Lazy Days of Summer

It is the beginning of harvest time for farmers. It is also the start of school vacations, government shut downs, and the great migration toward the Mediterranean and Baltic beaches, Alpine trails, and a host of exotic vacation-lands. The secondary roads are crowded with tractors pulling all manner of crop cutting and bailing implements. The Autobahns and tunnels through the Alps are

jammed with families and campers making their way south. The airports are so tightly scheduled that the slightest glitch causes enormous chaos.

Recently, in the midst of this mass movement of people, a lone woman caused havoc at the busiest airport in Germany — Munich, Bavaria. She somehow managed to unintentionally skirt a security checkpoint and fifteen minutes later 330 flights were canceled, 32,000 passengers were inconvenienced, and 2,000 passengers spent the night on cots and benches in the terminal. The turmoil extended to overcrowded trains and buses trying to cope with altered scheduling of tourist vacation plans.

Not phased by all this hubbub, we packed a thermos of coffee, two fresh-baked rolls with fried eggs, and a banana for a 30-minute bike ride and an enjoyable breakfast on the “beach.” Trees conveniently separate the farm fields from a patch of grassy lakefront for public enjoyment. Christl takes her swim across the half-kilometer-wide lake formed by a flood-protection dam on the River Rott while I read and watch girls taking farm horses for a swim. Horses have an easy life in modern Bavaria.

Although all-time temperature records were broken in Bavaria this summer, the humidity is about half that of Florida’s sweltering, muggy, sodden, dank, steamy . . . summer heat.

The village hosted their annual downtown summer festival over the past weekend with the usual beer benches, music pavilions, eateries, and a host of drinking pavilions spread over about a four block area. This year the featured theme countries and their music were Italy, Spain, France, Mexico, N. American, and the Caribbean Islands. The main fare, of course, was beer and bratwurst. I was pleased to see that the North American alley only flew one Confederate flag next to the US flag. In years past, the alley was peppered with confederate flags.

According to a recent Time magazine article a growing number of cities in Europe are complaining about tourists — “We’re cities, not theme parks.” In 2017 almost three quarters of a billion people visited Europe. Countries and cities are fighting back through increased tourism taxes, fines for drunkenness-noise-littering, no street drinking, closing bars earlier, and limiting the number of tourists.

Crazy world in the lazy-hazy days of summer.