Eventually, after taking a wrong turning out of Ansbach and being compelled to enquire the way of one of the witches of the field, we arrived at Rothenburg about four o’clock. This town surpasses belief. It is as though all the goblin haunts, palaces and fortress towers of fairyland were writhing in an elongated distortion glass; and yet, unlike those of Nuremberg, they ring true. There is a subtle distinction between the two towns. Both are visited by tourists, but Rothenberg by Germans only. Whereas Nuremberg is a conglomeration of all dates and styles, Rothenburg was built in the later Middle Ages and not a stone has been added or subtracted since. Her buildings are the more preposterous, but they do not suffer from that clustering ornamentation reminiscent of Burmese temples, with which the gables of Nuremberg are loaded. Rothenburg is a complete walled ‘burg’ of the Middle Ages. The walls have remained intact; at them, therefore, the town ends. In the fields beyond struggle one or two pink villas; that is all.
Entrance is effected through a series of gatehouses that are in themselves scarcely credible. From a central archway radiate two arc-shaped walls ending in a couple of round flanking turrets, with high-pitched, conical roofs. Over the actual gateway rises a tower, square in shape, and over sixty feet in height, up which runs a succession of little windows; while at the top, under the projecting eaves of a twisted and pagoda-like tiled roof, is a tiny house, having a row of these windows back and front, each embowered with a window-box. From one depends a string, on the end of which is a basket in which to haul up food. Here, surely, is a domicile reached only on a broomstick. In reality it is probably the dwelling of a neatly-dressed jeweller’s assistant, newly married, who, owing to the housing shortage, is obliged to live either with his mother-in-law, or up 130 stairs.
The streets of the town shelve and twist like mountain paths. The roofs of the houses reach as high and half as high again as the walls on which they rest. Every window has its window-box, filled with geraniums, lobelia, and marguerites. At the end of the town furthest from the gate by which we entered, runs a street of magnificent old stone houses, into the front walls of which have been built, haphazard, the painted escutcheons of their former owners. One of these was erected by the Emperor Henry IV.
Groups of Wandervögel, with their bare necks and knees, were to be seen at every corner, making sketches. While David and Simon sat in a café, I also attempted, very unsuccessfully, to draw the town hall. Such, however, was the smell of the crowds of Wandervögel who insisted on looking over my shoulder, that I was eventually thankful to see Diana driving down the street to take me away.
Of all the fantastic, outlandish forms of medieval artistic expression that have come down to us, the Bavarian style of architecture is the most eccentric. That a perfect example of a complete town of the period should have survived in its entirety, unaltered, undemolished and unextended, in the heart of the country over which the Reformation and the counter-Reformation carried fire and sword, and the Thirty Years War cannibalism and polygamy, is one of the miracles of history. Considering her absence of natural defences and the vicissitudes that she has endured, the phenomenon of Rothenburg’s conservation is without parallel in Europe.
CHAPTER V
WHEN WE LEFT ENGLAND, the fashionable intelligentsia were all preparing their descent on Salzburg to attend the Mozart Festival, the production of which had been entrusted to M. Reinhardt. Either for the sake of their musical education, or simply for the purpose of meeting various friends, David and Simon had also decided to honour this feast in the musical calendar with their presence. In any case we left Nuremberg at half-past ten on Saturday morning for Austria.
David had arranged to lunch with a Hungarian baron, who, despite the fact that he himself possesses large estates in his own country and his wife in hers, which is Roumania, was spending the summer in Munich. Unfortunately we arrived an hour-and-a-half late, and he was gone. David telephoned his apologies to his mother. On the way we had had our first puncture, and had taken some time to change the wheel, as we were unable to find the jack. This had been strapped under the bonnet. Later, while travelling at sixty miles an hour down a very long stretch of straight road, a large white cock had stalked sedately out in front of us and emitted a sharp ping as we cut off his head with the front number-plate. At Ingolstadt we had crossed the Danube.
