a spooky German roadtrip
At the end of October and the eve of Lockdown 2.0 we decide to take a roadtrip to see some castles and some countryside. Masha rents a car that’s much bigger than we expected and we drive like soccer moms into the small town of Wolfenbuttel to see a friend living in the library there for her PhD research. It’s grey and cobbled, and chalkboards promising a pivot to takeaway already line a main highstreet of electric signs beneath 18th century beams. A woman in a cafe home to two rainbow budgerigars makes us lattes, and we drive onwards in the dusk towards Leipzig and DV.
There is an “unpretentious bar” round the corner from our Airbnb; we have an hour until our booking at a GDR-themed restaurant recommended by a friend, and also need change for the parking meter. Two middle aged men are pouring beer and cokes behind the bar alongside many statues of dogs in formalwear. (When I say beers and cokes I am not speaking about two separate drinks.) A little old woman has wedged herself into the corner with some kind of steaming hot drink, and two men are playing chess over litres of beer. One of the bar men pours us a large bowl of peanut butter flavour crips with a wink and our four glasses of prosecco cost €7 in total.
Later I will insist this is a gay bar as everyone in there was gay. DV asks whether just because gay people are there, does this make it a gay bar? Yes, it does. After dinner we go to a social club where we stand at the bar sandwiched behind students ordering nine absurdly tall shots. There is another pair of men playing chess in the corner; I wonder whether they simply moved location while we were eating.
In the morning we have classic continental German breakfasts of croissants but also cold ham, cheese and boiled eggs. It is Halloween, and also apparently “Reformation Day”, celebrating Luther’s nailing of his commandments. Very spooky. The drive south is marked by spirals of smoke above autumnal tree slopes, kilometre long tunnels boring through the hillside, sunset wisps of cloud hanging low over the woods. In Weimar we have hot chocolate and apple strudel with cream, soundtracked by the clippity clop of two horse-drawn carriages. DV orders an onion soup.
We listen to spooky stories as we drive above a landscape of dense and dark forest straight out of a Grimms fairy tale, and we enter Coburg as the light begins to fade and a full moon rises over the town. On a mission to see the castle we become completely stuck at the top of a narrow winding path up through the woods that we had sort of known was a footpath but ploughed on regardless. Two German teenagers watch us silently as our tires squeal and thrash on inches of leaves and the smell of burning clutch fills the air. They silently disappear down a path as dusk fades into night, and after some frantic phone-calls and out-of-control flails we back slowly, slowly down the winding road from whence we came, our phone lights like airplane ushers on the runway. Masha executes an impressive 11 point turn against a fence. We descend into an old town of pastel walls and oak tables, huge schnitzels from kind waiters, and three beers in an atmospherically-lit overflow garage beside a crowded pizzeria.
Afterwards we walk below a lamp-lit secondary castle, faces invisible as mask-wearing is mandatory, Boris’s lockdown update echoing through the small-town German silence. (No matter how spooky empty early modern architecture under a full moon on Halloween, Boris blaming The North for the failure of his virus measures is peak spine-chilling.) We sit on the dark motorway with “4 week lockdown will begin next week” ringing in our ears, and turn off towards the drive-through McDonald’s for cherry pie and a paper sack of processed meat that we realistically will not fit in.
We enter the fortress town of Kronach and drag our bags up through the gates to the castle, all towering sandstone and rain-slicked cobbles and a kind German couple pointing out the spiral staircase up to our room. Breakfast is an enormous buffet accessed with sterilised gloves. While DV pays and Masha packs I stand alone with the sound of rain against my Barbican umbrella, church bells from the town below, birds from the forest above. On our way out we stop to stare at huge shaggy cows in the drizzle, a truly peaceful interaction until they begin plodding purposefully towards the car.
While climbing up through a hillside town hanging off of a steep slope we lose all internet and navigation for several minutes of upwards ascent. When we reach level ground we are surrounded by thick and impenetrable fog. Trees burst over the road at the last moment and pinpricks of headlights meander in the distance, divorced from any vehicle. We pass a tiny church that could barely fit one person, the landscape beyond it impossible to gauge. Fields? Trees? Sheer drop? Fog means we cannot see beyond 20m ahead. It’s only noon but it feels like dusk against the leaden grey of the sky, the clouds so low they must be dragging on the roof of our stupidly large car. Piles of logs swim in and out of sight and paths lead off into the forest, visible three trees deep before they’re swallowed by grey.
We enter Thuringia and suddenly all the houses are painted black. We park up in the tiny spa town of Bad Lobenstein, where we drink coffees at a gingham table-clothed cafe and then go to the spa. It’s stuffed with couples and families soaking up the final hours of gathering in public space - it’s unfortunately a clothed spa, so I must buy a very 80s bikini. We sit in the jets of the outside pool, steam rising and and leaves falling, watching the tidal whirlpool in which an elderly couple float round and round and round to the point that I wonder how long they have been in there. The sauna is closed. We receive disapproving glares from older German women if we spend too long under the jets, in the hot tub, on the loungers etc etc. When we leave the couple are still circulating gently onwards… legend has it they’re there still.
Driving towards Dresden under a sky stained red from traffic and pierced by factory towers, we listen to a podcast in which two men discuss the origins of the myth of the pied piper (it’s the children’s crusades lads, we all know it). We have a fish dinner in the town of Pirnau, beside a blue and pink theatre that looks like a large boiled sweet, and embark on a winding 20 minute drive along a single-laned unlit road. There are perhaps cows beside us at one point, as our headlights reflects off of large and low white shapes. When we arrive at our location pin there is absolutely no indication we are anywhere near an Airbnb until a small light comes bobbing towards us through the darkness. It is attached to the head of Ronny, our host, who does not speak English although is very keen to hear about Masha’s Russian background. He guides our car down a pathway beneath a large weeping willow until we are in front of the dark and hulking “castle” that we appear to be staying in, which is a surprise to me, having panic-booked the only place 2 hours from Berlin that allowed instant-booking on the eve of lockdown.
