April 28, 1999
In Germany.
After a restless, uncomfortable, endless train ride from Naples. About 700
miles. A scheduled twelve-hour journey. Took about thirteen. At night. In a
crowded compartment. With functional restrooms only in other cars. Not the most fun I had on my journeys.
At the
Munich airport, after screwing up my train connections from the city to the
airport, I rented a Volkswagen Golf (stick shift—so glad I’d always owned such
devices) and drove to Karlsruhe, about 190 miles northwest, a trip that took me
only about three hours on the Autobahn, an experience I wrote about in my
journal a little later that day.
The speed limits on the Autobahn are 120K
[about 75 mph], but the only vehicles which move more slowly than that are
vehicles which simply can’t go 100 mph.
Oh yes, the
Autobahn. Here’s a duh-comment: Things happen swiftly at 100 mph. There’s no
looking in your outside mirror, say, seeing behind you a car at what ought to
be a safe distance, pulling out to pass or change lanes. That approaching car
is by you while you’re making your
mental calculations.
Oh, and when
I was there, the Germans did not seem to have (or to be enforcing) emission
standards. Trucks and buses stank,
reminding me of the long car trips I took in boyhood with my family, inhaling rank
(and cancerous) exhaust from trucks or a Greyhound ahead of us on an upgrade.
Anyway, I
arrived safely in Karlsruhe. And why was I there? My journal says: The weather looks decent for the next couple
of days, so I planned out some leisurely activities along the Rhine.
Among those
activities: A drive to Ingolstadt, home of the university attended by Victor
Frankenstein—and where he created his creature. Mary had been in Germany twice—once
on the return portion of her elopement misadventure with Bysshe in 1814, a
second time, with her son Percy Florence Shelley, in 1842. On neither journey
did she visit Ingolstadt.
I also
planned a Rhine boat cruise. And, of course, a visit to Gernsheim and its nearby castle
once occupied by the family Frankenstein.
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| Munich (lower right) and Karlsruhe (upper left) |
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