Wales tales

Church Stretton. So says a sign on a railway platform midway between somewhere in the Midlands and somewhere in Wales. It has very little relevance to my whole trip apart from the fact that this railway line I have never before taken has stopped briefly in a town that looks so cosily cosseted in the Shropshire Hills that I want to remember it. And perhaps come back and stop and walk atop its hills and meander back through its vales to refresh with a pint of cider in a beer garden of an old stone pub with whitewashed walls and hanging baskets and the noise of contented sheep bleating nearby.

Cwmbran is the station sign at which I disembark, situated in the South Wales valleys and a landscape not without its own hilly charm and abundance of bleating sheep. It can also lay claim to having a supermarket on every roundabout, one of which – Morrisons – is swiftly visited for a few day’s provisions vital for picnic lunches and delicious home-cooked dinners. With me, Dad and Aunty Val, taxi driver and cook, pivotal cogs as ever in creating a fine few days.

Where there are valleys there are hills and it didn’t take long to get amongst them. A drive through a warren of lanes led Dad and I to a spot below a big hill with a Welsh name. This is where I refer to Dad’s Facebook pictures and check what on earth it was called. Twm Balwm, which means top of hill to catapult sheep at English. A short but steep walk confirmed its prominent position for attacking folk, with hazy views over the South Wales coastline, across the Bristol Channel to Somerset and Devon, and north and east back in the direction from which I had come.

Amongst this landscape much water runs and – in places – runs to dramatic effect. The next day, in a corner of the fabulous Brecon Beacons National Park, we followed the course of the Afon Mellte as it made its way from underground to plunge over several rock ledges, each as unpronounceable as the next. Anything billed as the Four Waterfalls Walk is bound to be of appeal, and the falls of (wait for it...) Sgwd Clun-gwyn, Sgwd Isaf Clun-gwyn, Sgwd y Pannwr, and Sgwd yr Eira provided a showcase of white water spectacle.

    

From our approach at Glyn Porth the cascades increased in drama, culminating in Sgwd yr Eira, a curtain of water that has carved an overhang through which walkers can walk behind water. Sure Jesus, it’s not quite walking on water but it’s the next best thing. The sound of roaring water over your head, spray peppering clothes and camera lenses, slightly dubious slippy-looking rocks, and small dogs reluctantly getting in the way all add that exciting touch of adventure. And hopefully this adrenaline can just about get you back up the hill for a tasty sandwich and the onward march back to the car.

Considerably less exciting is a stop in a fishing shop in Pontypridd, but it wasn’t too long and Dad got a few birthday goodies so all was still well with the world! Nearby though there was more drama of the Winterfell kind, courtesy of a couple of hours in Caerphilly and its castle. This had everything a good castle should with moats and ramparts and crenulations and spiral staircases up lofty towers and banquet halls and dungeons and catapults. Parts had been restored and renovated, others remained ramshackle, which meant you could really get a sense of what it was like back when Welsh people were catapulting sheep at the English and devious plots of intermarriage and murder were being concocted over a feast of wild boar and spicy cheese on toast. 

No such scheming over dinner, though the roast pork was a welcome substitute for wild boar. Extra potatoes could be justified by the walking earlier in the day, but I think so much was eaten that another walk was to be encouraged the following day. Especially after a tasty slice of cake and a passable coffee in Abergavenny in the morning, prior to a different kind of sugar high.

A walk up to the Sugar Loaf involved some notable uphill drags, cutting across unruly bracken and withering woods, and striking out for the top. Up here, the slight sunniness of the valley in which we started was no more, with a windy, cool bleakness emerging with every step. The clouds were scraping the tops of the Brecon Beacons to the north, and only occasional hollows of pasture glowed with the rays of the sun. But this is high summer, and several other people were still in shorts atop the loaf.

Of course, the views were far-reaching and rewarding, but it was quite nice to have gravity on your side for a while as others battled up. Down steeply at first but then a gentle descent along a ridge and through an ancient wood, emerging out into some kind of civilisation with farmhouses and tractors and manure. Unfortunately on this circular walk the car was still a fair way around the corner and it suffered (as did we) from that final, unrelenting drag.

