Murray and Rosa launched their Klepper folding kayak, the first of several Romurs, at Ulm on June 2, 1939. The plan was to paddle to the Black Sea -- through Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Romania -- and then head home from Turkey. They probably would have made it before the WWII intervened, had they not had so much fun along the way.
Starting down the river
June 4, 1939
Ingolstadt, Germany
Dear
Dad:
Two days
ago Rosa and I lifted the Romur into the Danube at Ulm, just across the river
from the "Munster," a great cathedral which Ulmsters proudly boast has the tallest spire in the world. There was no one to say goodbye to us as we
clambered into the boat, fastened on our backrest lifebelts, and pushed away
from shore. In the distance we could hear the automatic chirping of a cookoo
and we weren't so sure he was wrong.
But in a minute our doubts were dispelled. We shot easily beneath the middle arch of the
three-arched stone bridge (a task which had worried us some because while the
Danube is very smooth, it has a good current and we were not used to bridges in
fast water) and in a few moments we were idling along in the open country.
The most
surprising thing about the Danube is that its shores are relatively unsettled.
We float along between green fields, our horizon fixed by some gently rolling
hills on which stand a few red roofed houses, in a cluster, or an isolated
baroque church with a radish shaped tower, the walls white and gleaming, the
tower green or dull red.
Suddenly
the scenery will change and the forest will creep down to the shore. Elms and
willows will rise on each side of us, and we will see men and women with
scythes cutting the tall green grass which grows on the bank beside the forest.
Red-cheeked, broad-beamed people these scythe wielders, and they answer our
waves with a fascist palm flip and a cheery Heil Hitler.
Often
there is no one on the shore, and we slip along with the current and occasional
bursts of energetic paddling. Ducks whir up from the water, blotches of white
and brown between two whirring wings. Occasionally we will startle a great,
long-legged blue heron and he will pound into the air, flap his great wings
with calm but puzzled dignity, and come down virtually where he started. Twice
we have seen wild deer coming to the water to drink, and yesterday we caught
sight of the plumy brown tail and pointed ears of a fox.
 |
| River map key, with helpful translations such as Get Out! and Not Possible |
After
one such stretch of river, which bore a striking resemblance to a tamed
Nisqually, we swept around a curve to be confronted with the grey battlements
of Lauingen castle. Another isolated stretch was broken unexpectedly by the
walled city of Neuberg, which looked untouched since the time it was first
erected upon a hill commanding a broad stretch of the Danube.
Although
we did not start until noon, Rosa and I covered 78 kilometers (roughly 50
miles) on our first day.
Sunburned but satisfied, we jerked the Romur's nose
upstream at Donauworth, paddled hard for a minute, and entered the quiet water
of the Wornitz. There, about 800 yards upstream, we saw our first "Kanu-Verein,"
which is an aquatic autocamp. For the cost of a dollar we had a magnificent
dinner of half a dozen eggs, fried spuds, bread and milk, a breakfast of tea
and rolls, storage for the boat overnight, and a room for ourselves.
... summary of Donauworth's role in the Thirty Years War ...
No city would be more peaceful today, however, When we left
our boothaus about noon, we drifted idly along the Wornitz, past the old city
walls, now covered with fish nets hung up by the townsfolk to dry.
Last night we spent in a great pile of a building, an armory
which has been converted into a boothaus. The walls are six feet thick, the
windows narrow into slits, our room is reached by a circular staircase which
winds narrowly through the wall. The beds are as uncompromising as the
building. They wouldn't give an inch. The "springs" were slabs of
pine, the pillows seemed to be stuffed with cannon balls. We both slept soundly
all night. Bed and breakfast: 50 cents. ...
Hotel Drei
Mohren [three moors]
Deggendorf,
GermanyThursday,
June 8
Dear Dad,
It was a
dark night on the Danube, and it gave promise of getting cold. We had
underestimated the slowness of the current and overestimated our paddling
speed, so when the pastels of twilight had faded completely into the swelling
darkness, we found ourselves miles from Straubing, the city we had picked on
the map as our day's destination.
