Corona # Lahn # German Cycle Tour E-Book

Peter Vornberg

• Herausgeber: via tolino media
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

What motivated him to write this book, which sketches a number of formative moments in his life, was his fascination with people and nature. Every time we start for a trip, we leave the real world in our homes behind us. We want to forget it while being on the way, want to gain new energy for whatever is awaiting us when being back home again. Since Corona, however, the world looks completely different. Or doesn`t it? Peter Vornberg describes in this book a fictive character, who travels on his bike from one camping ground to another one as a person, who appears to be troubled by problems that are tearing at his soul, but still can enjoy the beautiful things around him. The moments in the life he talks about are surreal, truly presented, full of humour and unsparing. The touring biker succeeds in facing the upsetting experiences in his past and momentary life relentlessly during the five-day tour and thereby summoning new strength for his further life. Three cheers for our hope for a better future!

Leseprobe

Corona # Lahn # Cycle Tour

Written by Peter Vornberg

and

translated by Albrecht Kienow

The Upper Lahn Valley Cycle Route: from Siegen to the source of of the Lahn and back »home«

withCaricaturesfrom Annemarie Petrus-Lichnowsky

A narrative about a biking tour illustrated with

a couple of short stories and caricatures

Edited by

Peter Schulte

©/ Copyright: 2021 Peter Schulte (Editor)

Cover design: truxa.grafik.design (Vienna)

Artwork and caricatures: Annemarie Petrus-Lichnowsky (Rotterdam)

Editor:

Peter Schulte (Editor)Friedrichstraße 72

61476 Kronberg in Taunus

mailto:[email protected]

Delivery:

1st Revised Edition, July 2021

Self-Published by Peter Schulte

Legal regulations:

The literary work and everything around it are protected by copyright. Any use of them infringing the copyright without the consent of the author is unlawful and punishable.

The author assures that all characters portrayed are fictitious. Mr. Vornberg undertook the tour from May 25 until May 29 2020 using solely a hammock as his shelter. The experiences and encounters during the tour have prompted him to turn them into a work of literature.

Contents

Sunday May 24th – At home in Kronberg

Monday May 25th – Travelling by train and bike to Bad Laasphe

Tuesday May 26th – Leaving all cares behind

Wednesday May 27th – From Bad Laasphe into the riverside meadow landscape (Auenland)

Thursday May 28th – From Riverside Pasture to Braunfels

Friday May 29th – From Braunfels to Kronberg

Acknowledgements

Sunday May 24th – At home in Kronberg

This was a day I felt I was ready for a change. I began to rummage through my cupboards and wardrobes collecting all my biking clothes and things around me of which I was certain I would be needing them on my tour from Siegen via the spring of the Lahn in the Rothaar uplands and back to Kronberg in the Taunus uplands: that would include 8:00 o'clock in the morning, 1:00 pm at noon time or 7:00 pm in the evening. How many miles? 141 miles! How many days? 5 days! That's it!

I regarded the mess around me in complete confusion. What was it still like last year? What box served for which objects and had to be stored in which bike bag? I knew, however, darn well that each bike tour always faced you with different challenges. A feeling that everything was right wouldn't come before I had spent two nights on my trip. My unease would have gone by then. The sense of order would put me in the right mood. My bike would become a part of myself like many times before. Thinking of my first-day destination made me do my packing with greater verve. The route from Siegen to Laasphe! But I wasn't yet on the road and nothing had changed. My momentary place was still my home in Kronberg.

I had bought my bike bags already in the nineties. They were such ones that were fixed at the pannier rack and had served me for 25 years, but they did their job well like new ones. That sounds a bit overstated, yet from my point of view I was sure that I could rely on them. Later I afforded a touring bike and bags that you fasten around the front wheels. That bike had been made by a real »velosopher«. It had accompanied me on my first biking tour through Europe from the beginning of May until the middle of July 2015 and it has been continuing to do that truly up to this moment.

It took me the whole Sunday up to the evening. At last I could finish packing, which made me feel satisfied. Two large, red-coloured biking bags and two packages coloured yellow now had to be loaded on to the bike. Everything was well planned. In the end, I decided to store away all the luggage on the back side of the bike like last time despite the availability of the frontside rack. That way it was impossible for me to lift the hind wheel any more. Why did I choose the hind wheel as my luggage carrier? It was the mobility of the front wheel that I favoured most, because the handle-bar grip helped me feel any unevenness the front wheel tyres might signal as a danger. Still more important was the fact that I could yank around the wheel if any unforeseeable situation afforded a fast reaction (that happened rather often on such a tour).