Still, it was something of an accomplishment with which to finish this short sojourn in South Wales. Well, not quite finish, for there was a rather large trifle to try and finish back at Aunty Val’s that evening. Already it seemed that much had been achieved off my bucket list – roast, trifle, upland walking, history, trips to Morrisons – in just a couple of days. Indeed, Wales offered a well concocted taste and teaser for the crème de la crème, the emergence into a blue sky Devon. I’m sure the main will be just as good as the starter.   

The child leg

Being of a certain age when one should probably have settled down and produced a couple of little people, there is an inevitability that my travelling visits of Europe will involve stops to see people of a similar age who have settled down and produced some little people. This is not a bad thing, perhaps with the exception of an over-saturation of Peppa Pig and the lingering of theme tunes in my head. It offers time to be welcomed into family life and reconnect with close and dear friends and family, succumb to Lego construction and bombardment from cushions. There’s opportunity to immerse yourself in those very events which provoke memories of your own childhood, like travel sickness, 5 o’clock tea times, and an insatiable demand for chocolate. And children are infinitely entertaining, affectionate, cunning, sweet, annoying, lovable, lively, dramatic, naive, and everything else in between.

And so it was I arrived in Geneva and connected on a bus across the border to France to greet the newest addition to this extended family. Joy Caitlin Stafford, a niece of two months and very much living up to her name thus far. A contrast to her frenetic older brother whose dynamism and energy results in a big bundle of fun with an adorable French accent. And then of course there is my third child, named fromage.

Days out are obviously a big part of being a family and you only have to think back to your own childhood to remember summer days by the seaside in the drizzle, car journeys that seem to go on forever and trips to the garden centre. While Joy is just a little young to go too far, the boys were able to escape for a couple of trips into the French Alps over the weekend, with perfect weather for perfect scenes. The first spot was in the Vallee Verte, undeniably green and lush with wild raspberries ripe for plunder. Gliders taking off from a stretch of flatter grass added a touch of drama to the day and of course much in the way of child-like excitement. Excitement which quickly dwindles on the curvy drive down the hillside, inducing nausea and stony pale-faced silence.

Such drama was avoided on the second day thanks to tactical sleeping, after a decent loop walk around the ridges and hollows of the Plaine Joux. A picnic at the start was reassuringly accompanied by cow bells and glimpses of Mont Blanc’s uppermost snowy triangle. It was a beautiful day, warm and blue, with just a touch of breeze limiting the kite-flying escapism. Perfect to sit outside and eat...which means it is so busy that you have to sit inside and eat when you want to enjoy Tarte aux Myrtilles post-lunch. Still, there was enough time to stand and walk and hopefully burn off some of the calories around the Plaine Joux.

Leaving France and leaving Geneva I had a fair few hours child-free before reaching north London. Here, again, visits to friends and their offspring were on the cards, leading to trips to the park for picnic and play. Another day heralded a chance to be a little less childish with a trip into London town, looking at pictures, going to the beach, and eating ice cream. While the ice cream was delicious, the beach – Camden Beach – was everything you would expect a beach in Camden to be. Sand plonked into a large beer garden, people on deckchairs and, of course, children playing ball, rolling around and generally getting bored while the parents chug on another fluorescent cocktail under murky skies.

Cocktails emerged briefly during the final visit on the child leg of this journey, spending time with a family I love very much in Lytham, northwest England. The parents, who joined me in this child-free cocktail moment on a Saturday night, offered great comfort that comes with familiarity. The children, who are full of character and life, offered a pile of cushions on my head, trips to the park, drawing activities, all mixed up with those occasional doses of unprovoked affection that are so heart-warming.

Lytham always can be relied upon for providing a bleak, wet and windy day that reaffirms the truth of it being grim up north. Seventeen degrees cannot dissuade hundreds of people from dressing up as soldiers and dancing to Vera Lynn as they seek to resurrect the war in 1940s day on Lytham Green. Do you think Hitler would have stopped for a bit of rain and a chill wind? I don’t know, why don’t you go ask him, he’s over there...?

Agreeably though the next day was brighter and sunnier and much less 1940s. In fact it was fine enough for a barbecue, indeed an Australian-fashioned gas burner barbecue. I don’t know if I approve for there is something to be said for the smoky aromas of charcoal, especially when plumes of it fill your lungs. Still, I shouldn’t have worried, for the gas barbecue got very smoky and, in a ball of flame, endeavoured to blacken burgers and shrivel sausages with a marinade of burning plastic.

