused by all this regionalism, you would not be alone.  It harkens back to the days of the Germanic city states, and it will all lead to endless arguments.  Suffice it to say that you can read up on it if you like.  The dizzying array of Gothic tribes (Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Franks, etc.) will keep a scholar up at night, replacing dreams of lovely teaching assistants.  There were tiny kingdoms, city states, and a succession of Holy Roman Emperors, the study of which will keep you out of trouble for a good long time.  Have fun with that.   

It is a veritable barrage of cute and tidy.  Very tidy.

Decently dressed, I set out along the small path.  I was experiencing a self-induced déjà vu due to having reconnoitered the hiking route via Google Earth.  There were a bit over eight kilometers to travel and dinner was a seven.  One hour and forty-five minutes, five miles to go, uphill with a backpack.  Obviously, it was time for more ambulating and less cogitating.  

The countryside hereabouts is tidy.  The streets are tidy, the paths are tidy, the houses are tidy, everything in its appointed place.  As I revved up to full hiking pace, I wondered if I would have to pass a test or something, a checkpoint to approve the appearance of my gear.  I knew I would fail any such examination.  For one thing, I had no poles.  I believe there is a regulation on the books somewhere, both in Austria and Germany, that one cannot hike without Nordic walking sticks.  These people are nuts for the things, flailing them about as they hike.  I had none.  As an added offense, I was smoking a short cigar as I strode along.  I'm sure that's also verboten in the hiking rule book.  

Impossibly Cute

It was the work of a few hundred meters to be out of the village and ambling across the fields.  Unlike the United States, where walking is viewed as a sure sign of poverty and thus not encouraged, here there are lots of walking paths that do not involve risking ones life on the edge of a busy roadway.  Wandering across the eerily familiar fields, I watched for my landmarks.  Across the railway line for the old steam train, turn left towards Gasseldorf, leaving the broad valley behind.  From Gasseldorf, skirt along the hillside, keeping the slope to the right.  Uphill and more uphill, following the pathway to the village of Unterleinleiter (try saying that after three Biers).  

With both my Cute-O-Meter and Tidy-O-Meter pegged at eleven, I pushed up the long sloping valley that leads to Veilbronn.  Checking the hour, I picked up the pace, determined to be there in time for dinner.  As I learned early in life when the chicken platter hit the family dinner table, there are two kinds of people in the world:  The Quick and The Hungry.  

The walls of the valley above Veilbronn

Then there was the sign for the hamlet of Veilbronn, the promised turn in the trail, the hotel.  A row of motos stood outside of Landhaus Sponsel-Regus, with folks milling about on the street-side terrace.  I walked up the front steps and into the outstretched hand of Steve W., an old friend from Seattle.  There were introductions all around, an impossible array of names, and the strangeness of suddenly adding a face to folks I heretofore had known only online.  I was saved the embarrassment of remembering everyone, at least for the present, by the call to dinner.  And thus began a three day food orgy.

One of the extraordinary meals from the folk at Landhaus Sponsel-Regus

The food was amazing, made even better by the sauce of hunger from hiking.  Every dinner proved to be a multi-course extravaganza.  We had a starter buffet, an entire room of tables groaning under the weight of various appetizers and noshes.  Once the vorspeisen was exhausted, there were one of three main courses.  My table mates and I quickly mastered the main course numbering system.  Number One was some lighter fare, fish or some such.  Number Two was the meaty Man's Fare.  Number Three was some new-age vegetarian stuff.  The mantra became "Always choose Number Two."

After two plates of appetizers and salads and a main course of Schweinbraten, I have to admit that the edge had gone from my ravenous nature.  But wait, there's more!  Not just dessert, but a dessert buffet.  I don't know how "Nachspeisenbuffet" sounds in Deutsch, but in English "Dessert Buffet" has a decadent ring to it that just sucks me right in.

And then there was cheese.  Lots of cheese of all sorts.  My English mate Paul and I engaged in a brief round of Wallace and Gromit impersonations, whereupon we fell upon the cheese like good Trenchermen.

