Blitzkrieg to Berlin

So, it’s true what they say about the highways in Germany: there are no speed limits, and no rules. The autobahn is a place where natural law rules out over common decency and logic; where motors rev and brake lights seem a figment of a past universe. I’m riding shotgun with Nuno at present, and I again will commend him on his responsible and competent piloting of our craft in the face of tremendous aggression. We have been hanging out mostly in the far right and middle lanes as moderation dictates, all the while watching Audis, Bmws, Mercedes, and even the odd ambitious Peugeot shoot by like bullets fired from guns. This is our Blietzkrieg to Berlin, so to speak.

We left our hotel in Frankfurt around 9:30 this morning, and I’ve quite enjoyed the drive thus far. The German countryside is extremely scenic, and marked in many places by dense forestry – so dense that at times the sun struggles to pierce the canopy to shine on the soil. Also something worth noting is the abundance of those huge three-pronged windmills, made for catching and storing wind energy. I wanted to call them propellers, but windmills is probably the more accepted term. These huge structures pepper the horizon in numbers, and are quite a feat of engineering. It’s a good thing to see this, because it means people over here are getting the picture on alternative energy. I can only think of a couple places in the states that employ these, most memorably near Palm Springs, 3 hours east of Los Angeles.

I’ve taken over DJ duties for our trek today, spinning a variety of Black Sabbath, Michael Jackson, The Doors, The Cold War Kids, The Beastie Boys, Blonde Redhead, and a mixture of others. It’s been a pretty good little mix in my opinion. I even tried to listen to the WolfMother (one word? Two words?) album, but couldn’t really get through it. I liked them live a lot more than recorded, I’ve concluded. Right now we have about an hour and a half left our drive, and are now in straight up old-school eastern-bloc territory. I love it. I feel like a communist…..er something.

One thing that I have found somewhat disturbing today is the frequent Mcdonald’s sightings along the autobahn. I figure if you have people driving over 100mph (I don’t know what that is in Km/hr), you shouldn’t encourage any impulses which would cause a quick change in direction. The thought of a delicious Big Mac could lead to utter catastrophe if not checked by the proper amount of road awareness. Seriously though, I don’t want to see a Mcdonald’s once every thirty minutes. It’s just the same as driving up to Boston and being bombarded by golden arch after golden arch the entire way. It’s distracting! And fattening! Call me a hypocrite, but I did in fact just enjoy a delicious bratwurst for lunch at a little petrol station. Bratwurst is everywhere in this country, and I love it. I guess Germans might even think of this cuisine as their own localized version of Mcdonald’s, purely on account of its ubiquity and its cultural underpinnings.

Despite the abundance of Brats, I have yet to see anyone where leiderhozen. This upsets me a bit. Although, some of the towns we passed today on the ol’ autobahn must have had some proud leiderhozen wearers. These towns were small, quaint, and each one looked like it could have been the original birthplace of Augustus Gloup, that poor boy who got sucked up into Willy Wonka’s chocolate river piping system. I’ll never forget him.