Pleasingly the kids were distracted, running around in the garden generally beating each other up and laughing at the same time, in that way that kids do. The barbecue was rectified and there was a full stomach on which to watch a very strange movie about bird-watching in the evening! Thus it was with a bit of sadness that I set out from Lytham the next day, in pursuit of that Snowy Owl without hindrance. The child leg at an end, and at least a few days before I am exposed to Peppa Pig again.

Hallo Italy!

Five hours on a train over the Bavarian Alps, across a thin but very precipitous sliver of Austria, and through the valleys and steep terraces of craggy northern Italy brought me to Bolzano. Or Bozen. Provincial capital of the Alto Adige. Or Sudtirol. You see, borders on a map may be crossed but language is shaped by the contours of the Alps – whether you are in them or out of them, what particular valley you may be in, or which side of the lake you butter your brezel in. 

So just because we are in Italy does not mean that German is gone, nein nein nein. Which makes it a bit scheiser for the English-speaking, who are relegated to third in the language stakes and, if my experience is anything to go by, frequently caught out using a mix of all three. Par example (and yes, occasionally I also fall into French as default when any foreign language is involved): “Hallo, una gelato with two scoops, straciatella und caffe latte per favore. Danke.” Surprisingly though everything is understood and luscious ice cream is forthcoming. 

As a result I’m not so sure whether you are going to read German or Italian place names in this blog entry. I’m tempted to try and use Italian because they are in Italy, but I am rather fond of Bozen which sounds so pleasingly like a cross between bozo and bogan. Does the name do it justice? Well, I would have said yes at first, as I trudged in searing heat through industrial areas by the river, seeking a funicular to whizz me into the hills, with busy highways and power lines and train tracks crammed into the valley. But I missed the centre at first, an old town with gracious buildings and narrow pedestrian streets, made narrower by market stalls and glass displays for expensive shoes and handbags. Veering toward the Italian, which is naturally less bogan. 

Bozen has three mountain cable car and railway combos whizzing you up into the countryside, and the first I took after that uninspiring walk was up to Colle. The top was still in the tree line but (take note other self-proclaimed lookouts of this world) some smart Alec had built a large wooden tower for viewing pleasure, providing you enjoy steps. From here there were views over Bozen and other foothills leading to the more jagged teeth of the Dolomites. And at the bottom a sunny bar for a beer which was disappointingly less German than much else. 

The Dolomites were my raison d’être for stopping here really, as I had been interested in visiting for a while...I think spurred on by some pictures in a travel supplement or maybe some footage of crazy climbs in the Giro d’Italia. Bozen was a good base, with its cable cars and other transport links, but the Dolomites were a little infuriating to photograph: wrong light so very glary for most of the day, then thundery clouds bubbling up in the afternoon and difficulty lingering in spots very early or very late because of transportation options. It really needs a week to get close and intimate, preferably in June. It is no wonder that the area is a popular spot for multi-day walks, hiking from refuge to pension along the ridges and plains, getting personal with the mountains. 

Still, I had two full days and was very keen to make the most of them and the travel card I had bought. The first day I took another cable car from Bozen, impressively up and up over vineyard terraces and pine forests to the undulating plateau of the Renon. At the top a mountain tramway trundled through the undulating hills, past villages and chalets and through forests and fields. Plenty of walking tracks offered chance to meander and get slightly lost but find your way to another path providing balcony views of the glary Dolomites. With wild meadows and the scent of pine needles, it was nothing other than pretty and nourished enough appetite for lunch in a sunny garden sampling local cheese and bacon dumplings with salad. 

It’s incredible to think of these Alpine environments being caked in metres of snow and freezing through several months of the year, and thus surprising how full of life they are. I guess it’s a shorter growing season and everything bursts forth rapidly and in generosity, a perfect manifestation of making hay while the sun shines. The steep hills of the region are decked out in rows and rows of vines, occasionally interspersed with orchards. Many look too steep to harvest by machine and I’m not quite sure how people actually make it to some of the farmsteads perched on their lofty terraces. It seems the cable car is the easiest way to view this hidden world, as I head back down into Bozen. 