Since "caution"
is our watchword on this trip, night navigation was not for us. With our
flashlight refusing to give up more than a hopelessly feeble glow, about as
powerful as the beam of the radium dial on a watch, we pulled up to the tarry
side of a great, black, evil-smelling river barge, and prepared to spend a long
night there. Then down the river from Walhalla floated two saving angels -- on
a barge.
Wally is a
Czech, a dentist, a sportsman and a
minor linguist. Wilma is a Sudetan German, a sportswoman, a minor linguist, and
Wally's frau. Making their second trip down the Danube to the Black Sea,
they had left Ulm in their canoe only a few hours before us, made stops in
Donauworth and Ingolstadt, as we had, and reached Regensburg about five hours
before us. Instead of stopping at the bootshaus where we left the Romur, they
had decided to try to shoot the old bridge at Regensburg and spend the night
below the city.
The bridge
at Regensburg (Ratisbon, to the French) is no ordinary span. It has stood athwart
the Danube since the 11th century, and most of the original rocks are still in
place. Its narrow arches have always been the bane of upper Danube navigation
-- the Crusaders, who took the Danube route to the Holy Land, portaged when
they came to this bridge -- and it is only natural that city and province
authorities have made no effort to make the bridge easier to pass. As it
stands, the Old Bridge of Regensburg makes its city the head of commercial
shipping on the river.
In the
course of time all but two of the arches have become so choked with weeds and
sand that they are absolutely impassable. Consequently almost the entire water
of the Danube is funneled through the remaining pair of arches. About fifteen
feet upstream from the bridge, the river gathers itself and leaps forward. It
surges at the two arches, roaring and shaking itself like some wild animal. On
the downstream side of the bridge, the Danube indulges in a startling series of
acrobatics. Dangerous at all times, the bridge is especially bad with the river
is at flood level, and it is near that now.
Rosa and I
have been overjoyed to find that there has been a new canal cut through this
year which eliminated the necessity of our portaging. But Wilma and Wally
disdained the thought of quiet water. With their six years of canoeing experience, they defied the danger spot on
the Danube. The gesture was ill-timed. Later in the year they might have
succeeded, but the Danube, at full strength, slapped their kayak with a wave as
it neared the bridge. The boat veered too close to the left side of the arch.
Wilma's paddle touched one of the great stone blocks. The boat swung into the
wall. A long jagged cut appeared in the hull (the only way a folding boat can
be sunk) and Wilma and Wally were swimming.
Our Saving-Angels-to-be
rescued their clothes but the kayak went down to join McGinty. Since there were
no folding boats for sale in Regensburg, Wilma and Wally bought a peasant's
boat for $4.00 and are going downstream to Passau where they can get another
canoe.
Earlier in
the evening of our day of trouble, Rosa and I had passed them as they paddled
their unwieldy craft downstream. The German peasant's boat is a cross between a
misbegotten gondola and a malformed gravel scow. It is blunt at each end, about
25 feet long, 5 feet across at the widest point, 2 feet at the narrowest. It is
propelled with huge canoe paddles, and the only seats in it ware 2x10 planks
which may be placed anywhere across the boat as they overlap the sides by a
good two feet. ...
"Wo zu
ist going?" I yelled at them.
"We
don't speak English," shouted Wally, in English. I doubt that he guessed
what language I was accustomed to using from my questions, although he surely
must have known it wasn't German. Earlier in the evening, however, when we had
passed their boat, Rosa and I had been bellowing our milk-curdling version of
some American songs, and I think Wally recognized us as the emitters of those
shrieks.
"Straubing?
Slaufen?" I essayed.
"Ja,
slaufen."
"Ve go
mit!" Rosa bellowed, on hearing that they were going someplace, anyplace
to sleep -- and I do mean bellowed. Looking back at it, the next half hour
seems funny. At the time it was more long than anything else.
Wally and
Wilma tried talking to us in every language at their disposal. First one would
spout for about two minutes, and then ask "Verstehen?" We wouldn't
have caught a word, but thinking that we had paddled far enough to find a place
to go to bed, would ask hopefully, "Slaufen?"
