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In Which I Am Befriended By.. A Serial Killer?

December 14, 2006 by Mike

Wangerland

Route: Büsum - Meldorf - Glückstad - Krummendeich - Cuxhaven - Bremerhaven - Wilhelmshaven - Wangerland

Riding today was all about the wind. Not the scenery, not the road conditions, not the villages and towns, not the songs singing in my head, not the livestock or the architecture or the price of fish or any of the 1001 things that keep a biker on her/ his toes. Just the wind.

It was coming from the west, in the main, and it was hard. For the most I was heading straight into it but at times it was blowing into me from the right, then from the left. It skudded and spurted and pretended to go away before starting again from a new angle. It hid behind trees but came at me full pelt across open fields, rivers and marshy lowlands. The front wheel hopped a couple of times as a fresh gust washed over the bike.

There are 100s of modern windmills here, tall and spindly towers with great propellors on top, surging round at a pace today. It's called wind farming, isn't it? This would be the factory farming of wind farms. Battery farming, in fact. Geddit?

These windmills aren't here by accident. It's windy here. The trees are all leaning at implausible angles. The houses are built of brick, not wood. It reminds me.. and I apologise again for place-dropping.. of Tierra del Fuego.

--

I completed a happy hat-trick today: a big bridge (over the Kiel canal at Brunsbüttel), a long and slow ferry (across the Elbe, at Glückstad) and a bright, spangly new tunnel (the Wesser tunnel below Bremerhaven).

They took me past or round the big ports of north west Germany.. as with Rostock and Kiel in the east, I've bypassed the big German cities. No grand plan, but they've come and gone at the wrong time of day. Luckily, as I haven't been reading up in advance, I don't know what I've missed. Hope they aren't toooo brilliant.

Having said that, I surprised myself by not going to Hamburg -- yes, it's inland but it's still a seaport thanks to the size and depth of the Elbe. I'd been quite looking forward to that Big City vibe, but in the end, I elected to stick to the coast. Besides, the idea of a hamburger simply doesn't appeal.

--

Even though Büsum had been such a letdown yesterday I did it again today -- noticed a small area of the coast called Wangerland and, skoolboy giggles steaming up my visor, I tootled up the coast looking for a seaside room for the night.

The tiny town of Horumersiel is the centre of the region, though that makes it sound grander than it is: a post office, a small supermarket and, joy of joys, a bookshop. I sent a couple of postcards, nibbled on a Berliner (no, JFK, it's actually a fruit-filled bread roll) and prepared to cruise the streets looking for a B&B, when:

"This is your motorbicycle?"

I looked around. I was the only person for 100 miles wearing motorbike gear.

"Yes, it is. Do you ride too?"

It's my stock answer to the men of a certain age who admire the Bonnie. Many of them used to ride, often British bikes, and they (and I) enjoy the reminiscing. But not this one, a tall man with broad shoulders and a hairline I can only dream of. It wasn't the bike that interested him so much as the number plates - British number plates.

"You're English? Where are you from? You're on holiday? Where are you staying? In the area? Do you have somewhere to stay? English, did you say? You'll stay with us? You wait for two minutes? While my father finishes in the shop? English, yes? Have you heard? There is a serial killer in England. Yes! You stay with us? Yes!"

No chance or time to answer a single question. By the time he drew breath it was all arranged - I was staying in his home tonight.

And, it transpired, it wasn't his father we were waiting for, but his wife. His grasp of English being, well, let's call it idiosyncratic.

When his wife joined us she didn't seem in the least surprised that her husband had found himself an Englishman, even one riding through Wangerland on a motorbike in the middle of December, nor that I would be spending the night at her house. (I, on the other hand, had a bemused look on my face, jaw to the floor, dizzy, looking ever-so-slightly stupid.)

"He is from Norwich," explained the husband. "Near Ipswich. The serial killer! Five dead prostitutes!!"

She smiled benignly and stepped into their car. I felt a nagging unease at how interested this man was in serial killings, an unease that only grew as we drove off, in convoy, away from the small town centre along a small road, turning left onto a still smaller lane and then right onto an unmarked dirt track. What street lights there were were now far behind us. The car ahead of me rocked and lurched along the track. No space to turn the bike round and flee. I could see the distant twinkle of warm, welcoming farmhouses on the horizon but there was nothing ahead of us or anywhere close enough to hear me scream. I was thinking to myself.

Eventually the car pulled into the driveway of a small house. In the darkness, I turned in behind them and parked the bike where, I judged, I could make a quick getaway if the man came after me in the night with a meat cleaver. It was deadly still all around. The man was all smiles as he bounded over to me, his eyes gleaming as he took in the sight of victim and.. I mean man and bike on his driveway.

"I have not introduced," he said. "My name is Gerreilt. This," he looked admiringly at his wife, "is Hille. Welcome to our home!"

"And I'm M-M-Mike," I stammered. If he is a serial killer, I conceded, he's a particularly sociable one.

You'll be glad to hear (I hope) that Gerreilt turned out not to be a serial killer, but a committed Anglophile, and a warm and generous host. Of all things, he discovered his love of England during a two year spell as a prisoner of war, from 1944-46, in Cumbria. This bundle of energy, who I had pegged as a dangerous threat to my safety, was 82 years old, though he looks no more than 60 and could match a teenager in terms of his enthusiasms.

Hille, who he met and married in 1949, floated in and out of the room, glancing over at Gerreilt and shaking her head every now and then. She spoke no English, so she was glad when I started to translate into German some of the things her husband was excitedly telling me in his occasionally off-kilter English. (My German's been getting better, and quickly, but it's no better than occasionally on-kilter.)

"I was a prisoner in Cockermouth," he explained. "Cumberland, yes? Camp 103. They were in my life the best years. I was driver for the commander of the camp, Major Collins. Such a man!" [At which point Gerreilt told me a couple of stories about Major Collins that he never wants to turn up in print.]

"And every morning I would drive the prisoners out to the farms to work." [At which point Gerreilt told me a couple of stories about prisoners being seduced by farmers' wives that he never wants to turn up in print.]

"We had the best of times." [At which point Gerreilt told me a couple of stories about prisoners escaping for the weekend and stashes of home-made beer that he never wants to turn up in print.]

And so did I. It was a grand evening, talking long into the night with beer in one hand and photo albums in the other; an evening made even better by the fact that, even though the pair of them were remarkably unsentimental about the fact that their friends and neighbours have all started to die of old age, discussing recent deaths with a matter-of-factness I could hardly believe, at no stage did Gerreilt attempt to slice me up into little pieces.

Comments

By Laura | December 23, 2006 4:55 AM

Riding in gusty wind is no fun at all. In Palm Springs it was crazy windy and we had to ride at an angle but it was constant not gusty. There's a wind mill farm there too.

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