After a refresh of ice cream and purchasing some dinner time picnic snacks, a bus took me to somewhere in the general vicinity of the Jenesian cable car. Compared to the Renon, which was spacious and flash, this one was pure old school. Which means, by late afternoon, it is a searing glass house on a wire. It has a driver, who speaks to the top on his retro phone with a pleasing old-fashioned ringing bell, and seems happy to squash us in to see if we can all make it without passing out. The relief at the top is palpable, with shade and a beer garden obviously cashing in. In the distance the Dolomites still glare and clouds bubble up high, testament to the heat and humidity of August in Italy. 

I was, as I say, keen to make the most of my travel card and, given it runs into the evening, I spent the last section of the day by taking the Renon cable car once more. This was a chance to try and get some good light for pictures and, well, stop on a bench in a forest and eat my bread rolls, cheese and salami sausages. I didn’t stay right until daylight faded, as it had been a long day and I wanted to catch the last bus to my pension, rather than walk up hill for twenty minutes. I had to conserve some energy for tomorrow. 

So the second day was an opportunity to get closer to the toothy peaks of the Dolomites and indulge in some wilder, Alpine walking around the Alpe di Suisi. This, apparently, is the largest upland plateau of its type in Europe, whatever that means. I presume it means the biggest expanse of undulating meadows peppered with farmhouse chalets and wooded valleys, a sea of green lapping up to the sheer cliffs of encircling mountains. It looks and feels obviously Alpine with the characteristic and pleasing sound of cowbells a sure sign to the ears that this is genuine high country. 

My travel card allowed me to take the sad bus to the town of Suisi. I say sad bus, but it was quite a happy, breezy ride up from the valley, SAD being the name of the local transportation system. This climbed about 600 metres or so from Bozen. From Suisi, a cable car ascended a further 500 metres to Compaccio, and then it was onto a good old fashioned and open to the breeze chairlift propelling me another 400 metres up. What follows from here is an easy, good-natured ramble through the meadows and down past a flower filled hostelry and rustic farmhouses to a wooded valley. Down? Down? Prices may be down, but I want to go up. Up to the Rifugio di Bolzani sitting at around 2,500 metres. Am I lost, or will I need to climb more than I hoped? 

The answer was the latter and I have to say it was a bit of a struggle. Once or twice I thought about turning back, the views still wide and grand. Every step up and the view opened up further, but so did the frequency of stopping, ideally in a spot of shade from the sweltering sun. A salami sausage and snatch of pretzel gave fortitude and spurred on by the reward of eating more at the top, I made it. 

It’s a bit strange to come up this far and find a fully functioning guest house and restaurant, looking out on the sawtooth ridges of the Dolomites. Washing hangs drying in the breeze and people are decked out with picnics at the outdoor tables. Inside, a team of young people busy themselves cooking and serving food. Curious as to how all this happens, I note a rather archaic looking single wire cable way that must bring up wheels of cheese and kegs of beer. 

Alas, it does not transport people back down. That, for me, requires a weary descent of almost 1,500 metres as I plan to go back to Suisi to catch the sad bus. And so it’s down the entire climb that I made, happy that gravity is on my side but my feet and ankles and legs less content with the constant jarring and braking. Some respite takes place as I turn onto a path through a cool pine forest, but this at some point has to hit the river below and, when it does, it veers down in a torment of curving hairpins. The river and forest and beautiful, but after six hours or so, Suisi cannot come soon enough. 

Perhaps with a week, at a cooler time of year, I could have taken things more leisurely. There are certainly many other places the SAD network can take you – on other cable cars and post buses into Switzerland for instance. There are great rides for bikes and cultural things to do too. Now being so distant in Australia I wonder why on earth I did not go away every other weekend when I lived in London. A Ryanair flight at 2am to an airport 3 hours out or Barcelona. Or the Wizz Air jet to Krakow. Or even a week in the Dolomites. Now, with time precious, I am falling into that Australian trap of trying to cover off Europe in a few days! 

Still, it’s amazing that you can be out of the Dolomites and into another region within a couple of hours. En route to Milan, I stopped off in the city of Verona for six hours. Five Euros seventy for left luggage the price to pay to see another Italian city. Proper Italian, with weisbier and streusels far behind and nothing but average pizza and pasta in every piazza. 

I spent most of the morning meandering the streets of Verona, centred around Piazza Baz and its arena. The arena is a bit like a poor man’s version of the Colosseum in Rome (I imagine), and far more modern. I suspect it will look quite a sight in the splendour of an evening performance of – inevitably – Romeo and Juliet, but in the day, with set construction and cranes and limited access, I found 6 Euros entry a bit of a rip-off. Nearby gelato was also expensive, but the raspberry flavour was worth every cent. 