"Nein,
Nein, Nix Slaufen," and then off they would go in Roumanian, or Turkish,
or Magyar, or Serb. We found out the next day that they were trying to tell us
that Wally knew of a farmer who could let us sleep in this barn and wanted to
know if we would join them, but at the time we could find no linguistic common
denominator. They knew everything but French and English, our two languages,
and since our German is based on sign language, it was of no use to use in the
dark.
They needn't
have bothered with the questioning, for Wally would have had to pull a gun on
us to get rid of us after he had admitted they were sleep-seeking. Our angels
finally realized that we intended to stick to them like chewing gum to your
best suit, so they just led the way.
It about
half an hour we were literally hitting the hay in a German farmer's barn.
The next day
we covered remarkably little distance. In the morning we paddled on to
Straubing with Wilma and Wally. While they cooked their own breakfast on the
bank, we went into town, had marvellous scrambled eggs at a restaurant, and
signed the local canoe club's guest book. It was afternoon by the time we were
on the river again, for we did a little sightseeing while in the city. The day
was pretty hot, and we were all feeling lazy, so we pulled into shore at a
shady spot, Wally dug out his fishing poles, and we spent the rest of the day
catching two fish. Rosa, Wilma and I went over to a nearby farmhouse and bought
eggs and butter. Dinner was cooked and served on the edge of the Danube. That
night we slept in the hay at the farmhouse where we had bought the eggs.
There is
considerable question in my mind just who were the sightseers as far as our
visit to the farm was concerned. We were the first Americans ever to visit the
place, and Men from Mars couldn't have caused more excitement. The little boys
followed me all over the place, and the little girls hid their faces whenever I
looked at them. The barefooted frau of the farm, on hearing that I was from
America, wanted to know if I were English, and when I said I was from the
"Oo S Ah" she wanted to know if it were North or South America. the
whole family turned out to help dig fish worms, and everyone handed his to
Rosa, just to hear her say "Dunka shoen."
Two nights
of barn sleeping in a row were enough for Rosa and me, so today we paddled down
here to Deggendorf, and have a room with hot and cold running water, and an
honest-to-gosh bathroom down the hall.
June 12,
1939
Passau,
Germany Boathouse
Dear Dad:
Our luck as
to weather shifted here in Passau and for the past two days we have been held
up waiting for a rainstorm to lift. Tomorrow morning, thunder or not, we are
going to start again on the river for Vienna, which we should reach in about
four or five days, depending on how many castled crags we climb.
Passau,
although a well-known town, is not the place I would have chosen to spend a
couple of unexpected days. It is a little too much of a tourist center. In fact, with the exception of two big breweries,
the only occupation of the 32,000 people here seems to be catering to tourists.
In one of
the letters which you wrote us in England, you remarked that you preferred to
stay on the beaten track where you meet the people of a country. It is for the
same reason that Rosa and I like to leave it: we feel that on the beaten tourist
track one is all too likely to meet tourists, with a capital "T" (how
much she spent on her operation, nothing but the best, you know the type) or
the people who cater to such tourists. On the other hand, we are meeting the
real Germans, the people who fill the little villages which are so closely
scattered across the country. ...
...
With the
exception of the Overhaus, the architectural pride and joy of Passau is its
three-domed church, an unmitigated monstrosity, unsuited to either its natural
surroundings or its fellow buildings. In a town marked by the simplicity of its
dwellings, some exhibitionistic architect planted this unhealthy pile of florid
baroque brick. A fragment from a Turkish nightmare, it dominates the city, its
three green radish domes visible for miles. It reminds me of the story about
Vernon Louis Parrington (who wrote the three books on American literature which
we were reading shortly before Rosa and I left Tacoma) and one of the buildings
on the campus. He looked at the plans for it and said, "My God, an
architectural abortion." He died the same year and the building was named
after him. ...
Murray asked for news from home, saying that all they had learned was a couple of sports scores and a fire in Chicago.