The main streets of Munich are magnificent. Their architecture is contemporary with that of the English Regency, the golden age of town planning. The architect who built them, under the auspices of King Ludwig, did not allow pediment and ornamental pillar to play so prominent a part in his design as in the English style, and favoured the purely Greek cornice ornamented with small upright acroteria in the shape of oriental fans. It is to be hoped that the destinies of the city are not ruled by a County Council and an Office of Works that are intent on destroying any national monument that happens to rest upon a lease.
We lunched, half fainting, at the best hotel, and had a ham omelette and some Rhine wine.
We left at about three o’clock and began ascending the mountains, eventually coming down on Wasserburg, which resembles from above a miniature Venice, being situated on several islands in the middle of the Inn, which here broadens to the dimensions of a small lake. We had reached the very centre of the town, when another puncture occurred beneath the spreading trees of a little triangular green. The whole population poured out like an audience from a burning cinema, until we were encircled by a pushing, chattering crowd, which pressed so close that it was impossible to turn the jack or fix the wheel without jolting some inquisitively bent bare knee that might have seen anything from two to eighty summers.
From Wasserburg we ascended steadily, and the cottages and churches developed eaves and onion domelets in the Austro-Swiss manner. A mile from the frontier the petrol gave out. Recourse was had to the spare tank; and the suitcases, books, and hats were strewn all over the neighbouring fields in our enraged efforts to unearth it. At this moment another car appeared. Alarmed at the scene of wreckage, it stopped to enquire and stayed to chat. The driver, enveloped like the rest of his party in a white dust sheet, said that his name was Tomaselli. He commended us by note to the proprietor of the Hotel de l’Europe, where, we told him, we had engaged rooms. David believed him to be a famous Italian singer; while I had an idea that he was a well-known racing motorist. It turned out that he kept a café in Salzburg. The proprietor was rather sniffy.
At the frontiers, which were divided by a wooden bridge that spanned a rushing river, we were obliged to wait an hour, while David attempted to argue back the exorbitant deposit that he had paid on the two spare outer covers at Hamburg. The head official then discovered that there was not enough money in the office to meet the demand. He promised to have it ready on Monday. Meanwhile Simon and I walked backwards and forwards over the heavy wooden planks of the bridge. There is something absurd about a land frontier. The guards seemed to know all the local residents as they walked across the bridge driving animals, or on their way to visit friends. The Austrian douanier was at a village dance and had to be fetched. He was so anxious to return that he did not examine our trunks, though astonished at their quantity. We assured him that they contained nothing but clothes.
The first thing that we were told on at last reaching Salzburg was that the Festival did not begin until Wednesday. David was furious, Simon indifferent. Personally, after driving six hundred and fifty miles in the last three days I looked forward to a quiet weekend.
That evening after dinner, we went out into the garden and watched some dancing on a tiled floor laid down beneath the trees, from which depended large and unbecoming electric light bulbs. The band was not expert, and the atmosphere not unlike that of a provincial palais-de-danse on a Monday afternoon.
The next morning we were awakened by the incessant shunting of trams at the station over the road, varied by the strains of a numerous brass band, which paraded the streets with sabbatarian exuberance from 9 till 12. David turned over and went to sl
eep. Seizing sketch book and pencil, I rose out of bed, and seating myself on the balcony, revenged myself on Salzburg with an uncomplimentary drawing of the station and one factory chimney.
