the kids are alright

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This post is about a 19km walk from Lake Mandicho to Augsburg. I see a very rich family’s house, and I meet some climate activists.

I woke up in my bivouac sack. The grass around me was wet, the lake was quiet, and my friend Bower and his son Eric were still asleep under their tarp.

We took our time getting up and packing our stuff, then we said our goodbyes, and I started walking north.

more nudists

There was a gravel path along the Lech river that led to the city of Augsburg. It went through a forest, so it was often in the shade, and the walking was easy. Also, it was very quiet.

I saw a handful of cyclists and some people walking their dogs. Sometimes I would hear some noises, and then I would invariably see a few bicycles parked on the way, and some towels with bathers on them on the riverbank. Sometimes they had parasols with them, and often they were naked like my friends at Auensee.

the yeller

The first thing that happened to me in Augsburg was that I got yelled at. I was taking some random street shots when a lady noticed me and screamed: “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?“

Tourism, I replied.

“WHAT?”

Tourism.

She stood there, staring at me as I was walking past. Then she screamed: “IF I AM IN ANY OF THE PHOTOS I WANT THEM TO BE DELETED!”

fascist posters

The second thing that happened to me in Augsburg was that I noticed the AfD election posters. They were mostly on one main road into the city, and they were hung up higher than all the other parties’ posters.

They made me want to throw up. The AfD (“Alternative für Deutschland”) is a far-right political party that started out ten years ago as mainly eurosceptic but has since become more or less openly fascist.

I was annoyed as hell until I noticed the kid with the basketball. He looked sixteen or seventeen, he was dribbling his ball down the road, and every once in a while he would stop and toss the ball at one of the fascist election posters, turning them around.

Look at that, I thought, the kids are alright.

meet the Fuckers

There are some families in European history that managed to accumulate such massive wealth that they became like quasi-royalty. The House of Medici comes to mind. Or the Rothschilds. Augsburg was home to another one of those families: the Fugger family.

I’m going to have to come out and say it right away: their family name was initially spelled Fucker. Make of that what you will.

Anyway they were rich, so rich in fact that at some point one of them possessed two percent of the combined wealth of Europe. Damn.

And their (restored) house still stood in the city of Augsburg. I went and looked at it, and it was nice. That’s all I can say: it was a nice renaissance building, and some very rich fuckers used to live in it.

Spezi-E

One of the nudists at Auensee had told me to go and check out the Climate Camp Augsburg.  Back in 2020, a bunch of young people inspired by Fridays For Future had gotten together and set up a makeshift camp in the center of downtown in order to voice their environmentalist demands.

I went and talked to them, and they were nice and friendly, albeit a bit unorganized. One of them, a young man who went by the nom de guerre of Passion Fruit, treated me to a bottle of Spezi Energy.

“Try this,” he said, “you can hardly get it anywhere else.”

pictures

the walk from Lake Mandicho to Augsburg:

LOVE YOUR SELF

the path along the Lech river

nudists on the shore of the Lech river

the Lech river at a barrage

ice-cream graffito

bridge near Augsburg

park south of Augsburg

an angry lady yelled at me here

AfD election poster in Augsburg

VERBOTEN

the Red Gate of Augsburg

old town of Augsburg

Roman fresco on display in Augsburg

Fugger House in Augsburg

Damenhof of the Fugger House

I sit in the courtyard of the Fugger House in Augsburg.

Perlach Tower

Climate Camp Augsburg

I sit in the Climate Camp Augsburg

Spezi-E

skateboard with stickers in the Climate Camp Augsburg

back view of the Climate Camp Augsburg

the Caboose in the Climate Camp Augsburg

my sleeping place in the Climate Camp Augsburg