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Around the World on a Bicycle V1

T >> Thomas Stevens >> Around the World on a Bicycle V1




The day is most lovely, the fields are deserted, and the roads and
villages are alive with holiday-making peasants. In every village a tall
pole is erected, and decorated from top to bottom with small flags and
evergreen wreaths. The little stone churches and the adjoining cemeteries
are filled with worshippers chanting in solemn chorus; not so preoccupied
with their devotional exercises and spiritual meditations, however, as
to prevent their calling one another's attention to me as I wheel past,
craning their necks to obtain a better view, and, in one instance, an
o'er-inquisitive worshipper even beckons for me to stop - this person both
chanting and beckoning vigorously at the same time.

Now my road leads through forests of dark firs; and here I overtake a
procession of some fifty peasants, the men and women alternately chanting
in weird harmony as they trudge along the road. The men are bareheaded,
carrying their hats in hand. Many of the women are barefooted, and the
pedal extremities of others are incased in stockings of marvellous
pattern; not any are wearing shoes. All the colors of the rainbow are
represented in their respective costumes, and each carries a large
umbrella strapped at his back; they are trudging along at quite a brisk
pace, and altogether there is something weird and fascinating about the
whole scene: the chanting and the surroundings. The variegated costumes
of the women are the only bright objects amid the gloominess of the dark
green pines. As I finally pass ahead, the unmistakable expressions of
interest on the faces of the men, and the even rows of ivories displayed
by the women, betray a diverted attention.

Near noon I arrive at the antiquated town of Dachau, and upon repairing
to the gasthaus, an individual in a last week's paper collar, and with
general appearance in keeping, comes forward and addresses me in quite
excellent English, and during the dinner hour answers several questions
concerning the country and the natives so intelligently that, upon
departing, I ungrudgingly offer him the small tip customary on such
occasions in Germany. "No, Whitsuntide in Bavaria. I thank you, very
muchly," he replies, smiling, and shaking his head. "I am not an employe
of the hotel, as you doubtless think; I am a student of modern languages
at the Munich University, visiting Dauhau for the day." Several soldiers
playing billiards in the room grin broadly in recognition of the ludicrousness
situation; and I must confess that for the moment I feel like asking one of
them to draw his sword and charitably prod me out of the room. The unhappy
memory of having, in my ignorance, tendered a small tip to a student of the
Munich University will cling around me forever. Nevertheless, I feel that after
all there are extenuating circumstances - he ought to change his paper collar
occasionally.

An hour after noon I am industriously dodging loose flints on the level
road leading across the Isar River Valley toward Munich; the Tyrolese
Alps loom up, shadowy and indistinct, in the distance to the southward,
their snowy peaks recalling memories of the Rockies through which I was
wheeling exactly a year ago. While wending my way along the streets
toward the central portion of the Bavarian capital the familiar sign,
"American Cigar Store," looking like a ray of light penetrating through
the gloom and mystery of the multitudinous unreadable signs that surround
it, greets my vision, and I immediately wend my footsteps thitherward.
I discover in the proprietor, Mr. Walsch, a native of Munich, who, after
residing in America for several years, has returned to dream away declining
years amid the smoke of good cigars and the quaffing of the delicious
amber beer that the brewers of Munich alone know how to brew. Then who
should happen in but Mr. Charles Buscher, a thorough-going American;
from Chicago, who is studying art here at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts,
and who straightway volunteers to show me Munich.

Nine o'clock next morning finds me under the pilotage of Mr. Buscher,
wandering through the splendid art galleries. We next visit the Royal
Academy of Fine Arts, a magnificent building, being erected at a cost
of 7,000,000 marks.

We repair at eleven o'clock to the royal residence, making a note by the
way of a trifling mark of King Ludwig's well-known eccentricity. Opposite
the palace is an old church, with two of its four clocks facing the
King's apartments. The hands of these clocks are, according to my
informant, made of gold. Some time since the King announced that the
sight of these golden hands hurt his eyesight, and ordered them painted
black. It was done, and they are black to-day. Among the most interesting
objects in the palace are the room and bed in which Napoleon I. slept
in 1809, which has since been occupied by no other person; the "rich
bed," a gorgeous affair of pink and scarlet satin-work, on which forty
women wove, with gold thread, daily, for ten years, until 1,600,000 marks
were expended.

At one of the entrances to the royal residence, and secured with iron
bars, is a large bowlder weighing three hundred and sixty-three pounds;
in the wall above it are driven three spikes, the highest spike being
twelve feet from the ground; and Bavarian historians have recorded that
Earl Christoph, a famous giant, tossed this bowlder up to the mark
indicated by the highest spike, with his foot.

