Sunday, October 4

From	To	Distance (km)	Average Speed (km/hr)	Max Speed (km/hr)	Odometer (km)	Riding Time (hr:min:sec)	Push-Ups
Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany							250

(4103 words)

Man versus Water Heater

This morning I got up at 7:30AM. Anja had put Matt and I on a hideabed in a small room. I had to climb off the foot of the bed to get around Matt, who was still asleep. I crept out into the hallway and into the kitchen. As all was dark and quiet, I concluded Anja too was still asleep. I returned to my room, extracted from my bags the things I'd need to take a shower, and headed for the bathroom.

Anja's bathroom was cold. I flipped on the light and surveyed the landscape. At one end of the bathroom sat a tub. On the wall above the tub hung a water heater, from which emerged a flexible metal hose terminated by a shower head gun. The flexible hose, which is typical of German showers, makes for more efficient and effective rinsing. One need not contort oneself to expose those hard to reach spots to water falling from a fixed and distant shower head, as one must usually do in America. In Germany, one can position the shower head mere centimeters from its target, aim squarely at the bullseye, pull the trigger, and spray away the suds with deadly accuracy. Given that this particular tub had no shower curtain, however, I knew I would need to do a bit of squating and contorting this morning anyway, to prevent stray water from flying out into the rest of the bathroom.

I pulled off my clothes in the cold air and approached the tub. I took the showerhead gun, aimed it at the tub, and pulled the trigger. As soon as the water started flowing, I heard the heater kick on. I stuck my hand in the spraying water to test its temperature. Within seconds, the water emerging from the showerhead changed from ice cold, to warm, to hot.

To be on the safe side, I wet only my hair. For some reason, the whole set-up reminded me of Francis's shower in Dolleren, France, where Matt had encountered temperature troubles. Back in Dolleren, Matt had sprayed his entire body with warm water, then soaped and shampooed everything he had with reckless enthusiasm. When he at last went to rinse all those suds, however, the only water he could coax out of the shower head was freezing cold. With this in mind, I proceeded to shampoo my wet hair. The environmentally conscious water heater had shut off automatically as soon as I had released the trigger to stop the flow of water. When I again pulled the trigger to turn on the water, I expected the heater to kick on as it had before, but this time the heater remained stubbornly quiet. The water remained ice-cold.

With sudsy hair, I stood and inspected the water heater. Apparently, when the heater had automatically shut off, it had also blown out its own pilot light. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to reignite the pilot light. Nearby I spotted a box of matches. Center front on the water heater I noted a small hole. I grabbed the box of matches, removed one wooden match, struck it, and slowly inserted the burning match into the hole in the heater. Luckily, the heater didn't explode. Unluckily, the pilot light didn't reignite. With a sigh I resigned myself to the fate of a cold sponge bath. I kneeled low in the tub and rinsed my hair with ice-cold water.

My luck reversed, however, when on the way back from the sink, where I had gone to retrieve my forgotten soap dish, I happened to notice a sticker on the side of the water heater. As cold water dripped from my hair to my shoulders, I inspected this sticker, which explained with large, technical German words how to use the heater. Although the technical German was next to incomprehensible to me, the sticker did include some diagrams. With these diagrams, the small amount of German I could decipher, and a match, I managed to reignite the pilot light. When I again pulled the trigger on the showerhead, the heater kicked on and the water turned hot. Although I had to repeat the pilot light ignition process three or four more times because the heater kept blowing out its own pilot light, ultimately I ended up feeling well showered and ready for the day.

Hiking to Bettenfeld

Unfortunately, my struggle with the water heater put me behind schedule. When I arrived at the café where I planned to eat breakfast, my cyclometer-clock read 9:12AM. I was supposed to meet Olbeth and Alexandra at the Goethe Institut at 9:30 to exchange addresses. My schedule was not helped by the rather relaxed service at this café, especially the four minute egg that took fifteen minutes to prepare. I ate as quickly as I could, but I wanted a complete breakfast and stayed until I'd had it. I didn't arrive at the Goethe Institut until 9:45.

