HE DID THE MASH
I was late leaving Sydney on Monday. The captain got on the PA and said one of the engines was misbehaving, and they were going to shut it down and spin it up again. He did that and it all seemed okay.
I didn’t know turbofan engines could be fixed like that. I lost a lot of respect for aircraft engineers that day.
After about twenty four hours of sitting in aircraft and airports I arrived in Munich and took a cab to the Hotel Linner and booked in. It was maybe eight o’clock so I thought I’d walk the five minutes to the bike rental place and check it out even though their website said they open at 10:00.
The sign on the door said they open at 10:30, but there was someone there. I told him I was interested in hiring a DL650 for five days from Thursday and then I might hire a Ninja 1000 for three days if the weather held. He said he was pretty much booked out and didn’t have either of them. But he checked his computer and said he could do a KTM 990 on Thursday at five hundred euros for five days.
I said “Deal”, and he took some details from my passport and we sat around telling each other stories until some other customers turned up.
I was jetlagged. Germans drive on the right, and it’s confusing to adapt to that when you’re jetlagged. I’d tried to open the cab driver’s door at the airport, and I was screwing up just crossing the road.
So I walked the six hundred or so metres to downtown Erding and sat in a beer garden. A waitress in a dirndl came up and I ordered a Weissbier. It came in a 500ml glass with a fresh baked pretzel on the side. I drank my beer and ate my pretzel and asked for the bill. There was change from five euros.
A balanced diet is a cure for many ills.
The trick with jetlag is to adapt straight away to the new time zone, so I wasn’t going to go to bed until earliest 21:00 local. I went for a walk to the city park, which is huge and runs along both sides of the river. It has a petting zoo and an aviary. I photographed some of the birds in the aviary. There were budgerigars, rainbow lorikeets, and eastern rosellas. Rainbow lorikeets and rosellas land on the balcony of my apartment in Sydney most days and I never bother to photograph them, but I was on holidays and those birds were going to be photographed.
I walked around town for a bit and scoped out the buildings. Erding’s been a town since the thirteenth century. Lots of the buildings are very old. The Kraus clothing and textile business on the main street has been there since 1642.
Kraus’s fabric shop. Since 1642.
The entrance tower in the old city wall is still there. It was built in 1408. It was smashed up by the Swedes in the Thirty Years War but the Krauts fixed it. Because they do stuff like that.
The old main drag.
There was a motorcycle I’d never seen before parked outside a café. It had a sidecar. I was checking it out when the owner came back to it with his parking ticket. I told him I’d never seen one of them before.
He said “It is a Mash”.
I kind of knew that, because it had “Mash” written on the tank. And the engine covers.
“It is a French bike”, he said. “The engine is from China. They are quite popular in Germany.”
I asked him what it was like. He said it was not so powerful, and the engine had a lot of small problems.
I photographed it and moved on.
A little old lady burdened down with shopping was coming the other way. She asked me in German for directions to a taxi stand. I told her that I didn’t know, I was a stranger in town and that I didn’t speak much German because I came from Australia.
“Australien?” she said. She cackled.
“Ja”, I said. “Satans Streichelzoo.”
She cackled again.
I walked around a bit more, had some Weissbier and Wienerschnitzel for dinner, and got an early night.
Next day, Munich. There’s lots to see in Munich, I’m told.
About the Author
Al Al does a bit of everything, and likes hanging around with Boris, because there are generally motorcycles and whiskey, and because hilarity generally ensues. He wastes his spare time not moderating the BIKE ME! forums, where he posts occasionally and is regarded as unfair, unbalanced and unmedicated. Shows how much THEY know.
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