After this I am kindly warned by both Messrs. Buscher and Walsch not to
think of leaving the city without visiting the Konigliche Hofbrauhaus
(Royal Court Brewery) the most famous place of its kind in all Europe.
For centuries Munich has been famous for the excellent quality of its
beer, and somewhere about four centuries ago the king founded this famous
brewery for the charitable purpose of enabling his poorer subjects to
quench their thirst with the best quality of beer, at prices within their
means, and from generation to generation it has remained a favorite
resort in Munich for lovers of good beer. In spite of its remaining, as
of yore, a place of rude benches beneath equally rude, open sheds, with
cobwebs festooning the rafters and a general air of dilapidation about
it; in spite of the innovation of dozens of modern beer-gardens with
waving palms, electric lights, military music, and all modern improvements,
the Konigliche Hofbrauhaus is daily and nightly thronged with thirsty
visitors, who for the trifling sum of twenty-two pfennigs (about five
cents) obtain a quart tankard of the most celebrated brew in all Bavaria.

"Munich is the greatest art-centre of the world, the true hub of the
artistic universe," Mr. Buscher enthusiastically assures me as we wander
together through the sleepy old streets, and he points out a bright bit
of old frescoing, which is already partly obliterated by the elements,
and compares it with the work of recent years; calls my attention to a
piece of statuary, and anon pilots me down into a restaurant and beer
hall in some ancient, underground vaults and bids me examine the
architecture and the frescoing. The very custom-house of Munich is a
glorious old church, that would be carefully preserved as a relic of no
small interest and importance in cities less abundantly blessed with
antiquities, but which is here piled with the cases and boxes and bags
of commerce. One other conspicuous feature of Munich life must not be
over-looked ere I leave it, viz., the hackmen. Unlike their Transatlantic
brethren, they appear supremely indifferent about whether they pick up
any fares or not. Whenever one comes to a hack-stand it is a pretty sure
thing to bet that nine drivers out of every ten are taking a quiet snooze,
reclining on their elevated boxes, entirely oblivious of their surroundings,
and a timid stranger would almost hesitate about disturbing their slumbers.
But the Munich cabby has long since got hardened to the disagreeable
process of being wakened up. Nor does this lethargy pervade the ranks
of hackdom only: at least two-thirds of the teamsters one meets on the
roads, hereabouts, are stretched out on their respective loads, contentedly
sleeping while the horses or oxen crawl leisurely along toward their
goal.

Munich is visited heavily with rain during the night, and for several
kilometres, next morning, the road is a horrible waste of loose flints
and mud-filled ruts, along which it is all but impossible to ride; but
after leaving the level bottom of the Isar River the road improves
sufficiently to enable me to take an occasional, admiring glance at the
Bavarian and Tyrolese Alps, towering cloudward on the southern horizon,
their shadowy outlines scarcely distinguishable in the hazy distance
from the fleecy clouds their peaks aspire to invade. While absentmindedly
taking a more lingering look than is consistent with safety when picking
one's way along the narrow edge of the roadway between the stone-strewn
centre and the ditch, I run into the latter, and am rewarded with my
first Cis-atlantic header, but fortunately both myself and the bicycle
come up uninjured. Unlike the Swabish peasantry, the natives east of
Munich appear as prosy and unpicturesque in dress as a Kansas homesteader.

Ere long there is noticeable a decided change in the character of the
villages, they being no longer clusters of gabled cottages, but usually
consist of some three or four huge, rambling bulldings, at one of which
I call for a drink and observe that brewing and baking are going on as
though they were expecting a whole regiment to be quartered on them.
Among other things I mentally note this morning is that the men actually
seem to be bearing the drudgery of the farm equally with the women; but
the favorable impression becomes greatly imperilled upon meeting a woman
harnessed to a small cart, heavily laboring along, while her husband -
kind man - is walking along-side, holding on to a rope, upon which he
considerately pulls to assist her along and lighten her task. Nearing
Hoag, and thence eastward, the road becomes greatly improved, and along
the Inn River Valley, from Muhldorf to Alt Oetting, where I remain for
the night, the late rain-storm has not reached, and the wheeling is
superior to any I have yet had in Germany. Muhldorf is a curious and
interesting old town. The sidewalks of Muhldorf are beneath long arcades
from one end of the principal street to the other; not modern structures
either, but massive archways that are doubtless centuries old, and that
support the front rooms of the buildings that tower a couple of stories
above them.