When I arrived at the Goethe Institut, fifteen minutes late for my meeting with Olbeth and Alexandra, I looked in all the places I figured they might be waiting for me, but they were not around. Either they had waited for me for ten minutes and left in discust at 9:40, or -- what I figured was more likely -- they were later than me.

By 9:00, the scheduled start time for the day hike, quite a few students had gathered by the front gate of the Goethe Institut. I had taken this same hike one year earlier, when I was a student at the Goethe Institut. The group hikes through the forests and fields surrounding Rothenburg to a small nearby town named Bettenfeld. In Bettenfeld, the group briefly visits a small church, then has lunch in a local restaurant before hiking back to Rothenburg. The leader of the hike, both one year earlier and today, was Werner, a teacher at the Goethe Institut. As the group started walking, I looked around for Olbeth and Alexandra. Apparently, they had decided against going on the day hike altogether.

The group walked to the Burggarten (town park), then down a steep path into the Tauber river valley. We took a small footbridge over the Tauber, then hiked along a road. We stopped when we came to what Werner called a schlösschen (little castle), which looked like a tall, skinny house with tiny slits for windows. Werner told the group that this schlösschen was built in the 1300s by a man named Toppler, who was at that time the richest and most powerful man in Rothenburg. Although some say the rich man built the schlösschen as a summer home, given its small windows, others suggest he built it for protection.

Werner told the story of this rich man's demise -- the same story he had told one year earlier on this same hike. Werner said that although the rich man had apparently done quite a bit of good for the town of Rothenburg, he had also made a number of enemies along his road to riches. When a king with whom this rich man was allied was deposed, the townspeople of Rothenburg siezed a political opportunity to throw the rich man in jail. Given current laws and customs, had the town of Rothenburg executed this man, all his wealth would have been inherited by some external king. Rothenburg, at that time an independent city-state, wanted to keep the money for itself. Thus, instead of executing the man, they just didn't give the man any food or water in jail. Eventually, the man died of his own accord, and Rothenburg got to keep his money.

While standing in front of the schlösschen, Werner also mentioned that although many people have a romantic view of the old days many centuries ago, when Rothenburg was at the height of its power and independence, that life in those days probably wasn't as idyllic as people might imagine. As there was no sewage system back then, for example, people generally emptied their pots onto the street. As a result, Werner concluded, the town likely smelled quite bad.

While listening to Werner talk in front of the schlösschen, I became aware of how much my German comprehension had improved over the past year. I remembered that one year earlier when I had heard Werner tell these same stories, I had had a hard time understanding much. This time, however, I could understand almost everything he said.

The group continued along the road. We crossed a Doppelbrücke (double bridge), hiked along a trail in the woods, and stopped again in front of the "Wildbad," a complex of buildings built into the side of the Tauber valley. Here Werner told the story, as he had one year earlier, that these buildings had once been put up for a closed bid auction. When the highest bid turned out to be from the Hare Krishna's, the town somehow colluded to put together a higher bid from some local churches, because they didn't want the Hare Krishnas in Rothenburg. The investment was apparently a good one, because the site is now rented out for conventions and is quite popular. To be able to hold your convention there, Werner told us, you'll need to make reservations two or three years in advance.

Picking Schlehen

After Werner had concluded his Hare Krishna story, he asked if anyone had a plastic bag. Everyone began to shuffle around in their things, but a French man named Freddie was the first to produce an empty plastic bag and pass it over the heads of the crowd to Werner. Werner explained that he wanted to collect a kind of berry so that he could make schnapps with them. By the time he had finished explaining what he was planning to do with Freddie's bag, about five or six other plastic bags had been produced by various people and passed to Werner.