If you classified types of bikers, I certainly would belong to the »pure-nature« group. I prefer fresh air, travelling with a tent, a stove and all that gear, always alone – just pure! Apropos losing weight around my abdominal girth was a welcome side effect of the longer-lasting biking tour. Restaurants or something like that? Rather seldom, although I love them... and naturally never quite manage to stay off them. A double-edged passion. But hey, a biking tour should be fun ... and so it happened without fail, each time. My weaker self won – on each trip, of course not only one time! The beginning was always triggered by a subconscious urge. The smells of the various restaurants along the road appeared to me like the perfumes of beguiling women. The more I stayed on the bike without having a bite to eat, the more my appetite was growing.

That is how a human must feel, when he is about to turn into a were-wolf. Whatsoever, the smells, the appetite busts the self-imposed fetters that control my weaker self. I am readily prepared, like a wolf scenting its quarry, to strangle, to choke, to stab, to shoot or even to tear to parts my attempt at staying »abstinent«. When, upon that, my senses implant on my mind the picture of a »carcass« left behind, the moment has come that nothing can stop me any more to fall for the lust. I would go for the food with all the greed of a starving wolf.

Leaving corona behind me at last! Being allowed to travel again. Finally, again, a little bit of freedom. I did not dare to hope my second larger tour in the second half of the year might come true, as the warning voices of a second wave were growing louder, shortly before my setting off, but nobody knew when that would happen. That is why I seized the moment to use the five days before Whitsuntide. That way I would be able to test ... hammock, underquilt, tarp instead of tent, firestone instead of lighter, mini grill instead of stove. All right, I had a stove in reserve and it is true a lighter as well. Another utensil was a solar panel that should help me charge my battery in the daytime. That meant less dependance on the current on camping grounds. The rest was my usual travelling equipment during biking tours.

Monday May 25th – Travelling by train and bike to Bad Laasphe

Like always in the night before such a tour I had a restless sleep. My family had already finished breakfast when I came down from my bedroom in full attire. The rubber gloves were safely stuffed in my bike shorts. »Remember the FMP2 mask for God's sake«, I said to myself, while I was stowing my equipment on my bike. Well, my touring bike – mine! What great fun to ride such a bike. The »velosopher«, a true whiz among the builders of bikes, called my bike »cab« because of the colour I had chosen. I still remember how disappointed he was that I had not chosen a dark colour like blue black or like – exactly: blue black!

While I was eating my toast, there was an uncertain feeling prey on my mind. This time I was not in the usual optimistic mood. At the start of my tours would turn into a well-controlled dose of adrenalin would not appear, for getting along with the corona challenge, an hostile intruder into my life, into our world, meant to me and certainly to more than 80% of my fellow countrymen a tremendous effort to cope with. That was what it would be like if an alien race should invade the earth – Covid-19. I am waiting for the third part of the movie »July 4th«, when we finally will give the aliens a kick in the arse. Right, that would mean regarding the situation rather from an American point of view. It would be a good idea, however, if the Yankees finished the third part of the movie in time for the completion of the Covid antivirus vaccine campaign. I visualise that day in the year 2021 with getting a vaccine in the morning and watching »July 4th« in the evening – part 3, yeah! »›Antibody formation‹ and watching a movie does that go together?« A rational voice pondered over this question and could answer it at once. »That does not work, as it takes too long to form antibodies in our blood. If so, never mind, I am going to do that ...«, my inner voice insisted, as always full of emotion and rather angrily before it fell silent.

My mother waved a good-bye from the kitchen window. She loved doing that and the pleasure she felt to see me start for the trip, gave me a good feeling for my enterprise, the biking tour. She was 86 years old by now and still felt a strong yearning for seeing far-off countries. Travelling, however, was out of the question. My father has been depending on care for rather a long time.

I rode along Friedrichstraße, turned left into Schillerstraße, which, across a slight rise, passed Kronberg pond and then a part of the »English Garden of Queen Victoria«, until I reached the Bahnhofstraße on the left, which led to the station of Kronberg. The station, a terminus. Just behind it the newly built hotel Vienna and the Opera House for Cellos with its conservatoire financed by the EU. Kronberg is the world capital for cellos. Yes! I cannot be seriously proud of it. Well, I ... what does such a cello look like? Howsoever, I remember that age-old trees had to make room for the academy. Trees as old as the wood used to build instruments, now played by prospective cellists ... politicians from Kronberg driven by the desire to advance their reputation. World capital for cellos ... three cheers to the cello! Kronberg is a politically far right-wing oriented town, which seems to favour only music as a form of art – apart from its painters' colony originally also famous, but now run-down, because nobody really cares for promoting young talents. There are even some Christian Democrats besides some Social Democrats and Greens who were against this ruthless cutting down of trees to make room for the opera.

