3rd of July after the hottest day of the year we are trying to start really early at 5:00 am on our way to Kempten. Not only to escape the heat, but we try to avoid the crowd, as we are not allowed with bikes in the rush hour on Munich’s public transport. As we are packing up our bikes during dawn, we were suddenly surprised by Carsten Zehm and our Past Governor Christian Fey. They helped us to get the bikes and luggage up on the train platform at Starnberg station.
Arriving in Memmingen we were by coincidence just in time for the raise of the rainbow banner at the town hall. The team of Memmingen town around Caroline Weber was very helpful to show us their actual project of Klimathon, where the citizens can be part of a six weeks lasting campaign with six changing subjects about climate change.
We also got our St James stamps with a trick by the lady at the front desk it even landed on the back of my hand.
It’s 35 years ago, that after my final exams I started my first longer bike tour to Switzerland with my friend Tilman. The first leg ended in Hart close to Memmingen, where I tried to discover the family roots of my California friends Kuechle, who I got to know during my Rotary exchange in 1988. The village is full of Küchles and we already had visited with the California Kuechles several times the family of Friedrich. So we had this time a spontaneous short “hello” before we continued to Legau, where Maximilian Nost guided us through the Rapunzel World and Boris Weltermann gave us some background to the PR. The rapunzel World is an awarded sustainable project by architect Prof. Martin Haas, which managed to be built by local material and workers within a distance of 30km.
We left Legau with black clouds and thunder and it didn’t take very long until heavy rain set in. Until our arrival in Kempten we were soaked wet. When I stepped out of the Basilica to get the Saint James stamp in our pilgrim pass, a lightning struck into a building just a block away from us. But no dammages.
The Rotary Club Kempten had organized us a stay at the Art Hotel, where they usually hold their club meetings. It’s an interesting hotel project for inclusion, where we had a wonderful room with balcony to dry our equipment in the sun which presented itsself like it never had rained a single drop before.
The Rotary meeting was also visited by the governor of district 1841 Linda Gebser. President Ellio Schneider and his Rotarian friends had not only invited us for the stay, but handed beside the Club wimple us some gifts to stay longer fit on our tour.
After my lecture the Club was still interested in watching our short film of the years “Regnosis”, where Linda could also see her hand over as actual Governor on the MS Starnberg.
It was a wonderful evening and we managed to sleep before midnight. A good night of sleep.