We continued hiking. At several bushes along the route, Werner and several volunteer helpers stopped to collect the berries, which he called schlehen. The berries looked a lot like blueberries, but Werner said you can't eat them, because they are poison. You can only make schnapps out of them. Someone told me that he mixes the schlehen with sugar and vodka, then sets a sealed bottle of this solution in a window for two months. Apparently, it must set near a window because it needs light to help it turn into schnapps.

By this point in my bike trip, I was taking copious notes about my trip, documenting everything in the little blue notebook. Apparently I had already acquired something of a reputation among these Goethe students for always scribbling in my notebook. At one point, as I was writing the name "schlehen" down in my little blue notebook, verifying the spelling of it with Werner, Jan from England handed me a berry and suggested I press between the pages of my notebook as a rememberence. Jan also offered me a more useful item to place in my notebook. Whe told me that in English schlehen berries were called sloe.

I ended up not pressing Jan's berry in my notebook. Instead, I added that berry to a handful Isabel had picked and was holding in her cupped hand before adding them to one of Werner's bags. I smiled at her as I added my berry, but she just stared at me in silence, as if to say, "Is that all you can do old man?"

On the way to the restaurant I talked with many different people from many different places. I practiced my minimal Chinese with Eva from Taiwan. I met Laurie, a very young American girl spending a semester in Europe. I talked to Sophie of the pretty orange coat. She said her name was "Sophie," as in "philosophie." Very cute. She works in a tile factory near Lyon and recently got a new position in sales, which is why she now needs German. I also met Philip, a teacher from Alsace, who knows Valerie, Clarisse, and Simone. I talked to Laura and Sylvia from Italy. I talked more to Susan from Atlanta, Mary from North Carolina, and Carl from Connecticut. Carl was a retired librarian and plant afficianado who chewed on a blade of grass like Huck Finn.

Arriving in Bettenfeld

When we arrived in Bettenfeld, we all piled into a small, old church. I plopped down on a pew next to Sarah and spent a few minutes in silent contemplation of the infinity and mystery of the universe. Then it was time to eat. We all exited the church and headed for the restaurant.

Upon ascending the stairs and entering the dining room of the restaurant, which had been reserved exclusively for our group, I began to pay closer attention to the people around me and where they were going. Everyone was faced with the task of selecting a chair at a table, and everyone naturally wanted to end up at a table full of interesting and attractive people. I meandered over to a chair at a nearby table, around which were coallescing a group composed of Sarah from Ireland, who sat directly across from me, Christine from France, who sat to my left, Nadia, the German assistant at the Goethe Institut, who sat across from Christine, and Sylvia from Italy to my right, and Laura, also from Italy, across from Sylvia. Christine had collected about six colored leaves during the hike, and she spread them out on the center of our table as a fallish decoration.

I ordered the turkey with mushroom sauce and spaetzle. Christine at one point was raving about how great it was to have so many nationalities at one table. I said I thought we had a good mix at our table: five girls and one guy. This brought forth giggles from my tablemates. During dinner we discussed many topics, including the relationships that often happen during a Goethe course.

After dinner I ordered an apfel kuchen and a cup of coffee. I passed around my little blue notebook and asked people to write down their addresses. Some asked me in return for my address and the URL of my travelogue web site. I jotted my address and URL down on several napkins and passed it out to those who wanted it. As I exited the restaurant, Isabel came up to me and dropped her wallet into my blue bag for me to carry back to Rothenburg for her.

Returning to Rothenburg

It was sprinkling lightly as we started back to Rothenburg. It had been muddy on the way to the restaurant as well, and I had already acquired splotches of mud on the cuffs of my pants. On the way back, it was even muddier, and lightly raining most of the time. Most people had brought umbrellas, some had hats. But Freddie from France didn't even have a hat. He just walked in the light drizzle without complaining.