As toward dusk I ride into the market square of Alt Oetting, it is
noticeable that nearly all the stalls and shops remaining open display
nothing but rosaries, crucifixes, and other paraphernalia of the prevailing
religion. Through Eastern Bavaria the people seern pre-eminently devotional;
church-spires dot the landscape at every point of the compass. At my
hotel in Alt Oetting, crucifixes, holy water, and burning tapers are
situated on the different stairway landings. I am sitting in my room,
penning these lines to the music of several hundred voices chanting in
the old stone church near by, and can look out of the window and see a
number of peasant women taking turns in dragging themselves on their
knees round and round a small religious edifice in the centre of the
market square, carrying on their shoulders huge, heavy wooden crosses,
the ends of which are trailing on the ground.

All down the Inn River Valley, there is many a picturesque bit of
intermingled pine-copse and grassy slopes; but admiring scenery is
anything but a riskless undertaking along here, as I quickly discover.
On the Inn River I find a primitive ferry-boat operated by a, fac-simile
of the Ancient Mariner, who takes me and my wheel across for the
consideration of five pfennigs-a trifle over one cent -and when I refuse
the tiny change out of a ten-pfennig piece the old fellow touches his
cap as deferentially, and favors me with a look of gratitude as profound,
as though I were bestowing a pension upon him for life. My arrival at a
broad, well-travelled high-way at once convinces me that I have again
been unwittingly wandering among the comparatively untravelled by-ways
as the result of following the kindly meant advice of people whose
knowledge of bicycling requirements is of the slimmest nature. The Inn
River a warm, rich vale; haymaking is already in full progress, and
delightful perfume is wafted on the fresh morning air from aclows where
scores of barefooted Maud Mullers are raking hay, and mowing it too,
swinging scythes side by side with the men. Some of the out-door crucifixes
and shrines (small, substantial buildings containing pictures, images,
and all sorts of religious -emblems) along this valley are really quite
elaborate affairs. All through Roman Catholic Germany these emblems of
religion are very elaborate, or the reverse, according to the locality,
the chosen spot in rich and fertile valleys generally being favored with
better and more artistic affairs, and more of them, than the comparatively
unproductive uplands. This is evidently because the inhabitants of the
latter regions are either less wealthy, and consequently cannot afford
it, or otherwise realize that they have really much less to be thankful
for than their comparatively fortunate neighbors in the more productive
valleys.

At the town of Simbach I cross the Inn River again on a substantial
wooden bridge, and on the opposite side pass under an old stone archway
bearing the Austrian coat-of-arms. Here I am conducted into the custom-house
by an officer wearing the sombre uniform of Franz Josef, and required,
for the first time in Europe, to produce my passport. After a critical
and unnecessarily long examination of this document I am graciously
permitted to depart. In an adjacent money-changer's office I exchange
what German money I have remaining for the paper currency of Austria,
and once more pursue my way toward the Orient, finding the roads rather
better than the average German ones, the Austrians, hereabouts at least,
having had the goodness to omit the loose flints so characteristic of
Bavaria. Once out of the valley of the Inn River, however, I find the
uplands intervening between it and the valley of the Danube aggravatingly
hilly.

While eating my first luncheon in Austria, at the village of Altheim,
the village pedagogue informs me in good English that I am the first
Briton he has ever had the pleasure of conversing with. He learned the
language entirely from books, without a tutor, he says, learning it for
pleasure solely, never expecting to utilize the accomplishment in any
practical way. One hill after another characterizes my route to-day; the
weather, which has hitherto remained reasonably mild, is turning hot and
sultry, and, arriving at Hoag about five o'clock, I feel that I have
done sufficient hillclimbing for one day. I have been wheeling through
Austrian territory since 10.30 this morning, and, with observant eyes
the whole distance, I have yet to see the first native, male or female,
possessing in the least degree either a graceful figure or a prepossessing
face. There has been a great horse-fair at Hoag to-day; the business of
the day is concluded, and the principal occupation of the men, apart
from drinking beer and smoking, appears to be frightening the women out
of their wits by leading prancing horses as near them as possible.

