I had a Northern European-style breakfast this morning: toasted slices of pain levain dripping with cultured butter (both made by me), a hunk of very nice Leiden cheese with whole cumin seeds throughout, some vinegared herring with sour cream, some thick, intense Russian-Israeli preserves made from dried black currants, and tea. A breakfast like that would be common from the Netherlands, into northern Germany, then following the Kiel peninsula into Denmark and across to Sweden, or continuing eastward across Baltic Germany to Poland, throughout the three Baltic countries and across the strait into southern Finland. It made me recall a breakfast eaten at a pension in Gdansk, and that, in turn, started me thinking about other trips I\u2019ve made in that part of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For several years, I kept a US-registered motorcycle (a BMW R1100GS, for the motorheads) with the wonderful Stefan Knopf in Heidelberg (Hallo, Stefan!), so each European motorcycle trip I made started and ended there. One trip, made when I was in my early 50s, I think, saw me riding south into Baden-W\u00fcrttemburg into the Schwarzwald, east to Konstanz, Ravensburg, and Ulm, but I\u2019d be lying if I claimed to remember what the entire path was. I almost never made plans for my trips, either in the large or the small, but simply followed my nose, and traversed a Brownian trajectory guided by conversations with people along the way. Someplace in Germany\u2019s SW, I was following the eastern shore of a long, narrow lake valley, with white-wine vineyards clinging to the steep hills, and the road, just inches away from the lake, dotted with the stands local people had set up to sell their wine, vegetables from their gardens, homemade bread, and \u2014 of particular interest to me \u2014 home-smoked lake fish. I stopped at one of the fish smokers, made some blah-blah for a bit, and left with a couple of smoked fish wrapped in newspaper, the paper almost immediately soaked in the fishy fat. My GS had aluminum travel boxes mounted to the rear, but I didn\u2019t want everything I owned to smell like smoked fish for the rest of all time, so I had the rolled-up fish stuck between the covers of the side cases and the bike\u2019s rear fender, held in place beneath my waterproof duffles of camping gear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some nights, I found a place to set the tent up, but a lot of time I would choose to rather stay in a Privatzimmer, a room in somebody\u2019s house. Not too different in price from a camp ground, usually, and with the frequent and valued possibility of a good conversation. They work especially well in Germany, because there are rules in place requiring a separate entrance and key, which allows one to do some local exploring without worrying that one will disturb one\u2019s hosts when returning. I\u2019d generally start keeping my eyes open to find someplace to sleep by 6 in the evening or so, and would try to have myself set by 7:30. A lot of hosts want the night\u2019s rental to be finished before the summer light starts to fail. However, on this smoked fish day, I hadn\u2019t been paying attention to the time, and only realized that I hadn\u2019t found a bed until after the sun had dipped below the western margins of the foothills I was riding through. It was about 9 p.m.; an hour and a half past polite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most people had already turned off the lights at their Privatzimmer sign, or had indicated that the room had been taken. I finally found a place which still had its sign up, stopped, and knocked on the door. An older woman (probably my age now, or a few years older) came to the door, wondering who had shown up outside of the conventional hours. (One of the things I do love about traveling by motorcycle in Europe is that \u2014 as long as you\u2019re not trying to look like a Heck\u2019s Angel \u2014 people don\u2019t treat you in any weird way when you show up in riding gear.) She decided that I was OK, gave me a price, and started helping me to unpack the bike. After lifting the camping gear off and storing it in her garage, we got to the rolls of smelly newspaper. \u201cWas ist das?\u201d \u201cGer\u00e4ucherte Fische.\u201d Oh, she said, then you\u2019ll be needing some of this rye bread, and a slab of sweet butter a half-inch thick and four inches square, and I have a little bit of vegetables left over from my dinner. She had just eaten, and didn\u2019t want to eat more, but sat with me for more than an hour while I ate, as we talked about my life and hers, and the places we lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve been continuing to do a lot of cooking during the plague, but I have to say that I\u2019m not adding very many stories to go with my meals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had a Northern European-style breakfast this morning: toasted slices of pain levain dripping with cultured butter (both made by me), a hunk of very nice Leiden cheese with whole cumin seeds throughout, some vinegared herring with sour cream, some thick, intense Russian-Israeli preserves made from dried black currants, and tea. A breakfast like that … <\/p>\n