Day 8 – Vreden – Munster

This morning I woke up extremely tired. The boys from the soccer club decided to order pizza, get drunk, and play loud music all night without consideration that there were 22 other people trying to sleep in tents all around them. I think they finally went to bed at around 4:00am. It definitely was a rough night. To add to my fatigue, Riel and I soon realized that the trunk of the car would not open. The release button was stuck, so we couldn’t get anything out of the car. Here we go again! We went to the gas station to ask if there was a nearby WV dealership, luckily we were in Germany, and there is almost one in every corner of the city. The service mechanics were extremely helpful and fixed the trunk for 10 Euros fairly quickly.

Once the trunk was fixed we were on our way to the next city: Munster, Germany! The drive was mainly freeway or “autowan” driving today and it was a little scary. You see there is no speed limit on the freeways in Germany, so people would be doing 160km/hr, just wiping right by us. We stayed in the right lane for most of the drive. The left lane, just like in North America, is the fast lane, or in this case, the “faster lane.” During our drive I started listening to some oldies on my iPod and made some new discoveries. I’m a huge Laurin Hill fan, and have always loved her live album MTV Unplugged from 2002, but it wasn’t until this drive to Munster that I really connected with the lyrics from her song “I Get Out.” As many people know, over the last month the people of Iran have been protesting against the fraudulent acts of the Iranian government during the 2009 presidential election and fighting for their freedom. Although Laurin Hill’s song was not intended for the people of Iran, when I was listening to the lyrics, it seemed as though the people of Iran wrote the words and were speaking out against the Iranian regime. Here are some of the lyrics:

“I get out of all your boxes/You can’t hold me in these chains… Oh I’ll get out/I want out of social bondage…
Your stinking resolution/Is no type of solution/Preventing me freedom/Maintaining your pollution/I won’t support your lie no more/I won’t even try no more/If I have to die oh lord / That’s how I choose to live…I won’t be comprised no more/ I can’t be victimized no more….
Now I’m choosing life yo/I’ll take the sacrifice yo/if everything must go then go/that’s how I choose to live….No more comprises/I see past you’re your disguises…
See you don’t change the truth/And your hurt feelings no excuse/To keep me in this box/Psychological locks/Repressing true expression/Cementing this repression/Promoting mass deception/So that no one can be healed/I don’t respect your system/I won’t protect your system/when you talk I don’t listen”

The song is brilliant! After almost an hour and a half of driving, Riel and I made it to Munster and found ourselves in the middle of a bio organic farm. This was where we were staying tonight. The Young Greens of Munster had organized for us to camp out here for two nights. No one from our team had arrived at the final destination yet, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to hit the city centre and find some wi-fi! Munster was beautiful! It has been my favorite city visited so far on this trip. It was really surprising to me how stunning the city actually was, because when you first get in it seems like it’s all farmland, then you drive about 20 minutes towards the centre and it’s like a modern roman town with pillars everywhere.

Anyways, so I hit a coffee shop as soon as we got into the centre, while Riel went on a mission to find a adapter for our NA plugs, as he had lost one of ours the day before. The waitress at the coffee shop was extremely nice. I was actually quite surprised at how friendly and welcoming these minimal-English speaking Germans were. I ended up sitting there for five hours and working away on my computer. We headed back around 5:00pm to see if any of the riders had made it to the organic farm. It turned out a few of them had arrived for several hours and had found a miniature golf course near by and were having beers and hanging out. Shawn and I headed to the grocery store to buy dinner for the gang! We had BBQ sausages, salad, and tuna for dinner…yum!

Before heading to dinner, everyone was scrambling to set up their tents because it started raining and the wind hit us out of no where fairly strong. As I was emptying out the car, Shawn and Eileen’s tent flew right at me and hit the car. LOL. I quickly grabbed on to it and ran back down the road to give it back to them. It was quite funny!

After dinner the Young Greens joined us around a campfire and each organization introduced themselves. The Young Greens are part of the Green Party in Germany. After our introductions, they wiped out a lyric book filled with 90s sing along songs in English. We ended the day with Brian Adams, Red Hot Chili Peppers, R.E.M., Green Day, Nirvana, and a few more that I can’t remember right now.