Gerd Meuer mit Nobelpreisträger Wole Soyinka
   |||  Contact  | Imprint     

Cycling through Erlangen at night… and by day

Some time early in 1980, the Lord Mayor of the beautiful German university town of Erlangen ‘awards’ Wole a municipal bicycle for use during the ‘Erlangen International Literature Days’. And while using it by day and by night, Wole rediscovers the pleasures of the ‘bicycle civilisation’. (INSERT my story for German Radio on ‘International Environment day!)
By day and by NIGHT, that is. And one night he seems also to have enjoyed the pleasures of his preferred Italian ‘Red’, for when he cycles home to our Hotel, he does so in a somewhat unorthodox fashion: well, he’s doing some pretty wild circles. Which do not go unobserved by a nighttime police patrol. Wole is being stopped, and the policeman – who assumes Wole is one of the black American G.I.s who were then still numerous in the ‘Erlangen US Garrison’ – also assumes that this ‘black guy’ has stolen the municipal bike.
He rather sternly asks Wole: “Where did you get that bike from?“
Wole’s honest answer: “Your Bürgermeister, the Lord Mayor, gave it to me.”
“Now, come on young man: anybody can say that! Where did you really get it from?”
But Wole insists that he got his bike from the town’s number one citizen: “Why not call him, Dr. Thalweg, at home? He can tell you since I had breakfast in his garden this very morning.”
In the depths of the night, or rather in the depths of the early morning, the policeman does in fact call the Mayor at home and wakes him up. And the Mayor confirms that he DID hand a municipal bike to one... “Let me spell his difficult name for you S O Y I N K A, Wole Soyinka, this same – yesterday – morning. And please would you drive slowly in front of him and accompany him to his Hotel. And thank you so much for your excellent work in the service of our town’s guest!” Addendum
A few days later, briefly before the start of ‘Erlangen Hill Poetry Festival’ something much more serious happens… Al Imfeld, Reverend Father and writer, being the son of a Swiss mountain farmer and a man with a lot of cycling experience behind his back – or rather in his feet – and also being in possession of a municipal bike, feels tempted by the steep HILL. He starts pedalling frantically up the hill, thus challenging Wole. Wole attempts to beat the Swiss guy. And then a cry of pain: Wole has once again misused some muscles and now needs a massage. The next day he lies in bed with pains. And for this reason his ‘servant’ has to rush to the pharmacy to get some bee poison to rub him with.
The pains can’t have lasted for too long because a day or two later I discover Wole on his bike in town. He does look strange, though, since he is wearing something on his hands which definitely look like... socks. Socks that seem to have been cut off at the fingertips. “How now?”
The explanation comes quick: “Well, because of the cold I went into a shop to buy some gloves, only to find out that since this is supposed to be spring the shop had put away all gloves till next winter. And so as not to freeze off my fingers – which I do need for my job, after all! – I went to buy some socks, cut off the tip, and here I am with my self-made gloves!”