+49° 28' 31.45", +8° 30' 56.10"

If I remember correctly—and I gotta rely on my memory right now because the plane just took off from Hamburg, so I'm offline—we'll be coming into Terminal One of the Mannheim City Airport, and to get to the rental car place you go down the hall to the east, which will be on my right. I think.

Anyway, I've got an Opel Zafira reserved for me, a minivan. I've never seen one in the U.S.—I don't think they sell them back home—but I've checked it out on YouTube. Pretty nice. I'll make sure to add the links to this post when I can find some connectivity.

I won't visit Mannheim at all, because I'll be heading straight to the nearby medieval town of Speyer. Actually Speyer is older than medieval, it goes way back—it's an old border town between the Romans and the barbarians. The main attraction now, just as it was in December 1076, is the Romanesque cathedral, Dom zu Speyer. The cathedral is old now, almost a thousand years old, but back in the winter of 1076-77 it was less than 50, still unfinished, a baby as cathedrals go, a sprawling, soaring raw new symbol of the holiness, the Romanness, and the imperium of the Holy Roman Emperor.

There, in the town of Speyer, my passengers will be waiting.

+49° 28' 31.45", +8° 30' 56.10"

I ease the Opel Zafira out of the Mannheim City Airport, and onto a few frontage roads—at least that's what I think "Landstraße" means. My directions tell me that very soon I'll be on A656 and then on A6, and I know that if it begins with an "A", it's an autobahn. And the smaller the number, the bigger the autobahn.

+49° 18' 50.46", +8° 26' 40.57"

In the minivan, I'm driving through the streets of Speyer with two medieval chroniclers, Lambert of Hersfeld and Bruno the Saxon, whom I've just met at the Speyer Nord-West train station. As host and driver, it's my job to start the conversation, and the silence is getting kind of awkward, so I ask Bruno and Lambert if in fact the town's name refers to the spires of the cathedral (the English name of the town used to be "Spires"). It's actually one of the questions I wrote in my notebook as I prepped for this trip.

+49° 19' 2.33", +8° 26' 32.77"

Ever since the French Revolution, when the Abbey at Cluny got sacked, Dom zu Speyer has been the largest Romanesque church standing—a fact that somehow does not seem to inspire much verbal energy from Bruno and Lambert. I had been hoping that they might be lively tour guides, seeing as how they personally know many of the people involved in the construction and early history of this magnificent building. But their mood turns positively monastic once we enter the cathedral.

+49° 19' 2.38", +8° 26' 23.76"

So I gotta admit I feel a little bit tense as Bruno, Lambert and I emerge from the big front doors of Dom zu Speyer and walk down Maximillianstraße, which is sort of like the town square or main plaza of Speyer. I've picked up a vibe from the two monks—it would be hard to miss—that they aren't exactly eager to meet the Imperial family. Or at least they don't want to meet Henry, which shouldn't be too surprising, because they've both trashed him in their annales.

+49° 18' 45.84", +8° 26' 42.12"

Well, Henry was right—on the way out of Speyer, heading back to the A6 autobahn, you go right past the big Technik Museum. And if you've got a 3-year-old boy in the front passenger seat of your rented minivan (I still haven't figured out what the rules are over here—for all their scholarship, Bruno and Lambert profess complete ignorance of German child safety laws, and Bertha still hasn't said a word to anyone except her son), you really don't have a choice but to stop, especially when Conrad starts shouting "aereo! aereo!"

49° 19' 11.11", +8° 26' 4.49"

While the rest of us are in the Imax at the Technik Museum, Lambert volunteers to do a little online research—on my laptop, of course, using the Museum's broadband. His research skills prove to be quite impressive—which makes me a lot less likely to doubt, for example, his account of the murder of Godfrey the Hunchback, which some historians have called sensational and melodramatic. Anyway, Lambert produces convincing evidence that German child safety laws are very strict indeed. Passengers younger than 12 years of age and less than 150 centimeters tall must be strapped into an EU-approved child restraint system. A kindersitz.

+49° 19' 15.74", +8° 34' 8.40"

It"s "quiet time" here in the minivan, as we head south from Hockenheim on the A6 autobahn, and all the adults in the car—Bruno and Lambert and Bertha and myself—are being really, really careful, because Conrad just fell asleep, after crying it seemed like forever after getting strapped, for the first time, in his kindersitz. Who knows where Henry is. I figure he's commandeered that motorcycle, and he's riding around someplace. I keep an eye out for him in the rear-view mirror, but so far, nothing.

+53° 21' 4.59", -2° 17' 0.09"

So yesterday—or was it this morning?—I was sitting in the airport bar in Manchester, (layover #2 on my bargain itinerary, O'Hare—Newark—Manchester—Hamburg—Mannheim), having a cocktail so I'd be sure to sleep on the connecting flight to Hamburg—at that point I really, really needed an hour or two of unconsciousness, and I figured I could start pounding coffee once I landed in continental Europe—and anyway I started talking to this couple, it turned out they were from the Czech Republic and they asked me where I was going and I told them I was a blogger and I was flying to Mannheim so I could recapitulate or re-enact or re-something the Gang Nach Canossa, the Walk to Canossa, and the amazing thing is, this couple sorta knew what I was talking about.

+53° 21' 4.59", -2° 17' 0.09"

So there I am, or there I was—yesterday, or early this morning, whenever—anyway, I'm in the Manchester Airport bar, on a long layover, talking to this Czech couple about how this whole Walk to Canossa thing got started, and I'm really on a roll, I mean, for the first time, I'm actually making this story work—which is great, because when I try to explain the history to people back in Waukegan, I usually get these blank stares.

+49° 16' 16.50", +8° 36' 49.74"

Conrad and Bertha are both asleep now, soothed, I suppose, by the rumble of 140 km/hr (that's 80-something, I figure, in MPH, plenty fast for me and my jet-lagged reflexes, even though we're just about the slowest minivan out here on the autobahn). I take exit 31-Kreuz Walldorf to merge onto A5 toward Basel/Karlsruhe. Piece of cake. I really feel like I'm in control of this minivan. Maybe I could handle 145, 150?

+49° 10' 6.46", +8° 34' 15.58"

Everything had calmed down for awhile, but now, as we pass the towns of Forst and Hambrücken, Bertha's anger erupts again. In the mirror, I can see Bruno listening to Bertha. Even though she's yelling at him, I can tell he's having the time of his life, leaning back, leaning in, taking her verbal blows like a boxing coach.

+49° 5' 39.18", +8° 32' 4.06"

"Be quiet!" says Bruno. He's listening to Bertha make a phone call, and I guess I've interrupted once too often. Through the white noise of the minivan, as we pass the towns of Untergrombach and Obergrumbach, I can just barely hear Bertha's voice. She doesn't sound quite as furious as when she was yelling at Bruno, but I can tell she's talking about something that still makes her angry.

+49° 2' 31.72", +8° 29' 19.16"

Bertha's still talking to her mother on her cell phone, actually she's listening mostly, as we barrel down the autobahn. In the mirror, I can see her nodding her head. Then she closes her phone and makes an announcement to the car.

+48° 57' 36.17", +8° 23' 55.34"

I bite my lips, contort my cheeks into a grimace, first the left side, then the right side, pinch my leg, squeeze the steering wheel, anything to stay awake. The autobahn is even more soporific than I-55 in southern Illinois, especially when everyone else in the minivan has gone back to sleep, or is praying the office. I try to imagine life in the towns and villages whose names flit past on the blue signs: Waldbrüche, Karlsruhe, Wolfartsweier, Ettingen, but really all I can think of is a warm bed and closing my eyes.

+48° 55' 54.70", +8° 21' 34.13"

"Watch for Exit 51, Baden-Baden," I say to Lambert. "We're going to take B500 toward Iffezheim slash Paris."

"Paris?" says Lambert. "But Paris and Baden-Baden are in opposite directions...."

+48° 47' 34.23", +8° 9' 40.05"

Lambert, in the seat beside me, is now taking his duties as navigator seriously—he opens a paper map, flapping and snapping, to compare it to the GPS.

"Exit 51," he says, looking at the map. "There it is—right there."

He seems to be in a good mood. Maybe this is a good time to get to know him better. As a writer, a thinker.

+48° 32' 4.03", +7° 55' 13.64"

We're heading down the A5, south of Baden-Baden, planning to swing over to Strasbourg to meet Henry and his entourage, which apparently includes some vehicles that can't handle the 60 km/h minimum here on the autobahn. We missed Exit 51, I won't go into why exactly, so now what we're gonna do is take Exit 54-Appenweier to merge onto B28 toward Kehl. A few kilometers longer, no big deal.

+48° 33' 13.38", +7° 52' 8.25"

We're off the autobahn now, heading on the B28 highway toward toward the Rhine river—and Strasbourg, France. You know something, I'm actually kind of excited about driving across a national boundary in contemporary Europe, now that it's all unified. I've never done it before, and I'm curious as to what actually happens. And I'm even more curious as to what Bruno and Lambert think of the unification of Europe. I tell the two monks what I know about the border situation, and how I expect we won't even have to stop when we go across Rhine into France.

"So how does that compare," I say, "to your experience? You know, the borders of 1076?"

+48° 34' 23.49", +7° 47' 55.38"

As we get closer to the village of Kehl, the B28 highway follows a little river—I figure it must be a tributary of the Rhine, except that it looks more like a canal, sometimes even a drainage ditch. It's the the kind of waterway that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would love: dredged, routed, measured and rationalized. But as I drive beside it the little river keeps pulling at my mind, and now I think no, it's not rational at all, here it looks as if an orderly giant has pulled his finger through the soft earth, and I imagine an immense soil-encrusted finger, soon to be licked clean by the tongue of a loyal slobbering dog. The little river's name? I have no idea. I see a sign or two, but I think better about asking Bruno or Lambert—the signs might mean "No Littering" or "Fishing Only for Senior Citizens" and I don't want to accumulate any more American Idiot points this afternoon.

+48° 35' 0.62", +7° 44' 16.42"

We're supposed to meet Henry and his entourage at the Hotel Mercure in Strasbourg. Well, it turns out that there are several Hotel Mercures in that city—first I navigate through the narrow streets to the Hotel Mercure Strasbourg Centre, on the picturesque ile that holds the upscale shopping district, and we've almost got the minivan unloaded when Bertha gets a call on her cell phone. It's Henry, saying he's at the front desk, and wondering where we are.

+48° 35' 0.62", +7° 44' 16.42"

Well, eventually a someone from the hotel shows up with one of those carts to help me with the luggage, and together we roll it into the lobby, and I head to front desk.

Henry is nowhere to be seen, but Bertha's talking on her cell phone, and when I look at her and try to give her the International Tourist Sign Language for "Is this the right place?" (surveying the room with upraised spreading palms and quizzical eyebrows), she nods and points to the desk. So I go and book a single room for myself, and then the clerk asks me about the rest of my party.

+48° 35' 0.62", +7° 44' 16.42"

Finally, we get everybody checked in, and head up to our rooms. My room is on the fourth floor—it's kind of angular, like somebody tried to hide the attic beams of an old building by disguising them as geometric modernism—but it's nice. Actually really nice. I haven't done the euro-dollar conversion yet—my brain is still too foggy from lack of sleep to do the calculations in my head—but it seems affordable, as long as this is the only room that is still on my credit card at checkout time. I've got to talk to Henry about that.

+48° 34' 57.81", +7° 43' 58.73"

"Yah," says Manuel, or maybe it's Stefan. "Let's go next door."

Pretty soon we schlumbel out of Le Bar and down the street to Le Rive Gauche, which I guess is some sort of classic Strasbourgian cafe. There are a lot of tables outside, filling up the pointy corner, and even though it's not very warm, that's where we sit. It's dark now—what time is it? Who cares? I order a round of beers and a round of apertifs—I insist on calling them "shots"—and while we're waiting, the RKS guys check out a table of young women nearby.

+48° 35' 0.98", +7° 44' 12.21"

I wake up alone on the BierWagen. Which is to say that I wake on an old mattress, surrounded by plywood and beer-tapping equipment, with a picture of a large white rabbit, wearing sunglasses, looking down on me. It's an open question as to just how hungover I am, so I decide to postpone the moment of discovery.

+48° 35' 0.62", +7° 44' 16.42"

When I get back to the Hotel Mercure Strasbourg Quartier St. Jean, three of the Rabbit Warriors are sitting in the sidewalk cafe outside.

"Zere he is!" calls out Bendedikt when he sees me. "Ze steward of ze empire!"

"Did you sleep in ze BierWagen?" asks Manuel.

"Ah!" says Andreas, "Ze perfect cure for jet lag! Sit down and join us for breakfast, bro. Ve are drinking Strasbourg beer! Vill you have vun?"

+48° 35' 0.62", +7° 44' 16.42"

"Look," I say to Bruno, "Don't worry about Henry. He has a motorcycle. That's what's guys with motorcycles do. They go."

By this point, Bruno and I are the only ones sitting in the sidewalk cafe outside the hotel. Where's that coffee? Did I ever actually order it?

"Or in this case," says Bruno, "they arrive."

+48° 35' 0.62", +7° 44' 16.42"

1. Head southeast on Rue du Maire Kuss toward Quai Saint-Jean

Wait a minute--that's right outside the hotel! How do they know which way the minivan is pointing? Okay, okay... I'll just drive into the intersection and...

The journey continues...

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