Dinner was followed by groans, and then a general waddling to the terrace for drinks and smokes.  Somewhere during the course of the dinner, a suave Italian gent introduced himself as Alessandro.  This was the generous person who had graciously agreed to allow me to share a room with him.  As he leaned over our table, he said "Of course, the bed is il matrimonial," which received a good laugh all around.  I laughed as well, but somewhere during the dessert buffet, or possibly the cheese course, the memory was driven from my head.

A cool Franconian evening, good company, good cigars, what more could a traveler want?  All of my self-induced cares and frustrations brought about by travel planning had disappeared into a cloud of goodwill.  Once the journey has begun, anything that happens is fair play, events to be dealt with and thus incorporated into later tall tales.  Pesky details that happen before travel begins are vexations, but those vexations had passed.  The evening melted away in multilingual camaraderie and laughter.

Tired and sated, I made my way upstairs to my new digs.  Entering the room, I was greeted by darkness.  Quiet as a cat, I settled my rucksack to the floor and let my eyes adjust.  In the bit of light filtering into the room, I observed the lone bed and the peacefully sleeping figure upon it.  Now began the conundrum:  How does one slip into bed with another man, a man whom one has met only in passing, and who is very much sound asleep?

I searched through my groggy memory for lost bits of Miss Manners columns, some hint of the etiquette required for the current situation, but I came up blank.  Bellowing out "Hi Honey, I'm home!" and then flopping on the bed seemed a bit gauche.  Alessandro was sleeping peacefully, so much so that I was fully at a loss.  Fortunately, this is Germany (or Bavaria, or Franconia) so the bed was typically large and equipped with two separate comforters.  Such is the way here, probably a product of generational fatigue brought on by sleeping with cover-snatching spouses.  Silent as a ninja, I purloined the extra duvet and pillow from the bed and retreated to the hallway.  I made a sleeping nest of the comforter and settled in.  Darkness washed over me and I was asleep.

Forty years ago and but two score kilometers to the northwest from where I lay sleeping, the US Army had taught me a valuable lesson.  I learned that I could sleep anywhere.  Like the old Doctor Seuss character in Green Eggs and Ham, the places I could sleep were endless.  In a box, with a fox, on a train, in a plane, etc, etc.  After soldiering came a stint of commercial fishing.  Sleeping in a bunk on a crab boat atop the the roiling waters of the Bering Sea is much like trying to catch a nap on an amusement park ride, yet I can attest to many an untroubled slumber wedged between my survival suit and a steel bulkhead.  Given my history of goofy sleeping quarters, a comforter on the floor of a nice hotel in Franconia was a lark.

And that is where Alessandro found me while on his way to a midnight micturation.

     "Marco, why are you sleeping on the floor?"
     "Hallo Alessandro.  I didn't want to wake you."
     "Or perhaps you didn't want to share the same bed?"

How can one argue with that sort of graciousness?  I gathered up my nest and trundled it to my side of our bed.  Both of us settled in, wished each other a good night, and I remember no more.

Next up:  Part Three -- Hiking Franconia

Circles of Tail-Chasing -- Part One

Sure, yeah, you think you're a smart guy.  Yeah.

Everyone prefers to hear travel stories from exotic locales.  If hardship must be included in the tale, folks like to hear of things gone awry due to a lonely border crossing, a grimy bribe to obtain a visa, or being stranded by a rickety Cambodian bus.  Given enough time, events such as these become the highlights of a sojourn, the germ of the most requested story.  I have lots of these sorts of stories.  This is not going to be one of them.

Given the above parameters, Dear Reader, I'm going fail you.  Let's be honest:  This time, I'm going to leave you flat.  No delightful tale of the exotic, let's be kind and call this a litany of bad decisions. 

It was all so simple, just a rendezvous with several friends at a convenient Moto gathering in Germany.  Ha!  Deutschland!  Just the next little country over from Austria.  Yeah, yeah, okay, I follow the online link for the gathering, sign myself up, book a few train tickets at a fantastic advance rate.  Boom, Robert is your Mother's Brother.  I'm a busy man, things to do, books to pimp, agents to cozy up to, grievances to nurse.  Which leads us to the down and dirty, the trail of mistakes we must lay bare before there is any hope of redemption.  Sorry.