On the way back to Rothenburg, I chatted with more of the students. I tend to ask everyone I meet at the Goethe Institut the same three questions: What's your name? Where are you from? Why are you learning German? Nadia told me she lives in Passau, a small city on the border with Austria, but that she is originally from Berlin. She said that there is an exchange program of some kind where Berlin students visit the five American states that have towns named Berlin. She said she'd been to the United States once, to Berlin, Connecticut. I also spoke with a Greek lady named Anastasia. I chatted at length with Mauricio, an Italian who had just turned 34 the previous Sunday. Mauricio wanted to score while he was in Rothenburg, and asked me where all the romantic spots were. There are a lot of Romantic spots in Rothenburg, some of which I suggested to Mauricio, others of which I kept secret.

When we got back to the Wildbad, where Werner had told the story about the Hare Krishnas, we turned and headed up 300 steps to the top of the Tauber valley. Sarah had to go slowly up the steps. At one point I thought she had exclaimed, "I'm so inefficient!" But when I asked her to repeat, I realized she was saying, "I'm so unfit." Cristine and I went slowly as up the steps as well, so Sarah would have some company, and when we all three got to the top, Sarah had rosy cheeks.

Sarah, Chrisine, and I caught up with the rest of the group on the Marktplazt. I had asked Luis if he would take me to his apartment, where Olbeth and Alexandra were also living, so I could get their addresses since we had missed each other in the morning. Luis was kind enough to wait as I said my goodbyes to everyone in the group. Because I was leaving on the bicycle the next morning, I was saying goodbye for real.

As I said goodbye to Nadia, she told me somewhat embarrassed that she had somehow lost the napkin that I had given her upon which I had written my name, address, and URL. I had visions of her unknowingly pulling the napkin from her pocket as she was walking back to Rothenburg, blowing her nose vigorously onto my name, address, and URL, then casting the whole package aside in the mud. I became suspicious when she produced yet another tissue from her pocket, but I took it and once again wrote down my name, address, and URL. I returned it to her and hoped for the best.

When saying goodbye to Isabel, I returned her wallet, and she made kissy noise with her lips as thanks. After completing my goodbyes, I followed Luis back to his apartment, where I found Olbeth and Alexandra. They said nothing about missing me in the morning, so I figured they had done so intentionally. Determined to not take the hint, I proceded to pass them my little blue notebook and they dutifully gave me their addresses. I said my farewells to Olbeth, Alexandra, and Luis, and took my leave.

I went to the Goethe Institut, where I discovered Matt doing his laundry. Matt and I agreed to meet later at the Pizzeria Roma for dinner. After finishing my push-ups and making a phone call, I went to the internet cafe to write an e-mail to Siew.

At the Pizzaria Roma

When I arrived at the Pizzaria Roma, I discovered Isabel and Josephine sitting in a booth. Matt had apparently not yet arrived at the restaurant. The girls asked me if I was alone, and I of course replied, "Yes," neglecting to mention the impending arrival of Matt. As I had hoped, they said, "Well you should sit with us." So I sat down next to Isabel. When Matt arrived a few minutes later, he sat down across from me, next to Josephine, and I tried to affect a suitable look of surprise.

Perhaps a half hour after Matt arrived, a French man pulled up a chair at the end of our booth. This man, who introduced himself to Matt and I as Marcelle, was apparently in Josephine and Isabel's German class. He told us he had just returned from Straussburg, where he and his family had been celebrating his birthday. He also mentioned that he had brought back wine and cheese for his class's Kochpartie (a party in which all the students of a class get together and prepare regional dishes from their homelands), which was apparently set for Monday night.

When he introduced himself, Marcelle told me that his name, "Marcelle," was very rare and special. Because he seemed so proud of the uniqueness of his name, that I decided not to mention I'd heard his name before. I didn't tell him that in fact a very famous Frenchman, the mime Marcelle Marceaux, shared his same rare name. But the next day, as I was peddling my bicycle away from Rothenburg, Matt told me that Marcelle had also attempted to impress upon Matt also how rare and special the name "Marcelle," was. Matt, in contrast to me, held no qualms about bursting Marcelle's bubble. Matt had told Marcelle about Marcelle Marceaux, and reported that our Marcelle had never heard of the famous Marcelle. Matt then quipped, "I told him about Marcelle Marceaux, and he was speechless!"