The remainder of our Sunday we spent in the conventional manner. During the afternoon Simon and I wrote letters to our mothers; and later, when the heat had abated, we set out for our Sabbath walk. We had intended scaling one of the mountains with which the town is oppressively overhung. The hotel advised us to take a tram to Plazl for this purpose. We did so, and it set us down in the middle of the town, by the river. Passing through an archway we began the ascent of a steep and rocky footpath, on the right-hand side of which, set back in wire-faced grottos cut out of the cliff, were twelve life-size ‘Stations of the Cross’ in hideously realistic painted plaster. The path continued, until we were suddenly confronted by a wooden door labelled in Gothic ‘Mozart’s House’. Turning back precipitately, we wandered disconsolately about the suburbs in company with many others – courting couples, happy families, and grand-dads and -dams. It was still extraordinarily hot. Persevering, we reached the country, and giving up the idea of mountains, sank into a primitive beer-garden. The inn-keeper, in shorts and a Tyrolese hat, was talking to a friend, in the same costume, smoking a long and curly German pipe. Two or three Alsatians loafed about, free from their daily labour of drawing little hand-carts. A buxom gal brought us beer and was forced to accept our German money in payment. We sat beneath a chestnut tree and felt very happy. Then we walked home. Simon, in neat plus fours and loud chocolate-and-white stockings, was an object of admiration. The plus four has ‘caught on’ in Germany and Austria, and bank clerks wear it.
That evening we again watched the dancing in the garden. It was enlivened by a Viennese waltz, to which everyone danced the old six step with a little hop in the middle – all except one exclusive party who sat ostentatiously aloof until the next foxtrot. This party contained amongst others a handsome old man in a white moustache, who was referred to as the Baron, and an extremely good-looking woman, with copper, shingled hair, and a tight-fitting dress of red and gold. In my eyes, however, their pre-eminence in the world of fashion was dissolved when next day I found the woman’s portrait peering slyly from the window of the local photographer.
On Monday morning I visited the cathedral and also an unusual Gothic church supported by high, thin, round pillars like factory chimneys; then breakfasted in the Residenzplatz. This is a large open space with an elaborate fountain in the middle; to one side is the Residenz, a long, creamy and very simple baroque building with an archway in the middle; on another the cathedral; and flanking it, a tall tower and a shady row of chestnut trees. From the former there suddenly issued a melancholy, quavering old tune, wafted on the hot, still air by an ancient peal of bells. Everyone showed great interest and looked up, though there was nothing to see. This was followed by an organ recital in the cathedral, where I was able to get cool, until two enormous women, smelling of dentifrice, came and sat down on top of me. On the way back David picked me up in the car.
After lunch we left for Innsbruck. Though both Innsbruck and. Salzburg are in Austria, the geographical vagaries of the district make it necessary to pass over a tongue of Germany if a hundred-mile detour is to be avoided. This meant, therefore, returning along the road by which we had come and crossing four separate frontier barriers. Naturally the money equivalent to the Hamburg deposit, promised on Saturday night, was not ready, and there was a delay while it was fetched. During this we talked to one of the German guards. He said that he had been in prison for three-and-a-half years at Dorchester. It was a source of tremendous pleasure to him to talk about it. He had had to work; the English were good fighters in the trenches; it was all over now, and must never happen again. He spoke not a word of English. The Austrian sentries wear khaki, the Germans bottle-green.
We passed at first through gigantic mountains. The road wound up their pine-covered declivities, until it was impossible to look over the side of the car without feeling dizzy. The colours were attractive, though not beautiful; very rich green grass fields, usually perpendicular, on which could be seen men hanging by one hand and reaping with the other; then the pinewoods, a deeper, blacker green; and at the top, great white faces of rock stretching up into the blue sky, very little of which was visible. Some of the summits were snow-covered.
The fact that this was the Tyrol was emphasised by a special local customs barrier, which charged a pound to let Diana enter the province. The delay enabled us to have a drink of soda water.
We reached Innsbruck as it was growing misty. The town lies at the foot of enormous mountains. It is uninteresting and almost squalid, catering for native as much as foreign tourists. It has the same atmosphere of bustling trippers as Keswick, the centre of the English mountain district.
The hotel, the Tyrolerhof, smelt strongly of rice pudding, and was adorned with clocks under glass shades. After a long, late dinner, we were sitting half asleep in the reading-room, when it was invaded by some forty American women, each one with a voice like a surgical knife, accompanied by two men and a boy. While I was reaching for my spectacles which were on the table, a member of the party neatly slipped herself in between my upraised knees and the seat of my armchair. She was middle-aged with a strong, efficient face, and had had, I hope, an unhappy married life. She wore a toque adorned with flattened pansies. The men proceeded to make speeches, setting forth the course of action for the morrow, like Roman generals ‘exhorting’ their troops. As the ceremony continued, we laughed so much that we had to retire. A woman had sat next to us at dinner in a dress of cheap, brown tussore, printed with green and yellow boxes in perspective, so that she might have been covered with angular warts. These danced before my eyes long into the night.
