Motorcycle+ Girl=adventure
MOTORCYCLE+ GIRL=ADVENTURE
STORY AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY POOKIE BAKER
THE FIRST DAY’S motoring took me about seventy-five miles outside of Barcelona. I had to stop because the rain was so heavy and the drops so big, they tore at my cheeks and splattered my goggles, limiting visibility to zero. Giving up the one-sided struggle against nature, I stopped at a roadside camp that advertised rooms for $1.00. The rest of the day, I watched the rain streak the window. It had seemed in the past that, whenever I tried to leave a place, nature tried to make me stay. You can wait out a rainstorm just so long; then that spark that made you move from home in the first place ignites, and you must “push on.”
The day’s ride from Salon-de-Provence to Nice was an easy and beautiful one on the old Route Number Seven. The new route, on the other hand, is too fast, too boring, and very much like a freeway at home. For scenic beauty, France has it all over Spain; but, as I learned very quickly, the Spanish people seem much kinder and warmer than the French. I entered a camp outside of Nice on the road to Grasse. “Camping L’Oasis” has delightful hot showers free of charge, something I hadn’t enjoyed for quite some time. A small store, a snack bar and a pool made it well worth one dollar.
The prices in France are similar to the prices in the U.S., and, on the Riviera, the prices are even higher than U.S. resort prices. (Of course, staying in a hotel — or even a pension — was impossible on my skimpy budget.) The restaurants in Nice are a joke as far as prices are concerned, except for a few mentioned in “Five Dollars a Day,” so it was necessary that I give my little Primus stove a workout.
There is no doubt about it — Nice is nice. The only thing that I didn’t “dig” was the beach, which, in many places, is composed of large gray stones, smoothed and rounded by the ages. How vacationers sunbathe on them is quite beyond me. When I tried, I came up bruised.
There are certain things that every tourist must do when visiting the Riviera. One is to sit on a bench on the promenade just above the beach and watch the girls change from street clothes into a bikini. They do this with the aid of a small towel, and usually nothing is revealed. However, there are always one or two who drop the towel, which makes for quite an entertaining afternoon. It does, however, take a watchful eye and a long-suffering bottom to sit so long.
Every tourist should also buy some French bread, cheese, some paté, then gather it all into a sack and picnic on the beach. In fact, there are many things to do on the Riviera that require little or no money. I found that the majority of people there are just pretending, anyway. San Tropez, for instance, is full of visitors who look as if they had a bundle of money, but sleep in an old car in some parking lot to save a franc.
San Tropez was, by far, the most interesting town along the Cote d’Azure. It reminded me of Hollywood. Everyone laughs when there is nothing to laugh at, and everyone stands by the biggest yacht in the harbor, pretending it’s his. If you’re invited to dine, you can bet the pretenders will leave for the rest room when the bill arrives. The Riviera does have a few millionaires around (all the French models from Paris have itemized lists), and most of the millionaires are from the U.S.
There are many individuals in San Tropez who live off the tourists. If you can play a guitar, trumpet, or if you can juggle, you can spend the entire summer in San Tropez for nothing. Young hopefuls play their instruments, paint their paintings and sing their songs in front of every restaurant in San Tropez; then pass the hat around the tables. I remember one poor fellow, an American, I think, who played the worst sax I have ever heard. They paid him francs just so he would leave.
As far as dress in San Tropez is concerned, use your own judgment. I wore Levi’s most of the time, and, at first, felt a little guilty about it. Most of the women wore those high-style, way-out, bell-bottom, silk pajamas to the night spots. One night, however, I stopped feeling sorry for myself. While frugging in a little discotheque, I noticed Brigitte Bardot walk in, sporting an old chambray shirt and Levi’s. She and I were the only two in the whole place who looked comfortable. I guess when you’re famous or happy, things like clothes don’t really mean so much.