When I am sending out literary submissions, or sulking over the results, I am not operating at my highest level of awareness with regard to the outside world.  The foregoing is a bold use of understatement.  

It was a simple plan.  I had booked tickets on the ICE, the Deutsche Bahn high-speed train, direct from Vienna to Nuremberg.  Leaving Nuremberg, I would ride two local trains to the village of Ebermannstadt.  The connections were short and sweet, with the clockwork precision of Deutsch scheduling.  At the last tiny train station, I would doff my train clothes and don my hiking togs for an eight kilometer stroll to the hamlet of Veilbronn.  It was a good plan, a tidy plan, and it even included hiking the last leg.  How romantic and quaint I would be, arriving at a motorcycle gathering on foot.

Ahem.  Enter the Fool.  A scant two days before my departure date, I realized that with all of the train travel and romantic hiking, I would be arriving somewhat later in the evening.  I emailed the nice hotel folks to inform them of my later arrival and to assure them that I would be there.  "Please hold my reservation."  The reply was a very polite "What reservation?"  

Remember the preceding, the bit about the "busy man?"  When signing up for this shindig, I did not sign up for the mailing list.  All the information regarding the required deposit, et cetera, et cetera, was sent out via this email list.  The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.  I received no emails, no information, secure in a darkness of my own making.

A bit of panic now.  A few emails to the hotel.  No, due to a large gathering, there were no vacancies.  I was hoisted on my own petard.  An email exchange with the organizer revealed who the idiot was:  myself.  Mistake number one.  I did the natural thing, I cancelled the train tickets while I could.  Better to lose the eighteen euro fee than the entire hundred and twenty euro fare.  Mistake number two.  Then I began sulking.

The next morning, the penultimate morning for my now abandoned departure, I got a message from the very gentlemanly and patient event organizer.  There was a bed available if I was willing to share a room.  He had obviously gone to some trouble to arrange this, not to mention having to impose on another member of the group to share a room with an unknown idiot.  My own petard exploded once more, hoisting me a bit higher.  Only a complete cad could refuse.  

I manned up, gritted my teeth, and re-booked the train tickets.  I re-booked the train tickets at double the advance rate.  Then I spent some time applying my foot to my posterior.  The basic dilemma of kicking ones own ass is that there are not many options for escape.  Ass flees, foot follows ass, kicking continues.  My Love made a few amused attempts to intervene, but as I had no desire to be reasonable, she left me to my own ass-whooping, for all the good it did me.  

When the dust finally settled from my vigorous round of self-abuse, I was left with the very same trip, all neatly arranged despite the shambles I had tried to make of it.  After telling my friends I would not be making the trip, I sheepishly confessed my idiocy and assured them that I would, indeed, be there.  They know me.  I doubt they were surprised.  

The truth is that I needed to make this trip.  Veilbronn is located in Franconia, a region tucked within Bavaria.  Four decades ago I was a solider in Bavaria, one of the minions of the US Army.  Ostensibly defending the Free World from the Evil Communists, I spent almost three years there.  While I did not do much to defend anything, I did spend every free moment traveling about in Europe.  During that time, my heretofore tiny world blossomed into an immense universe, a vast expanse filled with other peoples and other languages.  At seventeen years of age, I discovered the wonders of independent travel.  Nothing would ever be the same.  Returning to Bavaria felt as if I was closing a loop, a vast loop that has encompassed four continents, the odd sub-continent, and decades of my life.

We, each of us, make myriad decisions over the course of our lives.  In making them, we never know which will be the choice that determines a major shift.  "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood" as the great poet wrote.  I had a strong desire to bring the shifting choices of my personal map back to a starting point, however mythical that point might be.  And so, I boarded the train.

I did arrive in Ebermannstadt.  I did doff my travel clothes and don hiking gear.  And, on a warm summer evening, I did hike through a picture perfect countryside of fields and small villages to my destination.  But that is the stuff of the nest installment.