Crossing the Alps Report

Day 1-6 (Aug 12- 17)

We departed Munich in high spirits, it had been a long layover in a noisy, crowded campground, that left all members anxious and excited for the thinness of both the mountain air and population density.  

It has been over 100 Degrees for a week straight, which is apparently Ranger’s entire working memory as she cut her only pair of pants into shorts.  

We boarded a regional train for a short and uneventful (But CHEAP!) trip across the border into Salzburg.  The the group had been reunited only briefly before we split up.  The newcomers, not completely adapted to the new behavior of the days (jetlag) were grumpy and eager for open spaces, while Arrowhead had fallen for the looks of a city arguably no different than any of the old European seats of power and influence.  Though it only took one date over ice-cream for her to realize there was little to practically gain from Salzburg’s external charm and we spend the rest of the day like hound dogs, losing the scent of our companions only to find them again by a stroke of luck so thin it could have been used for one of those coming-out-of-a-tunnel-and-jumping-through-the-sheet-of-paper-that-american-football-players-are-so-fond-of, but for ants.  

Once together we resumed the requisite party behavior.  “Everything is fine,” was often said and just as often met with a cheer of approval.  

That night we slept under a high voltage transmission line and awoke frequently, mistaking the crackling of the ionizing air for rain.  

The next morning we made breakfast while we watched some dynamite miners blow the top off of one of the nearer peaks.  For the rest of the day the scenery itself was just as explosive.

It’s true what they say, the hills are alive, but not with the sounds of music, it’s the sounds of “Holy Fuck,”s and “What the Damn,”s  

We opened a can of Booster Energy Drink and poured through ravine walls narrowing like we had willingly entered a grotesquely large trash compactor.  

I was startled by the amount of empty and discarded energy drink cans that litter the sides of the highway… “what are people doing here?” my colleague, Party Blower, wondered.  

In the American West the highways are usually littered with beer cans which are a clear indicator of people’s intention to drink and drive and get wasted.  But here…  Here, there are obviously other things on the agenda, things that require a near painful alertness.

Arrowhead also refers to herself as the little engine that’s working on it as riding across a mountain range is exactly as difficult as it sounds.  

One of the more notable camp sights we came across was Dr. Love’s Porno Bus.  As we were leaving a small Austrian town, confused as to the whereabouts of close campgrounds, we scoured the maps.  Partly blower happened upon one that was on “Fuck Bitch Road.”

“How do you spell that?” I asked, thinking it was just a remarkable stroke of luck that some Austrian word would sound like that when said aloud in English.

“You’ll know it when you see it.” was all the response.

Boy was he right.  Turns out, Fuck Bitch Road is a strategic name.  Dr. Love put a lot of time and effort into the grand murals that adorn the reception/bar/bathroom/orgy lounge.  Everything was hypersexualized bordering on rapey.  The faucets that came out of the wall appeared to come out of women’s butts.  Sectional couches draped is shag blankets leered from every corner, and to no one’s surprise we found Dr. Love shirtless and ready to check us in.  Through the piercings in his lips he mumbled things that I deciphered to mean “very expensive campsite.”  Which was fine because it was actually one of the more peaceful campsites we had been too.  Aside from the orgy den, the rest of the campground was quite normal, older and middle-aged couples in RV’s amidst vast expanses of grass with a few groves of trees to provide some privacy.  It would have been a great place to score some Maximum Romance points but the Alps proved to exhausting.  
Documentation of the adventure has taken a major downturn as most free time is spent with our friends.