Cannes is a beautiful city. The yacht harbor is exceptionally big; and it is fun to wander around the docks, looking at the different boats. Cannes, however, is a big city compared to San Tropez, and, to my disappointment, caters principally to older people.
From Cannes, I took a few days to visit Monaco, Princess Grace’s kingdom, or whatever. Actually, the drive from Nice to Monaco takes a beautifully scenic hour. In Monte Carlo, everything seems to be taken from a painting in a book about fairyland, and there are excellent camps just outside of Monte Carlo which overlook the aqua Mediterranean. The city is set high above the sea, with natural harbors to protect the multitude of seagoing yachts. The market place in Monte Carlo offers delicious fruits and vegetables, shoes, and bocee ball sets. Living there can be inexpensive if you camp and shop at the market.
You can see Monte Carlo in a day, and, unless you wish to gamble at the huge casino (which is flanked by Rolls Royces), you can leave and never worry about missing a thing. Beautiful, it is; but interesting, it is not.
Actually, I felt quite at home with the ’’yacht set” on the Riviera. You see, the real yachtsman needs transportation when he is in port, and, nine times out of ten, carries a big motorcycle on board. It was fun to meet these people, and, again, my Yamaha introduced me.
Just a few miles east of Monte Carlo is a village every tourist should see — Saint Paul de Vance. This is perhaps the most noted artist colony in all the world. Picasso and Brach once occupied rooms in a small, charming hotel here, creating paintings to pay for their room and board when they were struggling. The little village has an amazing quality of light that has drawn artists for centuries, and is located high on cliffs just above the sea. The Sunday I was there, the entire population was on the clay court in the center of the village watching a tournament of bocee ball, a sport that is very big in Italy and the south of France. Bear in mind that, on the Riviera, there are numerous settlements very close together, and all are of interest to the traveler.
Surprisingly, the Riviera is perhaps the only place in France where, if you are wise, you can live for almost nothing. The Riviera is geared for “taking” tourists, and, in a way, so is all of France. Yet there were and are many young Europeans spending their vacation on the same sort of budget I was, who always seem to know the places to go and the things to do that take little or no money.
After France, I decided to move to Switzerland; to Geneva, to be more specific. The trip takes two full days and is full of mountain roads that made me glad I was on a bike. I never worried about finding a camp, for there was always one close by when I needed it. When I first began my trip, I joined the Royal Automobile Club in England for a tendollar fee. I would suggest this for anyone wishing to travel abroad, whether by motorcycle or car. They supplied me with a complete set of maps which included all first-class camp sites throughout Europe. Another invaluable service offered by the club is, if you should ever get into mechanical difficulty, you can call to the nearest clubhouse (they’re all over), and they send help immediately, free of charge. If you need a part, they get it for you, flying it in from the U.S., if necessary. I didn’t have the opportunity to use this particular service, as I had no mechanical difficulties. Nevertheless, it was certainly good insurance, and I met a number of people who had Used the Rdyal Automobile Club service and found it absolutely invaluable.
My first night after leaving Nice was spent in Grenoble at the new municipal camp. Grenoble is over halfway to Geneva, so I got the longest part of the journey out of the way first. I took a day to wash my bike and my clothes. On washday, the thing I was most grateful for was a good supply of stretch-cords. Those gorgeous elastic snakes with hooks on the ends not only serve to secure luggage on a rack, but make a great clothesline. Inner tube strips might be cheaper, but give me a stretch-cord every time. They can even serve as a belt in a tight situation.
The mountains just before Geneva are splendid works of nature. Mont Blanc is quite a landmark and is, indeed, the “white mountain.” Geneva is built at the west end of Lake Geneva, or Lac Leman, as the Swiss call it. The city is lovely and clean and sterile. Its people are industrious and healthy. Motorcycles and bicycles swarm into the intersections and over the city’s picturesque bridges.
It was here I took the opportunity to work and help my finances. After a short stay in a lovely camp on the lake, I stayed with some people I had met while in Spain who were in the process of building a “new” old house and needed a helping hand. The house was in a small farming community between the French and Swiss border.