It isn't quite accurate to say that that is all we have
heard about America. Copies of the German Jew-baiting paper, Der Stürmer, are
posted on the city bulletin boards in this district almost every day, and we
run across them now and again. There is usually a page of cartoons, about half
of which are devoted to "exposing" the Jewish control of America and
the other democracies. Roosevelt is thought to be under Jewish influence in all
of his international policies.
Our impression of public opinion here is that America is
relatively popular as a country, but that Roosevelt, who is believed to be
acting contrary to the wishes of the American public, is cordially disliked. I
make it a point not to mention that I am a journalist when at home, unless
there is no way of avoiding doing so, for the people here believe that every
American paper spends three-quarters of its time libeling Germany.
Whenever we tell people we are Americans, they invariably
remark: "Now that you're here, you can see that all those awful stories
your papers have about us are not true." Last night for instance, a
strapping big canoeist from Hamburg boomed, "It is good that Americans
come here. Now you can see we are not barbarians."
While America as a country is fairly popular and Roosevelt
as a statesman very unpopular, we as Americans (and sportsmen) have been
treated with generosity which is frankly unbelievable. People go miles out of
their way to help us in every little thing. Here are a few examples:
1. When we were marooned the other night, we went with our
Czech and Sudetan acquaintances to a farmhouse and asked if we could spend the
night in the barn. (I told you about that in my last letter.) The farmer not
only agreed, but came out to the barn to open two fresh bales of straw so that
we would be sure to be warm.
2. In Passau we were hunting for the Klepper folding boat
shop, so that we could buy a celluloid map case. No one at the boathouse spoke
English, and the directions were most
complicated. Finally one of the men motioned for us to follow him. He
led us to his car, shooed us into it, drove us to the shop, which was at least
a mile from the boathouse.
3. In Regensburg we were trying to find a hotel or
Guesthouse. We had arrived in the town late at night and there were no spare
beds at the boathouse. Regensburg is no tourist center and has only two or
three hotels, none of which we could find. Finally we went up to a young fellow
on the street and asked for directions. He insisted on accompanying us, and
furthermore wanted to carry all our bags. I really believe he was injured when
we only let him have one. The first place he took us was full and so he walked
about two more miles with us. Previous experience with helpful Germans had
taught me that an attempt at a tip would be a grievous insult.
4. When Wally and Wilma found that we were going to the
Black Sea, they immediately offered to act as our guides. Wally told us he was
going to buy a tent in Passau and instead of getting one for two people he
would get one for four so we could stay with them. He looked really hurt when
we said that we would usually be staying in the hotels and guesthouses along
the way. He definitely did not expect us to share in the cost of the big tent.
These are a few of the examples of generosity, but they are
only a few. They are samples, and not the examples. After two weeks
here, our opinion of the German people could not be higher. As for the
government, we are far less ready to condemn than we were when we were at home.
While there is much in German policy with which we cannot agree, we at least
are getting an ever more sympathetic understanding of the background of that
policy. Of one thing I am sure, our opinions on the European scene are much better
balanced than they were before we arrived here.
By the way, while we have been here, I have reread the last
Master Christian a couple of times. It seems to me that it is the best lesson
you have written in several years, and if the others in the series are of equal
quality they should be brought out in book form, or at least the copies of the
M.C. should be bound. What sort of a response have you had to this one? For my
part I liked best the two paragraphs:
"It is all so very simple, so very livable, so very
lovable. Truly to the faith that sees, life's burden is light. There is no
weary striving, no holding anxious thought. There need be no horror of
loneliness, no brooding sorrow, no sighings of despair before fullness of
illumination is realized.
"The prodigal away from his father's house was always a
son. There was never a veil between himself and his father. He did not have to
travail in pain to become as son; all he had to do when wearied of the husks of
materiality was to return to his father's house where there was "plenty
and to spare.'"
....
I have been doing quite a bit of writing recently, and I am
positive that some of the things will sell. To date, however, I have just
mailed one. It went to the New Republic. ... As Pop Jones, in the U.W.
journalism department, has always said: The secret of selling 'em is to keep
mailing 'em.
...
Love, as ever,
Murray and Rosa