My road, on leaving Hoag, is hilly, and the snowy heights of the Nordliche
Kalkalpen (North Chalk Mountains), a range of the Austrian Alps, loom
up ahead at an uncertain distance. To-day is what Americans call a
"scorcher," and climbing hills among pine-woods, that shut out every
passing breeze, is anything but exhilarating exercise with the thermometer
hovering in the vicinity of one hundred degrees. The peasants are abroad
in their fields as usual, but a goodly proportion are reclining beneath
the trees. Reclining is, I think, a favorite pastime with the Austrian.
The teamster, who happens to be wide awake and sees me approaching, knows
instinctively that his team is going to scare at the bicycle, yet he
makes no precautionary movements whatever, neither does he arouse himself
from his lolling position until the horses or oxen begin to swerve around.
As a usual thing the teamster is filling his pipe, which has a large,
ungainly-looking, porcelain bowl, a long, straight wooden stem, and a
crooked mouth-piece. Almost every Austrian peasant from sixteen years
old upward carries one of these uncomely pipes.

The men here seem to be dull, uninteresting mortals, dressed in tight-
fitting, and yet, somehow, ill-fitting, pantaloons, usually about three
sizes too short, a small apron of blue ducking-an unbecoming garment
that can only be described as a cross between a short jacket and a
waistcoat - and a narrow-rimmed, prosy-looking billycock hat. The peasant
women are the poetry of Austria, as of any other European country, and
in their short red dresses and broad-brimmed, gypsy hats, they look
picturesque and interesting in spite of homely faces and ungraceful
figures. Riding into Lambach this morning, I am about wheeling past a
horse and drag that, careless and Austrian-like, has been left untied
and unwatched in the middle of the street, when the horse suddenly scares,
swerves around just in front of me, and dashes, helter-skelter, down the
street. The horse circles around the market square and finally stops of
his own accord without doing any damage. Runaways, other misfortunes,
it seems, never come singly, and ere I have left Lambach an hour I am
the innocent cause of yet another one; this time it is a large, powerful
work-dog, who becomes excited upon meeting me along the road, and upsets
things in the most lively manner. Small carts pulled by dogs are common
vehicles here and this one is met coming up an incline, the man considerately
giving the animal a lift. A life of drudgery breaks the spirit of these
work-dogs and makes them cowardly and cringing. At my approach this one
howls, and swerves suddenly around with a rush that upsets both man and
cart, topsy-turvy, into the ditch, and the last glimpse of the rumpus
obtained, as I sweep past and down the hill beyond, is the man pawing
the air with his naked feet and the dog struggling to free himself from
the entangling harness.

Up among the hills, at the village of Strenburg, night arrives at a very
opportune moment to-day, for Strenburg proves a nice, sociable sort of
village, where the doctor can speak good English and plays the role of
interpreter for me at the gasthaus. The school-ma'am, a vivacious Italian
lady, in addition to French and German, can also speak a few words of
English, though she persistently refers to herself as the " school
-master." She boards at the same gasthaus, and all the evening long I
am favored by the liveliest prattle and most charming gesticulations
imaginable, while the room is half filled with her class of young lady
aspirants to linguistic accomplishments, listening to our amusing, if
not instructive, efforts to carry on a conversation. ' It is altogether
a most enjoyable evening, and on parting I am requested to write when I
get around the world and tell the Strenburgers all that I have seen and
experienced. On top of the gasthaus is a rude observatory, and before
starting I take a view of the country. The outlook is magnificent; the
Austrian Alps are towering skyward to the southeast, rearing snow-crowned
heads out from among a billowy sea of pine-covered hills, and to the
northward is the lovely valley of the Danube, the river glistening softly
through the morning haze.

On yonder height, overlooking the Danube on the one hand and the town
of Molk on the other, is the largest and most imposing edifice I have
yet seen in Austria; it is a convent of the Benedictine monks; and though
Molk is a solid, substantially built town, of perhaps a thousand
inhabitants, I should think there is more material in the immense convent
building than in the whole town besides, and one naturally wonders
whatever use the monks can possibly have for a building of such enormous
dimensions. Entering a barber's shop here for a shave, I find the barber of
Molk following the example of so many of his countrymen by snoozing the
mid-day hours happily and unconsciously away. One could easily pocket
and walk off with his stock-in-trade, for small is the danger of his awakening.
Waking him up, he shuffles mechanically over to hia razor and lathering
apparatus, this latter being a soup-plate with a semicircular piece
chipped out to fit, after a fashion, the contour of the customers'
throats. Pressing this jagged edge of queen's-ware against your windpipe,
the artist alternately rubs the water and a cake of soap therein contained
about your face with his hands, the water meanwhile passing freely between
the ill-fitting' soup-plate and your throat, and running down your breast;
but don't complain; be reasonable: no reasonable-minded person could
expect one soup-plate, however carefully chipped out, to fit the throats
of the entire male population of Molk, besides such travellers as happen
along.