It seems that finding people who want to work in Switzerland is very difficult. I was given a room and meals for my services, which included painting walls and chairs, mending curtains, cooking, and helping out wherever I was needed. I enjoyed my stay there. My friends had been in show business and had now decided to settle down for awhile. They were very kind to me, as were all the people with whom I came in contact.
Eventually, the villagers would stop by to see me, but what they actually wanted was a peek at my motorcycle. I let several of them take a turn, and many of them wanted to trade me their prewar model mopeds for this shiny new bike from Japan. Women of the village did ride bicycles, but none of them were allowed motors of any size. It was a man’s world.
I spent two weeks helping around the farm, and when I could afford a day off, I did some sightseeing. I found that sightseeing wasn’t nearly as rewarding as working with the people, learning old recipes and seemingly old ways of doing things. The lady of the house spoke English; but she was the only one, so it became essential to pick up a few necessary words in French. This opportunity to work and learn gave my budget a needed breathing spell, and gave me two extra weeks of travel money. I did take a very worthwhile boat trip on the lake, and saw all those things that the tourists are supposed to see. I found that I was so much luckier than the majority of tourists. They see so much of the past when they travel, and I saw so much of the present.
I left Geneva along the northern route of the lake, and found that Geneva really isn’t representative of Switzerland as a whole; atypical, if you will. Switzerland is driving through the little villages, and stopping at an occasional tavern and drinking the wine of the region. Switzerland is a chalet; and it’s a milk wagon that pulls out in front of you when you’re doing seventy miles an hour, and then stops in the middle of the road because the horse felt the call of nature. It gets slippery in some places. Switzerland is altogether delightful.
Buy lots of cigarettes there; and fill up with gas in Switzerland before you enter another country, because it’s cheaper there than anywhere else close by.
Now, money in hand, I was heading for Berlin. From Geneva, I went to Lausanne, and then on to Basel. I passed city markers reading Stuttgart, Frankfurt, and Kassel. The roads in West Germany are marvelous freeways. Although I made good time, I decided to rest in Kassel before crossing the border into East Germany.
The trip from the East German border to Berlin has to be a one-day trip, for there are neither camps nor pensions for the traveler in East Germany. It is an easy day’s drive, however. Don’t start too early, or you are liable to get to the border just behind some buses full of tourists, and each of their visas will take fifteen minutes to process.
The best time to cross this border is midnight or sometime in the morning. It is a little chilly riding all the way into Berlin with no sun to warm your bones, but, if it is a nice night, you still save time; otherwise, prepare yourself for lots of waiting in line. (It is not necessary to get a visa long before you enter; in fact, if you go to the embassy beforehand, it may take two weeks before a visa comes through. It is much easier to simply wait in line.) Just fill out thousands of forms, pay a few marks, and get a huge hammer and sickle stamped on the passport. That’s really all it takes.
There are many gates to pass through, and rusting at the side of the road is barbed wire. The road to Berlin is marked very clearly, and if you say you are going to Berlin on the forms you sign, you’d better not change your mind. The roads in East Germany are the roads that Hitler built. They are modern divided highways. The only drawback is that the surface has not been cared for since that time, so it’s pretty rough going.
There are one or two gas pumps on the highway, a few rest spots just off the road; but no signs, no billboards. Nothing dots the landscape. One bridge I crossed was yet to be finished. I found out later that the bridge had been awaiting completion for at least fifteen years. There are no peasants on that road. There was no sign of people and no sign of work except an occasional smokestack belching on the horizon. I came to the border of West Berlin and had to repeat the same sort of paper-signing and form-filling as I had done just a few hours before. I passed through the same sort of roadblocks — but in a different order this time, as the allies were the last to check my papers. I stared at the same sort of barbed wire alongside the road. I glanced at the high towers on the other side of the wire where soldiers were manning machineguns. I watched tractors loosen the earth on the other side. One can spot footprints so much easier that way. When I drove into the city of shiny new buildings, the barbed wire became unimportant to me. The people looked so busy and laughed a lot. The streets are wide and swarm with Volkswagens and BMWs.
