Europe @ 2.4 km/h (25 page)

Mike and I are enjoying a stein or two (that weighty contribution to beer-drinking pleasure) at Munich’s Augustiner Keller when I read in a leaflet picked up at the hostel that Bavaria’s 1516 Purity Law mandating barley, hops and water as the sole ingredients in beer — a measure the rest of Germany adopted after unification in 1871 — has been overruled by European law, provoking a public outcry and calls to leave the Union. German brewers still pride themselves on sticking to the simple formula, and on this one I’m with them.
Prost
!

721–723 km

‘There’s a lot of ol’ tat in Altotting,’ Mike remarks as we glance at a window full of religious trinkets on the edge of this Bavarian town’s main square. But the Chapel of Our Lady (Marienkappel), in the centre of the square, is anything but trivial. Munich would dispute it, of course, but Altotting is ‘the heart of Bavaria’, which is to say rural, intensely conservative, unswervingly Catholic.

In Altötting a tourist trail has opened, called the Benediktweg (Benedict Path). In 1489 the Virgin Mary is credited with having performed two miracles in this town that dates back to at least the eighth century. In the past five centuries 50,000 votive tablets have been placed at Marienkappel, of which 1845 are on display today. Called ‘miracle boards’, they express thanks to Mary for cures and other tidings of joy attributed to her intercession.

It’s best I lay my cards on the table at this point. I will not presume to analyse whether ‘miracles’, supernatural events which repel my rational mind, actually occurred. I cannot decide and would not dissuade. But I do recognise how important it is to many people’s faith to believe in their existence.

In we file. The interior is a study in light and shade. A series of silver ornaments illuminate the altar beneath a sign that says,
Bei der
Mutter Sind wir zu Hause
! (We are at home with the Mother!) The sight of one old woman in a headscarf looking quietly grief-stricken will stay with me as long as memory functions. They come here to pray for deliverance from grievous illness or distress of all kinds.

In a foreword to the
Altötting City Guide
written in January 2005, Joseph Aloysius Ratzinger waxes lyrical about the nearest big town when he was growing up, describing it as ‘… a place of festive liturgy … a place of hospitality, a place where you can spoil your body’. I’m thinking that when the pontiff-in-waiting recommends you go somewhere to ‘spoil your body’ it’s time for a new system of papal election, or at least a new translator.

Grüß Gott!
— it means Praise be to God! or
Allah o-Akbar
, according to your linguistic preference — is a common Bavarian exclamation. Not long after Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, it was used with more reverence than usual when the former Archbishop of Munich flew over Altotting. While waiting for the flight, a TV commentator, padding out as they do, told viewers ‘the pilot has seven children, all by the same woman’. Bavarians apparently understood this as a typical piece of north German Protestant irreverence, but it may just have been that the announcer borrowed his one-liners from Prince Philippe of Belgium.

Joseph Ratzinger would later cite his having been baptised on Easter Saturday as a sign of Providence’s favour. His parents’ names were Maria and Joseph — which for a Christian could be claimed as an even greater sign of God’s favour — but perhaps the Pope felt that to have pointed this out would have been big-noting himself. Other roads may lead to Rome but the Benediktweg logically brings you to the double-storey white-stone building, neither poor nor pretentious, in which he was born. It had long since passed out of the Ratzinger family when on 19 April 2005 Joseph Aloysius became the first German Pope in 950 years.

Mike says ‘the local Catholics wanted to buy it from this lady who owned it and she didn’t want to sell it. People didn’t like her for not selling it because they thought it was her duty. The story went around that she was holding out for more money. I don’t think she was, but eventually so much money was offered that she gave it up.’

I am agog to see how the museum will deal with the Pope’s time in the Hitler Youth. An information plaque is candid enough (obviously the decision has been taken that to conceal this part of his curriculum vitae would have been dishonest). There is even a photo of him in his Hitler Youth uniform in the booklet on sale from reception
²¹
where under the heading ‘Stages in Life’ it simply states, ‘1943-45 War Service (flak [manning anti-aircraft guns,
Flakhelfer
] in Munich, work duty and infantry barracks in Traunstein) and imprisonment in Bad Aibling and Ulm’.

Mike explains how the German Pope differs most from his Polish predecessor. ‘John Paul II was a global priest who believed in the emotionalism of religion. Ratzinger believes his primary mission is to restore Christianity in the heartland of Europe, where he sees secularism and modernity as the greatest threats to faith.’

