Sprecken ze laundry?

After riding on the train from Amsterdam to Berlin in what had to be the only train in Europe lacking any sort of ventiliation system, we arrived in Berlin only to find temporary shelter from the heat. It's finally warm here in Europe and now I can rock the black socks and black shoes with shorts look that the girls love so much.

I'm doing a much poorer job of recording the notable events of the trip than my companions. These people even take notes and prepare before they write their stuff. I would highly advise checking out the other two blogs on the right sidebar for additional information or if you're tired of my perspective drivel.

So far in Germany, its become quite evident that far less people here speak English than in any other country we've been. Even in France we were able to get by playing the stupid American card. For instance, last night we went to do our laundry in our hostel and found the hostel's directions for the machines in German and terrible, incomprehensible English. A large teenager who was ironing his shirts (and T-shirts, who does that in 90 degree weather) and coincidentally blocking both of the top loading dryers and the two bottom loading washers happened to set our machines on the wrong wash program. It's worth noting that these four machines are the only laundry machines available to the 200 or so bed hostel and this guy was completely oblivious of what he was doing. You try and figure this out.

We set the washers and went to play pool down the hall. The table was so small that if you didn't sink three balls on the break, you had to have miscued. We checked the machines every game or so and found that our stuff just never finished. After an hour or so of this, we decided to ditch the pool game and just throw our stuff in the dryer. On account of the whole not speaking German thing, we couldn't easily figure out how to do that. We ended up pestering the attendant who scolded me for trying to open the machine, "When it isch done, it isch done." I blame Travis for setting the machine to another setting that made water spill out of the door on opening it later.

Now that our clothes were completely saturated, it was drying time. We threw our clothes in the dryer, set the machines, and headed to the pub across the street. This definitely put us in the right mood for surviving the laundry apocalypse that followed back at the hostel. We returned to find our still-wet laundry in the washers still spinning after over an hour. A large amount of laundry bags as well as disgrunted german teenagers were waiting for the machines to open. The attendant came by and scolded me (again) for having the dryer on the delicates setting. This system, while apparently completely obvious to the Germans, made no sense to me as one dial on the damn machine controlled two different numbers. I challenge all of you to do better with this.

Since we were now the most favorite people in the hostel, the girls decided to cut their losses and air dry their stuff in the room. Travis and I stuck it out for a little longer and eventually made it back to the room with mostly dry clothes. The girls used my bed to sort their clothes and I now had a giant wet spot on my bed where their dripping wet stuff had been. Awesome. And that's laundry in Europe.

Pictures!


It's apparently a custom in Germany to serve a beer with as much head as possible.


The mouse that "got up to the second story from outside" according to the waitress at the last restaurant we ate at in Amsterdam. She and her coworker were disturbingly nonchalant at the fact that a live mouse was tearing its way through a mayonaisse packet on the floor. We ended up being the stupid ones because we still ate there.