Verona is definitely a city for taking turns down random alley ways and stumbling across hidden piazzas and generally making it up as you go along. You will come across tourist trappings, such as the balcony where Juliet (who is, remember, a fictional character) was wooed by a horny young Montague. A nearby archway is bedecked in messages of love; inexplicably many of which are for One Direction. Such romantic prose as ‘Take me in any direction Harry’ or ‘I give you one erection One Direction’. How about you take long walk in one direction off very short pier? 

Anyway, you will also pass statues of Dante and come across courtyards and church towers and those colourful terraces with window boxes and shutters in perfect harmony. Eventually you’ll likely come across the Adige River, whose level is possibly heightened by tears shed for someone in One Direction getting a girl (or boy) friend. I presume some of these waters also come down from those Dolomites; indeed perhaps the stream I crossed before that long climb eventually finds its way here. 

After many days of mountain or city walking, legs and feet are starting to wear, but one final climb is worth it. Steps and steps lead up on the other side of the river to a castle and views over Verona, a city not without charm. An Italian city where they speak Italian, a chance to be anchored in one language and culture for just a while. For tomorrow brings a train through Switzerland, where Italian becomes German becomes French, all armed with pocket knives. Grazie, Danke, Merci.

Munchen and drinking

It started with a cheese covered giant pretzel at Munich International airport, reward for clocking off another mind-numbing, leg-aching, sleep-depriving trek across the globe. Then, if you discount a few anomalies involving fruit and yogurt and water, the remainder of my time in the Bavarian capital involved a BP diet...bread, beer, pretzels, pork.

Can there be anything wurst for the health than a Bavarian diet? In a way, as much as there is left that I could see and do, I am glad I am moving on after just a few days to, hopefully, something involving more vegetables and less pork. To be fair, you can obviously get other foods here, but I’ve been craving a German feast ever since I didn’t get one in the Barossa Valley. And the beer, on 30 degree days, under the shady trees of verdant parkland, is pretty much irresistible. Everyone seems to be at it, and my seven glasses over three days are but a drop in the ocean.

So, it was not like I was staggering around Munich in a drunken ramble. After arriving into the city, a first relaxed glass of weisbier was enough to make me amiably content in the splendour of a European summer in the Alter Botanischer Gardens. I always marvel in the trees when first arriving, the green, broad-leafed providers of cool shade that you don’t get in such a way down under. Such a simple thing, but such a delight.

Fuelled up I ambled into the Aldstadt – the old town – for the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening. This, of course, is the pedestrianised bit, full of shutters and window boxes, fountains and gargoyles, churches and cafes. So, for the place name aficionados, in kind of chronological order there was the suitably imposing Palace of Justice, the cool spray waters around the appropriately named Karlsplatz, the Michaelskirche, the double-domed Frauenkirche and the gothic fairytale towers around Marienplatz, with Neues Rathaus at its centre (and in that building’s centre, a courtyard restaurant and spot serving beer). Food and drink at the heart of the city indeed.

There seemed a bit of a Friday night feel around, even though it was Thursday – that could be the beer but I can think of no better complement for a city centre.  Sunshine and people frolicking in the fountains, ice creams and beers, camera posers and classical buskers. Fruit stalls dotted around serving delicious ripe berries and stone fruits, a much better-sounding option for my own dinner than a McDonalds, Starbucks or, especially, a long thin sausage from somewhere called Esspunkt.

I ventured into and around Aldstadt the next morning, milling around the Viktualienmarkt which had all sorts of nice looking fruits and cheeses and meats and mushrooms and plants. Disconcertingly (I think), the outdoor beer garden was already fairly bustling at around 10:30. I opted for a fresh grapefruit juice, thinking that a beer would not help me up hundreds of steps to the belltower of St Peterskirche.  And clear vision was helpful to soak up the 360 degree view across the city and afar to the Alps in the south.

Well, ain’t I just a saintly vision of wholesomeness, not drinking beer and going to church and all. In fact it took me until 12:20pm to be supping on a frothy lager in the middle of the giant Englischer Garden. It was hard earned, as the gardens are the size of a small English county and just as lovely and leafy.  Water runs through the park, an obvious lure to Germans to strip off and plunge into a torrent or, in one spot, kind of surf, with boards and wetsuits too. The other thing the water provides is another luscious setting for another shady waterfront beer garden. This was possibly my favourite beer moment as it accompanied a lazy browse through a copy of The Times that I picked up on my flight. All rather civilised and ever so relaxing.

