A Tough Test of Loyalties: 15,000 km Across Asia — or ROSI???

At last, the day had come.
The starting gun had sounded for a 15,000-kilometre journey into the great unknown. From now on, my friend Peter Kastenholz and I would take turns at the wheel of our little Volkswagen Beetle, determined to make it all the way to our destination — Calcutta, India — in one piece.
Originally, there were supposed to be four of us.
Then, at the very last minute, two of our fellow adventurers dropped out.



Never mind. Peter and I decided to go ahead anyway — and, as it turned out, we really did see the whole crazy thing through.
But our mammoth adventure very nearly came to an abrupt end almost before it had begun.
The culprits?
A failing clutch...
and a fascinating young woman named Rosi.



We had had the Beetle thoroughly checked over before setting off. With 15,000 kilometres of Asia ahead of us, that seemed like the sensible thing to do.
So we pulled out of Düren feeling reassured, heading first for Cologne.
But once we were past Cologne, something was very obviously wrong.
The Beetle could barely make it up even the gentlest hill.
We stared at each other in disbelief.
A complete inspection — and now this?
The clutch was dying.
Was this the end of Asia before it had even begun?



Peter called his father from a little wine-growing town near Königswinter. As head of personnel at Düren's main post office, his father had an extraordinary network of contacts in postal hostels all over Germany.
And that network was about to prove extremely useful.
At around ten that evening, our increasingly sick Beetle finally limped into Stuttgart railway station.



And what a reception we got!
Two women who ran a postal hostel — Esther among them — together with a male colleague, came to pick us up.
At the Stuttgart-Leuschnerstraße postal hostel we were welcomed with conversation, food, drink and an abundance of kindness.
There was just one problem:
We couldn't stay there overnight.



Esther lived in Stuttgart-Schmiden, and her apartment was wonderfully cosy, with its charming arched doorways.
She was considerably older than Peter and me — pleasantly plump, warm-hearted, talkative and extremely hospitable.
Actually, this was supposed to be Peter's love story.
But somehow, I ended up being very much involved in it myself.
Because...



Despite a few complications of the feminine variety, Esther and Peter hit it off that night with remarkable enthusiasm.
The sounds coming from the adjoining room left little to the imagination.
The two of them seemed to have discovered a private paradise of their own — and apparently had no intention of leaving it until dawn.
How I would have loved to trade places with Peter...
Or perhaps even make it three of us.



The following day, after hearing about my rather mixed feelings ;-) Peter offered his own philosophy on the matter:
"A good sailor will wade through the Red Sea if necessary!"
That night, however, had been a long one for more than just Peter.
Poor me.
Sleep was completely out of the question. From the room next door came an almost continuous soundtrack of unmistakable 'traffic noises'.
I tossed and turned.
Nothing helped.
There was plenty of time to cultivate both irritation and jealousy.



The following day, at least, we were wonderfully looked after again.
Lunch included a generous serving of delicious Swabian Spätzle.
Esther and her lovely colleague and friend from the Leuschnerstraße hostel then took Peter and me sightseeing around Stuttgart.
We went all the way up to the top of the television tower and had coffee there, enjoying a magnificent view over the city.
Later we headed for the castle restaurant, where we chatted, relaxed and indulged in a little harmless 'seeing and being seen'.
After all, we had a whole week to spare.
So we explored Stuttgart on foot, wandering up and down its hills and discovering something new at every turn.
Eventually, our Beetle was repaired and ready to hit the road again.



But strangely enough, leaving Stuttgart suddenly seemed much harder than I had expected.
I had almost become stranded there.
And the reason?
That brings us to Rosi.



Later, somewhere far from Stuttgart on our actual Asian adventure, the two globetrotters — Peter and I ;-) — found ourselves talking about Esther again.
I finally admitted to Peter that, on that memorable night, I would much rather have joined the fun than spent the entire night lying awake next door.
Peter looked at me and said:
"Why the hell didn't you say so at the time? We wouldn't have minded!"
Ouch.
Very, very painful.
Another one of my legendary missed opportunities.
My own diagnosis was brutally simple:
That's Harry for you. A complete idiot when it comes to recognizing his chances.



AN EXCURSION
A few months after our Asian adventure was over, I returned to Stuttgart.
This time I was travelling alone, carrying a whole stack of slides from our journey — and, more importantly, hoping to see some of the friendly people I had met there again.
I was given the opportunity to show my slides to a sizeable group of young people in one of the large rooms at the Leuschnerstraße postal hostel.
Unfortunately, I only saw Esther during the daytime.
Through a particularly unfortunate combination of impatience, stupidity and a touch of childish stubbornness, I left Stuttgart one day too early.
Another own goal.
A perfectly executed Harry-style blunder.
Once again, the pattern was painfully familiar.
I had never exactly suffered from a lack of female company in my life.
And yet, somehow, I had managed to collect almost as many missed opportunities as successful encounters.