Ronny is wearing a fleece and waterproof trousers, and has very black nails. He asks us to guess how old the building is - DV does not guess as he does not speak German and we are slightly too stunned to translate for him. We are both wrong any way. Ronny tells us that the first brick was laid on this site in the 9th century, the main building in the 16th, its current form in 1860. He points out what used to be the drawbridge, tells us that there used to be 6 meters of moat before the war. (Masha pulls me aside as Ronny fumbles with the key to ask if we are on a gravesite - subsequent googling has taught me that the words for grave and moat are the same in German, though why we each came to our separate conclusions perhaps says something about our psyches at that moment.) Ronny leads us into a huge and derelict entrance hall, lined with broken furniture and empty crates of beer and, inexplicably, cabbage. He introduces us to his enormous dog Oscar, who is enthusiastic and friendly. He shows us how to lock the doors so Oscar doesn’t get to the chickens.
Ronny asks what we do for work. He asks us if we’re baptized. He asks us where our parents are from. He particularly wants to know where DV’s parents are from. He asks if we’re interested in history? He tells us he is going to show us a picture that contains our history - all of our histories. I am afraid suddenly not of ghosts in this ruined building in the middle of the German countryside, but of other things.
Ronny leads us through the castle, where the only light is from his head and our phones. He shows us the exposed wooden beams of a mahogany ceiling, and we stand among flaking plaster and plastic sheeting as he tells us what century they are from and we grasp at increasingly random questions. He shows us the picture that is going to explain our history to us - a 16th century fresco, partially restored beneath the plaster of the hallway. It is faded and chipped, and in no way clear what is being represented - there’s a woman, there are serpents, there are male figures. Ronny asks us if we know the story of Cain and Abel. If we do, we know the wrong story, probably, he says - Abel was the son of Adam and Eve, and Cain was the product of Eve mating with the serpent, Nahash. We didn’t know that, did we? Everyone on earth is descended from these two bloodlines, he tells us. But we’re all the same of course, one people, he hastens to add. He then says something about the German People being one, unlike the British who are formed from many different invasions.
I’m not sure if we’re understanding what he’s saying; it’s getting colder, and my German is becoming overwhelmed by the biblical vocabulary, and as he gesticulates at us his head torch is blinding. Ronny moves on to show us a cavernous dining room with velvet drapes across the wall and a piano in the corner - do any of us play? Plastic deck chairs are set around a large table, drinks are piled on another as if we’re all waiting for a lot of guests, and his head torch illuminates a life-size oil portrait of a sullen-faced 16th century family. I can tell both Masha and DV think that this is where we will be sleeping tonight - or rather, that our very large rental car is where we will be sleeping tonight. There is what I think is what I think is a French flag on the mantelpiece, but when I ask Ronny he says no, it is a German flag. I look closer and it is sat atop an iron eagle. It is the flag of the Weimar Republic. The Deutches Reich.
At last we’re led up a winding stone staircase to a corridor with electric light temptingly visible at the end - another huge and shadowy dining room, with a table laid, next door to our bedrooms. There’s a stove with clean and folded towels and bowls of crystals, and Masha has got Ronny talking about horses - how he’d like a horse to ride into town to get his groceries and drive all the narrow-minded people there crazy. The plentiful light and the mention of the outside world is soothing. He tells us one last thing - that we’ll sleep well, as this is a holy place, but also to keep the door locked. He also says something about St George the dragon slayer, that he lived here? visits here? but that he’s now in Pirnau, and Ronny must go there to get him back. With that he leaves. To go and find St George? Neither Masha nor I can work out whether he means a statue, a ghost, or the saint himself, and by this point our German and our mental states have deteriorated to the point that we simply lock the door and sit on our beds very quietly.
It’s only at this point that I read the reviews that might have alerted us to this situation before arrival; “a night we won’t forget”, “extraordinary and unusual”, “extremely large dog”. We are too nervous to use the shower and must listen to each other use the loo as the door does not close. Masha goes to sleep and DV and I stay up among the oak furniture to finish our books and calm down with the crackle of the stove and the key in the door. By midnight my biggest fear is falling asleep with the electric heater on.
In the morning, daylight streams through net curtains. The dining room down the hall is bright and well-furnished, and its windows frame beautiful autumnal colours and rooftops. Cheerful chickens peck across the courtyard. Ronny moves his car to let us out and tells us to come again, Godspeed, next time book with him directly via his personal number. We laugh a bit hysterically as we drive back towards Berlin via Dresden’s blackened old town and Potsdam’s Prussian palaces. DV flies home, and Masha goes to stay with someone in Wolfsberg who tests positive for COVID two days later.
In my IKEA-lit bedroom in Berlin with mac and cheese and a stupid film I think about Ronny, sat alone with a beer and his dog in the two habitable rooms of a ruined castle in the middle of the German countryside. I looked up his Cain and Abel theory that night by the stove after Masha and DV had gone to bed, and discovered that it is a theology shared by others. It has its own Wikipedia page. It is called “serpent seed”, and appears in early gnostic writings. More recently it is held by adherents of the white supremacist theology Christian Identity, which claims that only white people are descendants of Adam and hence the chosen people of God, and that Jews are descended from the serpent.