CHAPTER VI
THE DAY OF OUR DEPARTURE from Innsbruck was to prove the most harassing twelve hours of the whole tour. It was only the persistence of David, who argued without ceasing in French and German from twelve o’clock midday until eight at night, that prevented the complete collapse of all our plans.
An hour’s driving brought us to the Italian frontier. The road ascended the mountains in a series of alarming bends, each of which disclosed a drop of five hundred to a thousand feet as we skidded round the outside edge. However, we reached the Brenner Pass, four thousand feet up, without changing gear. Here it was as pleasantly cool as Innsbruck had been hot and dusty. Earlier in the morning I had visited the cathedral and purchased a belt. Unfortunately this was incapable of refined adjustment, and it threatened either to cut me in half or let my trousers drop to the knee.
The Austrian barrier was passed with little difficulty. We drove brightly across the 100 yards of no-man’s land and stopped before the Italian. Here was a great to-do. A very new marble monument, about the size of a pillar-box, enclosed in a quadrangle of railings, proclaimed that this was now Italy. Upon its face was the following inscription:
Q.B.F.F.F.S.
Italiae et
Austriae
Terminus
Sangermanensi
Foedere
Consecratus
X. IX. MCMXIX.
Further on stood an enlarged chalet, festooned with green, white and red flags. The pole across the road was painted in similar colours. And two upstanding flagstaffs wafted their triumphant nationalism from mounds on either side of it.
The customs men in their grey-green uniforms and Robin Hood hats, small, surly and very dirty, contrasted strongly with the benign Austrians, who still stood looking after us from the threshold of their office door. Our passports having been examined, one of the officials stepped on board and we drove through the barrier and down to the customs house, which was at the railway station on the left of the road. There was a train in at the time and we had to wait our turn. I changed my kronen into lire and Simon and I drank two pennyworth of red wine in the third-class waiting-room. Everyone to whom we spoke a syllable of Italian answered in German, and vice versa
.
Suddenly we saw David hurrying towards us. They were refusing to let us pass without paying the full deposit on the car – in the neighbourhood of four hundred pounds. The reason was that the preliminary declaration by the customs of the country of origin had not been filled in. This was the fault of the leaden-headed official who had arrived two hours late at Grimsby. We all three returned to the breach; but it was useless. The man waved his printed instructions in our faces. We left the office, and jumping into Diana, raced back to the barrier on bottom gear, making a great deal of noise to show our annoyance. The sentries seemed to resent such peculiar behaviour, as if our return were due simply to English eccentricity. They re-stamped our passports, and we passed on to the Austrian barrier, still on bottom gear, although the road sloped downhill. We were in despair. All our letters and the Greek laissez-passer were waiting in Rome; and here we were apparently condemned either to return to England or remain north of the Alps for ever.
The Austrians, however, took a different view. Declining to reduce their books and our passports to confusion, they ridiculed the Italians and their tawdry frontier decorations flapping in the wind a hundred yards up the valley.
‘Since they’ve come this side of the mountains they’ve been above themselves,’ they said – Austrian interests having suffered considerably in the Brenner district when the northern frontiers were revised. And so, in revenge for the Great War, the Austrians, with complete irrelevance, plastered their stamps and signatures on the Carnet in the place of the missing Grimsby declaration.
Much amused we crossed the strip of neutral territory once more. This time the Italians made no attempt to conceal their disgust at our reappearance. For the third time they befouled our passports and their own registers, and with the same official on board we drove down to the customs once again. The officer was not deceived; nor was he amused. He insisted that we must have the English voucher.
Europe in the Looking Glass Page 4