I had ordered yet another spaghetti with mushrooms and an Apfelshoerle (apple juice and soda water), my usual order at the Pizzaria Roma. Matt ordered a Hefeweizen beer, and it looked good, so after I finished my Apfelshoerle, I ordered a Hefeweizen for myself.

Gemischtes Eis

After Isabel had finished her dinner, she picked up the ice cream menu. After carefully considering the ice cream menu for a while, Isabel asked, "What kind of ice cream comes in Gemischtes Eis?"

"Gemischt" (mixed), Marcelle replied.

"But what kind of Gemischt?" Isabel persisted.

"Various flavors," Marcelle replied.

"A few scoops, each of a different kind," Josephine added.

Isabelle frowned. I could tell she already new that Gemischtes Eis meant assorted flavors of ice cream. She wanted to know if those flavors were chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla, or perhaps strawberry, peach, and mint, or maybe orange, chocolate, and lime. She wanted to know the exact flavors. Having gotten no new information from her table companions, she gave up on us and went back to studying the ice cream menu. Soon, Pepe, the waiter, came up to our table. Isabel looked up at Pepe.

"What kind of ice cream comes in Gemischtes Eis?" Isabel asked.

Pepe smiled and said, "Gemischt!"

Isabel frowned again, looked down, and studied the ice cream menu in silence for a few more seconds. Then she turned to Pepe and firmly ordered a Gemischtes Eis. Somehow, I forgot to take a note of which flavors of ice cream actually ended up arriving in front of Isabel, so that remains a mystery. But whatever the flavors were, Isabel said she liked them.

Young and Old

At one point during our conversation, I asked Marcelle how old he had turned on his birthday. Marcelle, who looked to be somewhere in his forties, said 25.

"Yeah, sometimes I get the numbers turned around when I speak German too," I joked, "When I intend to say two and fifty, sometimes I accidentally say twenty five."

"I'm quite old actually," Marcelle admitted, "I'm 48."

"Oh, that's not old," chimed Isabel. I could see it warmed Marcelle's heart to hear an attractive, young woman such as Isabel tell him he wasn't old. But then Isabel went on to say, "It's about how old my parents are."

When I heard Isabel utter the word "Eltern" (parents), I cringed and Marcelle groaned.

I then proceeded to explain to Isabel that whenever a pretty, young girl calls me, "Sir," I feel old. Isabel then promptly called me Sir and stated that although Marcelle wasn't too old, because he was her parent's age, I was too old because I was beyond the range (which for her goes up to 30) that she thinks of as "her age group." Isabel then told us she had five boxes: babies, her age group, the "too old" generation, her parents age group, and her grandparents age group. Isabel then grabbed my little blue notebook and wrote in Portuguese:

Eu chamo-me Bill. E tenho 40 anos! Eusou americano. Gostu muito de beber cervejas.

Which she told me means:

My name is Bill. I am 40 years old. I am American. I like to drink beer.

Josephine took the notebook from Isabel and wrote the same in Swedish:

Jag heter Bill. Jag du 40 an. Jag kommen fran Amerika. Jag dricker garna ol.

Isabel took the notebook back and wrote the same in French:

Je m'appelle Bill. J'ai 40 ans. Je suis americain. J'aime boire des bieres.

Marcelle helped me pronounce the French version correctly, and Isabel finished off by drawing little fashion figurines into my blue notebook, and a dancing stick figure representation of their coming Kochpartie.

At 10:45, we all got up and left, saying our goodbyes to the girls and Marcelle outside of the restaurant. Matt and I meandered through the streets to Anja's place. When we got there, we discovered Anja had already gone to sleep. We decided we would try and spend a bit of time in the morning getting to know Anja, given that she was nice enough to let us stay in her place and Matt and I had not even crossed paths with her since we had moved in.