I had been invited to stay at the home of some friends I met in Spain. When people in Europe tell you to come and stay with them, they mean just that and would be insulted if you visited their city and stayed in a hotel. I have heard many times that, if I were to come, they would not politely show me to a hotel. I had the good fortune to stay with a family who owned the largest discotheque in Berlin. Almost every night, I would dance my heart out at the Big Apple or the Black Bottom, since Berlin has quite a night life. There is an atmosphere of eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow who knows. You feel it in the atmosphere, you see it on the streets. The hit songs are America’s mdSt frantic and the clothes and hairstyles are “a la Beatles.”
Everything is incredibly cheap in this glorious city. I bought a bikini for $.75, which in France might cost from $10.00 to $20.00. There are countless restaurants with tremendous German beer and German dishes for $.75. There are hundreds of pensions all around the city at reasonable prices. The fun to be found in the evening is immeasurable. And, of course, there is Check Point Charlie, the forbidding iron wall down the center of the city.
A Berliner will tell you very openly over a stein of beer how the people of Berlin are different from other Germans. A few felt that a divided Germahy was best for the German peoples. Perhaps all this is true; I don’t know. All that I do know for sure is that I loved this strange city and its people.
I heard someone say, “Let’s go to Sylt.”
“What’s a Sylt?” I asked, only to be told that a few day’s drive from Berlin is an island on the North Sea off the German coast. Sylt is THE island where every German of wealth spends his summer holiday. Sylt was a wonderful place to spend a few days observing how another country spends its leisure.
The North Sea area is cold. Even in summer it is cold. Despite this fact, the vacationing German is bound and determined to get his share of the sunshine, to go home with an all-over tan. In order to do this, the German couple will get up early in the morning, bundle up in ski wear, hop into the Grosser, and drive to the beach. When the pair finally reaches the beach, they step out of that nicely heated car, rush to the sand, dig a deep hole to protect themselves from the wind, then they take off all their clothes and bake (?) in the sun. Nudity is allowed on all the beaches on the island. No doubt that’s great in a tropical setting, but let’s rule out the North Sea. I guess they figure that everything is safe on this island. You are too cold to think of anything except the chills.
When I walked along the beach for the first time, it was quite a shock to notice an exceedingly pink bottom sticking out from the sand dunes. It is not, however, like a nudist colony, where you park your clothes at the door. If you don’t feel like catching a cold you can wear a ski suit.
The nights in Sylt are full-dress — and, I might add, a lot of fun. What used to be big, old homes, have been converted into family-style hotels, restaurants and bars. Watch out for the prices, though; it is a resort. In the settlement of Westerland on the island, you can find a few restaurants that are quite reasonable, and, just outside the city, are masses of camps on the beach. With the beaches as they are, that, too, can be most interesting. It’s feasible to spend several days there for very little. The island is connected to the mainland by a set of railroad tracks. I drove my bike on a flatcar and was shuttled all the way over to the island for a dollar. Believe me, I’ll never forget that kooky “Island in the Cold.”
I had planned before I left to visit Greece, Turkey, and Egypt, but time and funds didn’t allow it. However, now I know how cheaply I can travel; and, in a year or two, my plans to visit the East will materialize. They most definitely will include a Yamaha. For the entire seven months of hard travel, my bike gave me no trouble, except for a spark plug oiling now and then.
I was glad 1 chose a bike, for my motorcycle paved the way to many friendships. I had accomplished not five months on $3.00 a day, as originally planned, but seven months on an average of $2.00.
It is true that I am now sick of canned tuna, tomatoes and French bread, but that is the only scar I bear. What a small price to pay! ■
