It used to be - now this is a long time ago - that when boy scouts from, say, Dublin went camping in the summer, they didn't go far from base. Different now. One troop from Rathfarnham, Dublin, flew to the heart of Europe, camping on a river in Bavaria a few kilometres from the Czech border, ending up with a visit to Prague. On return one of them spoke of the warmth of the Bavarian people. First, they got great help from the local scouts, who ferried their gear from Regensburg, where it landed, to the campsite - about 50 kilometres. It was on a river, a lovely clear river, where they enjoyed swimming and again, the local scouts helped them by lending them three kayaks for the length of their stay. They hired a people carrier and were free to shop around, but the local village had one shop, which they patronised.
They got used to sausage and German food in general and were overwhelmed when, after visits to the local cafe, not far away, say three or four kilometres, they were brought back by car to the camp by the cafe proprietors more than once. Cooking in the camp was on gas, of course, none of this romantic wood-fire nonsense, except for the traditional campfire evening on the night before departure. One of the party was fluent in German, another could, as he put it, "get by" in the language. They had one day in Munich and were much impressed by the famous stadium. Everywhere so clean.
The impressions they brought back were of a very warm, generous people, especially those on whose land they were camped, and the beauty of the lovely wooded landscape. The pride of the people around them in their local area struck them very much. Would we be the same with Bavarian scouts? You would hope so. Ages of boys ranged from 12 to 17 and the leader was in his early 20s. An old grandfather said that he, too, had enjoyed Bavarian hospitality in the winter of 1946 when he, as a newspaper correspondent, had been taken into the hospitable home of a local broadcaster and his medical doctor wife, in a village, deep in snow, near the shore of lovely Starnberg lake. Barter was better than paper money, even for the doctor's services. She gladly took butter or eggs or whatever from her patients.
There have been black marks against Bavaria into which we needn't go. For all the Scouts, it was a lovely experience in human relations as well as the enjoyment of scenery.