After a day trip to the top of Germany in altitude and bottom of Germany on the map, we left Munich and its Bavarian alpine playground to our South for vineyards and open space. The vineyards are typically German. The grapes grow vertically up to ten feet high with German engineering and efficiency. Over a few hours, the grapevines give way to corn.
By 2 pm, dark forests of fir and spruce welcome us to the Czech Republic. The shadows among them seem to suggest secrets hidden from view. Eastern bloc secrets of a foreign land, not meant for nor understood by American ears.
In my attempt to get gas at the last possible stop in Germany, we ended up at a gas station on the Czech side of the border. I was surprised to find not only the usual gas options, diesel, super, super plus. This time I found biodiesel in a B30 blend. Mostly it is B5 or B10 in the U.S. I had seen biodiesel and ethanol thus far in Europe, but generally not more than B10. I pondered all of this while watching the price of my tank of gas climb into the hundreds (kc).
This is our first overseas destination that doesn't use the Euro. After a tank of gas on the credit card, I change a twenty, just in case I hit a toll. Andrew Jackson didn't flinch as I handed him to the Czech woman for 316 koruna (kc). I am sure he didn't expect to end up here when I found him at an ATM in Chatham, New York. But Jackson's a hearty fellow. He will find his way.
We drove on to find no tolls. Instead we found banners across every overpass advertising a casino with 500,000 Euro winnings each night guaranteed, an auto grill, and T-mobile. Freedom didn't waste any time in making people rich. Twenty years and she is undoubtedly now raising a generation who are lavishly spending their parents money. But most of that wealth I am sure is paying for yachts, expensive German cars, and houses in the hills well outside of the Czech Republic. Maybe in Garmisch. Maybe Corfu. Maybe the Catskills.
As we drove on, we found massive solar farms, just over the bushes lining the highway. I could get a peak just long enough to be sure I saw it. When I find myself pointing it out to my sleepy passenger, it is gone. And I woke her up for nothing. There are huge fields, acres of solar panels, lined up to the South like a huge army fortifying itself for future endeavors. A huge army enjoying the sunlight as the shadows from the Iron Curtain recede.
And then there are sunflowers. Too many to count. Hundreds of acres of them. They stand sentinel, at attention, heads poised toward the sun, anxiously awaiting a command that never comes. They stand like that day in and day out, following the sun from East to West. I wonder what happens when it rains. Do the sunflower heads hurry all different directions like children in the schoolyard minutes after the final bell of the school year rings to announce summer? No more lines and neat rows, no more good penmanship or ready answers to impress an all powerful teacher. Teacher, leave those kids alone.
The shadows of my imagination, fed since childhood on images of the evils of fascism—iron fists, iron curtains, concrete, drab, colorless, lifeless, no freedom to imagine, no individuality, no expression—fade as we drive further. A blunt object always helps sharpen a knife. I suppose my training in American patriotism was against the blunt object of Communism, as depicted by Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. As we approach Prague, the knife feels blunt and rusty, like something you would find among beer bottles and old tin cans from a miners' camp in the mountains of Colorado or deserts of Western Australia. Mostly, nobody who carried these tools ever found any gold. And if they did, they certainly didn't strike it rich.
Once in Prague, it feels more touristy than Amsterdam and more commercialized than anywhere we have been in Western Europe. Certainly somebody found gold here. And it was probably in my lifetime. But I am sure it was the usual characters and they don't use knifes and tin cans anymore. But alas, this is the first night in Prague, so we will see what emerges in our next four days. Maybe I will find some gold here myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment