Hello everyone, the chronicler can report virtually live. He doesn't have to crank. His first transit day in the Greyhound. The opportunity to relax. He's just wondering who else is on the other side. After all, everyone has their own little packet to work through and he doesn't have anything as sensational as a presidential helicopter crash to offer. He will therefore ask his back office in Todtenhausen for a few screen shots of the blog's statistics functions. So make an effort!
In the morning, with the hotel's generous breakfast offer of a coffee and a gumdrop in his hand, he quickly asks two hotel guests. Juana and Olivier. She's from Spain and he's from France, so why not give foreigners a chance? It's not that quick. Juana keeps out of it. Olivier doesn't believe in feelings in politics, so in the end Jesus comes away empty-handed for the first time: 10-90-0. The chronicler thinks of Willy Brandt and can't imagine that his particular success wasn't fuelled by his feelings. Perhaps developed during the time when he was locked out of Germany and had to live in exile in Norway. Oliver also considers Trump to be an incompetent politician (thinking of his teeth, the chronicler prefers not to use the original expression. His blog is also in English and he willingly distributes the link here too). Olivier baffles him with the question of what distribution the chronicler would award and leaves him speechless. He won't publish his answer here for the time being. Which has nothing to do with the teeth.
Juana and Olivier, the charm of travelling alone: you approach others; not in the picture: the lovely couple at the next table from New Zealand
Philadelphia is a city of millions, a metropolis. Its bus interchange is a 50 metre long, lice-ridden and potholed cul-de-sac in an abandoned industrial estate. No bench, no shelter, no one to clear away the rubbish. In the words of his favourite LIDL advertisement: You can do it that way, but you don't have to! You can tell from the people waiting for the buses with the chronicler that they don't make a very significant contribution to the gross national product. Nevertheless, it deserves more than a bus stop that looks more like a drug parlour. I hope the mayor somehow reads this and should also learn that travelling by bus is not cheap; the chronicler pays $100 for this 300 km trip.
Also a way of avoiding waste: Pointing the camera at the sky. Not the chronicler's bus in the picture
The vehicle is no consolation for this inconvenience. Because it is still of the rather low variety, its cellar is not suitable for transporting the racing bike standing up.
The nightmare sentence from the old days: The bike has to be in a box! Actually, says the rider
But the black female driver is not interested in whether he has a ticket. With five passengers, it's more like travelling in a large-capacity taxi. No wonder, when the conditions are so unappetising. The seats are well spaced, clean and comfortable, only the striped outer windows don't allow much more of a view than from a prisoner transporter. The chronicler is surprised by the area: the highway winds through a hilly, lush green landscape that almost reminds him a little of the Kassel mountains (for the English-speaking part: a landscape along a notorious stretch of motorway in central Germany ;-))
Behind striped curtains
Alone and without a specific task, the chronicler often wavers in his assessment of what he is doing here and hopes to be at least somewhat entertaining. Yes, why is he doing this? You could also ask the counter question: Why not? Why not be independent, quite free, with curiosity and a willingness to make an effort, while obviously travelling the world without protection?
He occasionally thinks back to this encounter years ago in his favourite Bavarian café, the Tortenkaiser Winklstübl. Of the old man at the neighbouring table with whom his son made one of those rare trips away from being alone. "When you're as old and immobile as I am, you only have memories to live on". Yes, the chronicler thinks, and it's good to have a good supply.After all, he still has his pet, which is probably more likely to do him in than the usual biological decay. In such a shortened future, it's best to do what you can. And you do it as well as you can and with all the love you are still capable of. Just don't save money at the wrong end.
Now, after the first few days of this special tour, where his trousers are still flapping due to the duration and effort, he realises that there is something else besides encounters, sore muscles and meatballs: Education. So he is very grateful to Alain for his reference to the president at the beginning of the seventies, Richard Nixon. A tough dog, a person about whom a competitor once said:
His lies will be remembered longer than his legitimate work. He was the most insincere person I have ever met in my life.
You can find that in Wikipedia and you can also find the interesting hint that his arch-enmity against the media and political establishment and his populist way of speaking provided the intellectual background for Mr Trump or Boris Johnson. Yet he did extraordinarily solid things during his time in office, such as a first Environmental Protection Agency, an Occupational Safety and Health Administration and a completely new approach to dealing with indigenous people. At this time, the chronicler was still in his nappies in terms of his personal development and was also subject to the strong influence of left-wing anti-war activists (the USA was at war in Vietnam). And so his opinion of Mr Nixon was limited to the offhand remark: Nixon does w..... too.
Alain's comment was aimed at the chronicler's assessment that there used to be more love between people. But if that was the case, he wondered, how could a person of Mr Nixon's character achieve such an overwhelming majority for his presidency at that time? Yes, why?!
Meanwhile, the person in front of him on the bus has woken up. Of course he will answer the chronicler's question, but he wants to put God first. In his order and his own currency, it's Jesus 110, Biden 80, Trump 75. There's no reason to make fun of him. Somehow, this distribution seems to the chronicler to be reasonably balanced. In the order and counting method used here, it would have to read 42-30-28.
Darryle
That's almost everything today. In the small town of Ebensburg, the amiable bus driver has let him out. While he is cleaning his racing bike out of the cellar, she lights her cigarillo again for the third time, takes a few puffs, stubs it out again at the kerb, gets back on with a "Take care baby" and rushes off in the almost empty vehicle. The chronicler is surprised by the cleanliness of the town, by the old houses made of red brick or wood. Not at all his image of America, which he had formed more in the West. There is a pub with a pretty good and affordable menu. However, as is so often the case in such places today, there is a lack of life in every corner.
The chronicler has to leave the village for the night and take the four-lane main road. He finds accommodation in one of these inns, rooms the size of double garages. So he takes his racing bike inside. The beds are so big that families of four could sleep in them. They are also piled high with pillows, enough for entire school classes to have wild battles. The chronicler will never learn to categorise sizes again in his life - what is queen and what is king? He enjoys himself. See you tomorrow. Stay cheerful.
