We’re off the autobahn now, heading on the B28 highway toward toward the Rhine river–and Strasbourg, France. You know something, I’m actually kind of excited about driving across a national boundary in contemporary Europe, now that it’s all unified. I’ve never done it before, and I’m curious as to what actually happens. And I’m even more curious as to what Bruno and Lambert think of the unification of Europe. I tell the two monks what I know about the border situation, and how I expect we won’t even have to stop when we go across Rhine into France.
“So how does that compare,” I say, “to your experience? You know, the borders of 1076?”
“We don’t worry about borders,” comes a voice from the wayback seat. “My husband is King of the Romans.”
It’s Bertha. This is the first time she has spoken directly to me since we left Speyer. “Right,” I say, jumping on the chance to get a conversation going. “Of course. But still, aren’t there some–“
“My Enrico is also King of Germany, King of Burgundy, and King of Italy.”
Enrico? Who’s Enrico? Does she mean Henry…?
“And when we get to Canossa, the pope will anoint him Emperor.”
“Absolutely,” I say, trying to catch her eye in the rear view mirror. “But aren’t there, you know, a lot of princes, dukes, counts, whatever, with their own territories, their own armies…?”
“My son is Duke of Lower Lotharingia,” says Bertha. There’s something final in her tone, as if Conrad’s dukedom is all I need to know on the subject of rival principalities.
“That’s great,” I say, nodding my head. “You… uh… you must be proud of him….”
What the hell is Conrad is doing? I look around, as best I can, in the mirror. The Duke of whatever-it-is had better still be in his kindersitz!
“Lower Lotharingia,” says Bruno, “is basically what you would call the Low Countries. That’s–“
“I know what they are,” I say. “Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg. Benelux.”
“Very good!” says Lambert, his voice dripping with unctuous superiority, “Except that Luxembourg would be part of Upper Lotharingia.”
Okay, I give up. We’re going to stop in Strasbourg and get a hotel room. I’m going to get a good night’s sleep before I try talking to these people again. How long has it been since I slept? really slept? not counting those semi-hallucinatory hours aboard the jumbo jet, half-dreaming yet excruciatingly aware of the passage of time? I’m too busy driving to figure it out.
As we get closer to the village of Kehl, the B28 highway follows a little river–I figure it must be a tributary of the Rhine, except that it looks more like a canal, sometimes even a drainage ditch. It’s the the kind of waterway that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would love: dredged, routed, measured and rationalized. The little river’s name? I have no idea. I see a sign or two, but I think better about asking Bruno or Lambert–the signs might mean “No Littering” or “Fishing Only for Senior Citizens” and I don’t want to accumulate any more American Idiot points this afternoon.
Then we veer left, heading toward France. Around us sprawls the industrial fringe of Kehl–railyards and warehouses. Next thing I know we’re crossing the Rhine–on a dreary old causeway that must be the Europa Brücke/Pont de l’Europe. For a symbol of peace, reconciliation and unity, the bridge is very utilitarian, even boring–it looks like it was rebuilt in a hurry at the end of World War II, which it probably was. There’s a nice pedestrian bridge, though, one of those soaring Calatrava rip-offs–a few hundred meters to the south.
And then, just as I expected, it’s clear sailing. The border crossing is like driving through those tollboths outside Chicago, where you don’t need to stop–except it was even easier, because you don’t need that thingey…
And then I see that something is wrong.
Burned out buildings.
Police tape.
Armed troops, with sub-machine guns, guarding workers boarding up smashed windows.
“What the hell happened here?” I say.
“The anti-OTAN riots,” says Lambert. “I think you call it NATO.”
“Don’t you watch TV?” says Bruno. “It happened last week. The Black Bloc anarchists set fire to the custom house during the summit.”
I pull over to the first parking spot I can find.
“C’mon,” I say. “You mean there were riots–buildings burning–right here–at this symbol of European unity?” I don’t care how stupid I sound–I want to know.
“Like I said,” says Bruno, “Don’t you watch TV? Did you even know your president was here?”
“Of course I knew,” I say. “It was all over the news. But I kept turning off the TV–it was all about Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni–their clothes, their make-up, their hair, whether they really got along or not…”
“American TV is fucking stupid.” Once again, a female voice comes from the wayback seat. I look back. Now that we’re parked, I can actually turn my head. Bertha has taken the Duke of Lower Lotharingia out of his kindersitz and holds him defiantly in her lap.
“I read about it in a magazine,” says Bertha. “You have the second-stupidest TV shows in the world.”
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Bertha Disbands the Rabbit Warriors with a Kiss
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Road Under Construction
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