The Aerie
Back now from Leipzig and Prague. I spent Sunday morning at the convention, then left the boys there and went back to the hotel to pack and get us out of the room. Then Theresa and Gennie and I toured Leipzig and had lunch to pass the time while we waited for the convention to end. We saw Bach's grave, and Goethe's statue, had lunch at a terrific little cafe while an old German man serenaded the square with soft guitar music (we tipped him well because everything he did was great. Except when he decided to sing Clapton's "You Look Wonderful Tonight," a song meant to be crooned softly, not bellowed across a square in a thick German accent).
We picked up the boys at the convention center when the convention ended, and that worked like a charm. There was a streetlight-tall sculpture of a rose right in front, so I told them to meet me at the rose when the place closed, and as I was walking up from one side they were walking up from the other. Fabulous.
Twenty four hours have passed and I am just about recovered from the trip. The journey til then was, as regular readers know, extremely stressful, and the journey back from Leipzig was no different.
Once again my eyeballs were turning yellow, (one thing you learn in travel is to always know where the next toilet is and I hadn't been able to find the one indicated on the map of Leipzig), so while the rest of the 186,000 convention attendees crowded up the counter at the McDonald's across the street, my family invaded the restrooms. Thus refreshed, we attempted to reach the freeway immediately adjacent to the McDonalds.
We followed a little red Ford hatchback that seemed to know where it was going, but this was a false hope. He wandered from pillar to post behind a bunch of strip malls, but eventually we stumbled upon the freeway.
We zoomed down the autobahn and caught the freeway that would take us south to Neumarkt, and when we saw the next McDonald's sign we exited to feed the boys, who had been too obsessed to eat while at the convention. I thought our idea of driving 30 kilometers to find another McDonald's was a clever one, but so did the other 200 convention attendees at the counter in front of us. Nonetheless we eventually got our food from the very nice lady behind the counter, and then I spent a few minutes setting up the laptop in the car to play a DVD for the kids. This ended up working really well.
We got on the freeway well-fed, watered or de-watered as the case may have been, the DVD playing the westering sun shining, ready for a three-hour trip home, and no national borders to attempt to cross. Everything was perfect.
It couldn't last.
Not more than ten kilometers down the road, traffic came to a terrifying stop. Well, it wasn't an accident or anything, it was just that it was stopped, and it looked to stay stopped for a long time. I started having flashbacks to Munich, when the stop-and-go traffic continued for forty or fifty miles, and my left leg almost fell off from riding the clutch.
The traffic went on for quite a while and I was considering getting a motel rather than drive this way for another 10 km, but finally we saw the Road Construction sign that indicated the cause to the problem. Two kilometers later and traffic narrowed to two lanes in either direction. Patiently we shuttllled down the narrow channel, anticipating the freedom at the other end, and soon enough it opened up! The pedal went to the floor, and the car surged forward!
Two kilometers later it stopped again. A few kilometers further, more road construction. Then it opened up. Then we hit more road construction.
The sun went down. Fog rolled in. It began to rain.
I found myself driving down a narrow channel between construction walls, with mere inches of clearance on either side of the van. I kept having to choose between going 30 mph in the right lane behind a semi, or going 45 in the left lane to try to PASS the semi, its lugnuts whirling like Ben Hur's spiked chariot axles only inches from the fender. The idea of motels waxed strongly.
And then... although I didn't know it... it was done. All at once the road construction stopped, the rain let up, and it even got a little lighter for a while. I don't know what had changed, but we were through and after fifteen minutes or so I dared hope we might get home the same evening.
We passed through areas thick with those wind-generation turbines, like some surreal spinning forest. I read today that Germany leads the world with a full 6% of domestic power produced thus, and more planned out at sea. Wow!
Zooming down the road in the autobahn, I tell you, it keeps you awake. The left lane is a constant struggle for position among increasingly fast drivers: pull in front of the wrong person at the wrong time and they'll park in your trunk. And unless you're really confident and knowledgeable of the road, you risk losing control while changing lanes.
When they're available, the middle lane can be a good compromise. Sometimes you end up passing slower cars on the left, merging into that competitive high-speed zone for a while; sometimes you end up pulling to the right to let faster drivers in the middle lane pass you. In some ways its more relaxed, but in others it's twice as complex: when the roads are wet, the middle lane is the worst because when you're not passing others are passing you, and one car out of control will take others with it.
But even the right lane is not safe. At one point I found myself in the rightmost of three lanes, driving 100 mph, and having faster cars overtake me... in the RIGHT lane. Sure I didn't have to go that fast, but the more you break with the traffic flow, the more you risk a multi-car accident as cars pass you. All of it has to be balanced together, and let me tell you, that keeps you awake.
So I remained alert as we tore south on the A9 at an average speed (after the road construction) of 95 mph, or 152 kilometers per hour. About halfway there we re-entered the part of the map that the navigation computer acknowledged existed, and soon we had a countdown till home (to say nothing of a little added info about the road ahead. When you're going 95 mph, it is helpful to see in advance that the road is going to bear right or left in a couple of miles.
Finally we exited to Neumarkt and rolled into the driveway, a full four hours after leaving Leipzig. The diesel manual transmission minivan only used about a quarter tank of gas.
Today has been very restful. We slept very late, aided by gray gloomy skies that rained constantly. The rain was welcome as it freed us from any belief that we ought to be out seeing Germany a bit on our last three days. No, it was nice to work on my trip photos (fully updated at right), and do some laundry in preparation for our trip home.
Tomorrow we will be having lunch with the Burgermeister, and maybe in the evening inviting some neighbors over again. Wednesday maybe we'll pack and visit Nuremburg if we feel ambitious, and then on Thursday, the long flight home.
I'll be sure we have our passports.
Posted by Albatross at August 28, 2006 4:26 PM | TrackBack