Kronberg's bourgeois elite has created its comfort zone in the town, yet often their offspring diverts themselves with other activities. The problems existing in other towns is known in Kronberg as well, but does not find any attention with the authorities. From my point of view, you have to single out the rich among the bourgeois. While you can recognize the bourgeois by their SUVs and their driveways to their garages, the rich live a rather seclusive life and are known to like settling in towns like Königstein, Kronberg, Oberursel, Bad Homburg and their closer environment and that for some decades. They live in large villas surrounded by high walls, fences or impenetrable hedges with driveways that you cannot spot from the street side. They do not care to take part in the cultural and social life in the town, which makes their presence be comparable to alien creatures. Kronberg can even boast of one or two billionaires.

You can encounter all those rich, strangers like, shopping at Aldi-Süd, the »cultural centre« of German cities with its typical culinary specialties so incomparably German. As a proof of that suffices remembering your last visit at that shop. A nice place for social gatherings, isn't it?

What else is there to mention about »my Kronberg«? I remember especially the spring and summer months, when drunken youths tore through Kronberg's streets, bawled around, vandalized and sometimes even left their excrements on the bonnet of cars, so that you had to park your car so close to a hedge that it did not leave those bladdered kids any chance to climb it.

Especially at the time of the A-level exams the situation escalates – at normal times. But Covid-19 has changed things and this year's orgiastic celebrations have not come about. There are some sports clubs that serve kids and adults, which give some young people a better chance to cope. What is missing? The usual, if the politicians, mainly the conservatives, are not willing to start investing some money in women's refuges, artists' houses, like the Frankfurt model »Basis«, or creating affordable living space for apprentices that are training in Kronberg's businesses etc. One third of the citizens of Kronberg apprentices live on private and social benefits and many of them in social housing, as their income does not cover their livelihood. Kronberg today is a town of newcomers. Village mindset? Everybody knows everybody? Wrong! Two years ago, new neighbours have moved in that have not introduced themselves up to now. Those on the other side of the street are not any better! In the meantime, we have established a loose contact but know very little about each other. No good prospects, or am I wrong? Preserving one's anonymity might also have its good sides.

The weather was rather brisk this morning. The train had not yet arrived. My rational mind took over the command. »The best thing for you to do is to enter one of the last waggons.« There I found two places reserved for bikes. »Now put on the mask and choose a seat with the bike in view so that you can watch out that it does not topple down (buckling devices for bicycles have apparently not been an option in the eyes of the builders of suburban trains). Two and a half hours would take it to reach my destination, first the suburban train to Frankfurt main station followed by the regional express train to Siegen ...«

The suburban train S4 arrived. It took some effort to lift the bike into the carriage with the rear wheel causing the greatest trouble. The climb seemed to me to be at least a yard higher than usual. At last I was safely seated eye in eye with my bike. Apart from me there was nobody else in the train yet. The smell in the train reminded me of chicken broth in the state of fermentation. At every stop the doors automatically opened, when somebody entered and shut a second later again instead of staying open for the whole stop to allow a better ventilation. The Rhein- Main combine – the operating company – nor the guard seemed to mind the requirements the Covid-19 times made necessary to protect the passengers. Immediate measures, easy to understand, would have given the people a feeling of being on a safe trip. A rather vain wish!

The ten minutes of waiting in the S4 were lasting endlessly. It did not take me any more than three minutes before I could sit down. On the tip of my straight nose with its lovely shape, a steady well of saltwater was forming under my mask after the three minutes of sitting in the train due to the biotope caused by exhaled air of humid quality, which now kept dripping on my chin. My bike was never left unobserved. I could not stand it anymore and was tempted to tear down my mask, but then I would certainly … I used my elbow to open the door of the train and rushed outside tearing down my mask. My multifunction outdoor scarf, called Buff, I wore on my arm, did the rest. I put on my mask again, opened the door with my elbow and was again seated in the train. There were still six minutes to go before the train would start. The first fellow travellers were entering. Three minutes before the departure the same procedure. My pulse beat was less hectic this time. Good that I could rely on my body functions ...

The time was 9:38 o'clock. The S4 started on time. Niederhöchstadt was the next stop, which the train had already passed by. Fifteen passengers, beside me, were travelling on the train, two of whom did not wear any mask. One of them went past me down the aisle. His way of moving through the carriage bode ill. I did not see him any more. At the stop at Frankfurt-West another person without a mask entered the train. His outer appearance radiated aggression. He looked at me with a stare. I returned the look over my FMP 2 mask. For a short moment he considered striking me in the face before he abstained from it. It might have been my age to stop him, which even my mask could not really conceal. He dropped his emaciated body full tilt onto the seat. His way of behaving was spoiling for a fight, never mind if it was something around him or a person coming his way. The seat of the S4 apparently was his first victim, yet obviously not his last one.

By the way he moved his arm, I could guess that he was rolling a cigarette.

---ENDE DER LESEPROBE---