Spending the night at Neu Lengbach, I climb hills and wabble along, over
rough, lumpy roads, toward Vienna, reaching the Austrian capital Sunday
morning, and putting up at the Englischer Eof about noon. At Vienna I
determine to make a halt of two days, and on Tuesday pay a visit to the
headquarters of the Vienna Wanderers' Bicycle Club, away out on a suburban
street called Schwimmschulenstrasse; and the club promises that if I
will delay my departure another day they will get up a small party of
wheelmen to escort me seventy kilometres, to Presburg. The bicycle clubs
of Vienna have, at the Wanderers' headquarters, constructed an excellent
race-track, three and one-third laps to the English mile, at an expense
of 2,000 gulden, and this evening several of Austria's fliers are training
upon it for the approaching races. English and American wheelmen little
understand the difficulties these Vienna cyclers have to contend with:
all the city inside the Ringstrasse, and no less than fifty streets
outside, are forbidden to the mounted cyclers, and they are required to
ticket themselves with big, glaring letters, as also their lamps at
night, so that, in case of violating any of these regulations, they can
by their number be readily recognized by the police. Self-preservation
compels the clubs to exercise every precaution against violating the
police regulations, in order not to excite popular prejudice overwhelmingly
against bicycles, and ere a new rider is permitted to venture outside
their own grounds he is hauled up before a regularly organized committee,
consisting of officers from each club in Vienna, and required to go
through a regular examination in mounting, dismounting, and otherwise
proving to their entire satisfaction his proficiency in managing and
manoeuvring his wheel; besides which every cycler is provided with a
pamphlet containing a list of the streets he may and may not frequent.
In spite of all these harassing regulations, the Austrian capital has
already two hundred riders. The Viennese impress themselves upon me as
being possessed of more than ordinary individuality. Yonder comes a man,
walking languidly along, and carrying his hat in his hand, because it
is warm, and just behind him comes a fellow-citizen muffled up in an
overcoat because - because of Viennese individuality. The people seem to
walk the streets with a swaying, happy-go-anyhow sort of gait, colliding
with one another and jostling together on the sidewalk in the happiest
manner imaginable.

At five o'clock on Thursday morning I am dressing, when I am notified
that two cyclers are awaiting me below. Church-bells are clanging joyously
all over Vienna as we meander toward suburbs, and people are already
streaming in the direction of the St. Stephen's Church, near the centre
of the city, for to-day is Frohnleichnam (Corpus Christi), and the Emperor
and many of the great ecclesiastical, civil, and military personages of
the empire will pass in procession with all pomp and circumstance; and
the average Viennese is not the person to miss so important an occasion.
Three other wheelmen are awaiting us in the suburbs, and together we
ride through the waving barley-fields of the Danube bottom to Schwechat,
for the light breakfast customary in Austria, and thence onward to
Petronelle, thirty kilometres distant, where we halt a few minutes for
a Corpus Christi procession, and drink a glass of white Hungarian wine.
Near Petronelle are the remains of an old Roman wall, extending from the
Danube to a lake called the Neusiedler See. My companions say it was
built 2,000 years ago, when the sway of the Romans extended over such
parts of Europe as were worth the trouble and expense of swaying. The
roads are found rather rough and inferior, on account of loose stones
and uneven surface, as we push forward toward Presburg, passing through
a dozen villages whose streets are carpeted with fresh-cut grass, and
converted into temporary avenues, with branches stuck in the ground, in
honor of the day they are celebrating. At Hamburg we pass beneath an
archway nine hundred years old, and wheel on through the grass-carpeted
streets between rows of Hungarian soldiers drawn up in line, with green
oak-sprigs in their hats; the villagers are swarming from the church,
whose bells are filling the air with their clangor, and on the summit
of an over-shadowing cliff are the massive ruins of an ancient castle.
Near about noon we roll into Presburg, warm and dusty, and after dinner
take a stroll through the Jewish quarter of the town up to the height
upon which Presburg castle is situated, and from which a most extensive
and beautiful view of the Danube, its wooded bluffs and broad, rich
bottom-lands, is obtainable. At dinner the waiter hands me a card, which
reads: "Pardon me, but I believe you are an Englishman, in which case
I beg the privilege of drinking a glass of wine with you." The sender
is an English gentleman residing at Budapest, Hungary, who, after the
requested glass of wine, tells me that he guessed who I was when he first
saw me enter the garden with the five Austrian wheelmen.

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