Only later did Peter tell me that Esther had actually wondered why I hadn't come back to see her the next day.
Well...
That hurt.
Especially because this was still the pre-AIDS era — a time when casual sex did not carry the terrifying shadow it would acquire later. ;-)



And then there was Rosi.
She worked for the postal service and was another particularly memorable woman I had met during our Stuttgart stopover.
Unfortunately, she no longer lived anywhere near the postal hostel.
But there was more to come.
Much more.

STILL STUTTGART — AND BACK TO THE ASIAN ADVENTURE
At first, our enforced stay in Stuttgart had been nothing but an irritating consequence of the broken-down car.
Gradually, however, the situation began to look rather different.
At the Stuttgart-Leuschnerstraße postal hostel, we Asian travellers were not merely welcomed warmly and fed generously.
There was also no shortage of attractive young women.
And naturally, we noticed.



The trouble was that Peter had already been effectively knocked out of the running by his new flame, Esther.
As for me, I had no intention of spending another night at the Schmiden apartment lying awake while somebody else had all the fun.
That was not going to happen again.
At first, my solution was nothing more than a crazy idea.
But perhaps it could rescue me from my romantic state of emergency. ;-)
Why not simply spend the night somewhere else?
And if necessary...
why not at Rosi's?



A little cheeky, perhaps.
But worth a try. ;-)
Because Rosi was, quite simply, love at first sight.
We had barely met at the postal hostel.
It was only a brief encounter.
But I knew immediately:
This woman was something special.
She had large greenish-grey eyes, a lovely face framed by a luxuriant mane of dark hair, sensual lips and a beautifully proportioned figure.
There was something warm and appealing about her.
Then there was her voice.
And her Bavarian accent.
To this day, I still remember it as the most beautiful Bavarian accent I had ever heard.
So much for the visual and acoustic side of things.



Naturally, I was also rather curious about what might be going on beneath the surface.
I certainly had no objection to finding out.
Unfortunately, fate — or perhaps a little matchmaking by her friends — had its own ideas.
Rosi was part of the wider postal-hostel circle, but she was already living in a separate apartment with another female postal employee of roughly the same age.
Esther tried to play Cupid.
And, to my enormous delight, Cupid actually hit the target.



The unbelievable happened:
I was invited to spend the night at Rosi's!
The anticipation alone was enough to erase much of the frustration left over from my previous night in Stuttgart-Schmiden.
After spending some time talking and getting to know each other better, the evening finally arrived.
Rosi came from the Nuremberg area.
Her job with the telecommunications service was only temporary, though. Her real ambition was to become a religious education teacher.
Aha.
And... oh dear.
This was beginning to sound like it might not be the easiest romantic assignment of my life.



When bedtime came, Rosi went to her room.
I was gently shown to mine.
And there I lay, wondering whether I should make another attempt to bridge the distance between us — perhaps with words, perhaps more directly.
Surely this couldn't be happening again.
Happiness seemed to be lying practically within arm's reach.
And yet...
nothing happened.
I tried, mentally and verbally, to find some way forward.
But Rosi seemed to prefer keeping her distance.
Perhaps I had been too eager.
Perhaps, once again, Harry had simply failed to read the signs.



Eventually, the awkward uncertainty came to an end.
Rosi's friend and roommate suddenly appeared, and Rosi went to bed with her.
That seemed to put paid to any hopes of a romantic twosome.
So, with my usual mixture of optimism and madness, I floated the idea of a threesome.
We discussed it.
Then discussed it some more.
And eventually laughed about it more than anything else.
And that was that.
Dream over.
At least for that night.



There were several more occasions when I saw Rosi.
And I remained hopelessly smitten.
For days, I found myself caught between two powerful desires.
One was the desire to stay in Stuttgart with Rosi.
The other was the journey that Peter and I had been planning for so long:
15,000 kilometres...
all the way to Calcutta.



Eventually, the Beetle came out of the workshop.
The decision could no longer be postponed.
I had to choose.
And, heavy-hearted, I chose the road.
I left Stuttgart with Peter.



Even the weather seemed to understand.
Rain poured from a sky filled with huge, dark clouds.
Everything looked grey, gloomy and utterly miserable as we drove away.
Before leaving, I gave Rosi one last kiss on the cheek.
And I gave her something else as well:
the hit record of the day, a melancholy song by Christian Anders, Geh nicht vorbei... — a kind of forerunner of the later Maxi single.



Its words expressed exactly what I was feeling:
"Wherever I go, I see your image before me..."
And then we drove on.
Asia was waiting.
But somewhere behind us, in Stuttgart, I had left a little piece of my heart.
And perhaps one more of those opportunities that Harry had somehow managed to miss.


 

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