There is considerable evidence that Europe has turned away from religion. The Catholic Church itself is concerned by how few candidates there are for the priesthood.

Another Benedict, the fifth-century founder of Western monasticism, aimed at bringing Europeans back to God. Benedict XVI, who visited his birthplace on 11 September a year ago, is unashamedly Eurocentric and still fighting that battle fifteen centuries later.

Mike drives back to Altotting and Regina’s mother’s house, which is large, comfortable and inviting. We dine in the garden, and afterwards I slump in front of the TV. On this journey in which, for all its excitement, I am cast as the eternal transient it is rare to enjoy home cooking and unfeigned hospitality. Mike and Regina — a cell biology researcher at University College, London, who often returns home to be with her ailing mother — have made this the most contented time of my whole trip, and I am grateful for it.

723-724 km

We proceed southwards, Mike again at the wheel, through the impressive medieval town of Tittmoning, towards the Austrian border. Our destination is Berchtesgaden, where the Eagle’s Nest (Martin Bormann’s 50th-birthday present of a log cabin to Hitler) was built. Since the Führer didn’t get much leisure time after 1938, he didn’t really enjoy the use of it — and in any case it no longer exists — but visitors flock here today for a bird’s-eye view, of history and the Alps.

On this first day of September we are escorted to the border by drizzle that, once we are there, intensifies into heavy showers. Before ascending Mt Kehlstein, site of Hitler’s cabin and today’s reconstruction, we stop in the village of Obersalzberg-Hintereck, the Third Reich’s alternative power centre, and in the museum there exercise our imaginations as we explore underground tunnels and barrel-vaulted bunkers built for leading party officials in the event of
Götterdämmerung.
Which duly came to them, but in Berlin.

Outside the museum we board a bus that takes us, by corkscrew turns, to the summit of Mount Kehlstein, at 1837 metres above sea level or about the same height at Mount Bogong in the Australian Alps. A gold-plated lift rises 124 metres through solid rock. Up above, they say you can see the Austrian city of Salzburg on a clear day. Today the view is of heavy fog rolling down one slope, light mist billowing up the other, and on a green slope in the middle distance — unbelievably — pools of sunlight. The following day I ring Dad and mention the rather unsettling fact that on our visit the Eagle’s Nest lift operator had a pencil moustache. Quick as a shot for all his 87 years, Dad asks, ‘Did you happen to notice if he had a lock of hair hanging over one eye?’

724-728 km

Mike sees me off at Altotting Station. He’s staying on for one more day before flying back to England; I will take the opportunity to see more of Munich’s sights.

A plaque inside the Jesuits’ church, Michaelskirche, reminds me that in the First World War the Germans, too, thought God was on their side: 9000 officers and more than 2000 junior officers and privates prayed here at the church before trooping off to ‘
dabei
fanden den Tod
'.

734-737 km

Near the great gate of Karlstor, three classical-music buskers are busted by city police in what seems, to my naive mind, a heavy-handed action. The violinist tells me afterwards that the fine is €250 but they got off with a warning this time. The trio say they will seriously consider applying for a licence. And how much would that cost? Fifteen euro.

Table for five, please, at one of Munich’s great gorging experiences, the Augustiner Brauhaus. The party consists of ‘Kaiser Tom’ from the Wombat Hostel’s reception desk, a colleague of his, their girlfriends and myself. I have the pork knuckle, get horribly under the weather and manage to sleep it off, dead (if not to the world, at least) to the party raging downstairs at the hostel bar.

743-748 km

Kaiser Tom tells me that Munich’s 417 hectare Englischer Garten is Europe’s biggest public park and not to be missed. Ambling through it from north to south takes up half the afternoon but it’s time well spent amid green fields and burbling brooks, a world apart from what is otherwise a gritty urban environment.

At the park’s southern edge a violent thunderstorm overtakes me. Somewhere nearby, where waves gush into the park from a subterranean stream, young men in wetsuits regularly ride the rapids. Hundreds of kilometres from the nearest surf beach, this was always going to be worth seeing but now, surely, no one else would be outdoors in such vile weather? Wrong. There they are, under the bridge, six super-fit lunatics, boogie boards in tow, being cheered on by a clutch of spectators huddled under umbrellas.