By contrast, an evening visit to the Hofbrauhaus was a different kind of affair. This is the most famous and hence most touristy beer hall, so busy that I didn’t even have one. There were wenches and an oompah loompah band and off course lashings of Weisswurst and Sauerkraut, but no empty tables. So instead, I returned to the site of my first beer in the Alter Botanischer Garden and engaged in something known as currywurst. Yes, it looks as good as it sounds. Basically a sausage with chips and curry sauce. I mean, is this not perfect beer garnish?

All this conviviality is well and good, but I was keen the next day to visit Dachau. This was one of the first concentration camps created by the Nazis. Sure, it doesn’t sound like a holiday kind of thing to do, but I was due some seriousness. It’s such a huge part of the world’s history and one that should not be forgotten, especially as we seem to be eternally selfish and greedy and seemingly superior in our position to immigrants and foreigners and boatpeople and anyone who might just want to get on with the same basic rights and welfare as us even though they were not born in our country. Oh, the horror, the (lack of) humanity!  Anyway, due to engineering works and incomprehensible replacement bus services it was not accessible, so you’ll be spared anything too confronting.

I was disappointed, but happened to find myself near a site of great ostentation where rich people obviously got very rich and wanted to boast about it – Schloss Nymphemburg. Here sat a palace in the midst of a country park, with more rambling ornamental gardens, dense green woodland and meadows. It was rather lovely albeit all a bit identical to yesterday, without the added bonus of beer gardens.

A few stops away on the tram I did find a great ice cream place – my first ice cream in nearly 48 hours here. It was lush and left me wondering why it had been so long, but then I remembered...beer had taken its place and was much easier to come across.

The ice cream was in some inner suburb and it was nice just to soak up a few minutes in the square watching people go about their normal Saturday chores. Just off the square was a station for the U-Bahn subway which had the bonus of being operational at least. It was quite a funky ride, through a mix of stations that are either deliberately stylised retro or just plain damn retro. So, huge coloured industrial lights, 3D metallic squares, blocks of orange and brown, sleek steel railings and trundling blue train carriages took me to the height of slightly daggy 70s urban development – the Munich 1972 Olympic Park. At its heart a concrete tower provided an overlook of the stadium and rather compact parkland setting; a tower which also did its best to look like the Telstra Tower in Canberra.

More bling was the BMW display centre around the corner which calls itself BMW World but is really just a big fancy showroom with some gizmos. There are cars that people can look at to get a hardon, motorbikes for straddling, and video racing games to demonstrate just how much of an awesome person you are. For some inexplicable reason someone roams around the centre on a motorbike doing wheelies. Meanwhile, in the corner the Rolls Royce and Minis sparkle on rotating displays, expertly placed for teary-eyed Brits to lament the decline of our great country.

And so, time in Munich was coming to a close, but I couldn’t let it end on such a sour note for us Pommies could I? Turns out the same U-Bahn train stops quite close to those old Englischer Gardens (see, they love us really) and a certain shady waterfront beer garden. Here there is garnish too, like the sausage medley and potato salad and pretzel that I had. A late lunch before a rest and a later dinner of pork knuckle, washed down with another drink. This in a beer hall attached to a brewery with genuine old-fashioned serving wenches. One was even called Helga, I kid you not, and she was blonde (or peroxide covering grey I would think).

I’m sure Helga would say that it’s always good to go out with a bang, and Munich obliged. Sampling the Aldstadt at night, parts lit up like a fairytale, others dark and dingy like another Grimm fairytale, lightning streaked across the sky. The rumbling intensified and rain began to fall in huge droplets, more forks of lightning shattering down as if they were almost going to hit the towers of Marienplatz like it was 1955 and we had to get back to the year 1985 or something, but only with the help of a bit of rock and roll. People dodged the rain, sheltering under alcoves and colonnades, disappearing into subways, lingering in shops. Hard as nails beer-toting chain-smoking German bikers were suddenly shrieking like girlies. And through this all I embraced a bit of rain, cooling and refreshing and hopefully just cleansing a little bit of the BP from my body.