Homeless

Everyone sounds the same when they scream.

This creepy thought hit me with a jolt as I watched twenty terrified trachten-clad* Germans freefall towards the ground on a rainbow-lit carnival ride. Although I probably wouldn’t be able to hold a conversation with most of these people, their primal screeches of fear didn’t sound any different from the ones I had heard come out of English-speakers in Orlando. Incidentally it was also the same sound I would make less than five minutes later, after I’d parted with my own perfectly good Euros in exchange for an adrenaline jolt. Strapped in and hoisted up 100 feet, we and our 15 other doomed compadres revolved lazily around the tower, rewarding us with a nice panoramic view of the sprawling temporary metropolis and instilling us with a healthy dose of suspense. Forty-five seconds we stayed up there. Forty-five seconds to contemplate all the bad decisions that had led us to this point in our lives and to realize there was no way out. I started nervously babbling about 20 seconds in, and didn’t stop until one last “SHIT” was truncated by a scream so high-pitched that it didn’t even make a sound for half a second as we plummeted back to Earth.

What have I done? (Yeah, I’m totally wearing bat socks)

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First we need to answer that aforementioned question: What bad decisions – or arguably great ones – had led me to this precarious spot 100 feet above a beer festival?

There were two important factors contributing to this weekend’s vagabonding. One, due to a snafu in housing arrangements, I was destined to be “homeless” for about five days in Freiburg, a situation that I preferred to look at as an opportunity for adventure rather than an annoyance. And two, I turned twenty-eight this weekend!

The decision to head out on the open road was made, but I still had to pick a destination. The answer was pretty obvious: Oktober, as I’m sure most everyone is aware, is beer fest time in Germany. Sadly the one in Munich is so huge that it literally requires booking a year in advance, so I instead chose Stuttgart’s Cannstatter Volksfest (Pro tip: many cities, including Berlin, have “October beer fests,” but most have their own names. When people say Oktoberfest, they usually mean the one in Munich). I found a willing travel victim in Laura, and after some barebones last-minute planning we hopped aboard a bus to Stuttgart.

When we stepped out of the train at Bad Cannstatt, we descended into the exit tunnel and were swept up in a rowdy river of dirndls and lederhosen. At least half of the festival-goers were decked out in trachten. And here I have a confession to make: on most days, I walk around with a level gaze, making eye contact with people and returning any smiles that are tossed my way. But today, my gaze was stuck below the belt – on these wonderful pants. It’s a little unfortunate that most of the threadwork details on lederhosen are centered near the unmentionables, because I may have offended more than one native with my appreciative ogling (I assure you, sir, I’m staring at the needlework!).

 
PANTS.

The flavor of the festival was a strange and wonderful amalgam. It was a celebration of German beer and food, but in the setting of a carnival. There were kiddie coasters and bumper cars next to biergartens, small children running between the stumbling legs of drunken adults, and pink-and-blue unicorn balloons being led through the air by people of all ages and, in the case of adults, various states of inebriation. Loud mashups of old and new American music blared from brightly lit rides, which were a riot to watch due to all the dirndl skirts flipping through the air as the rides spun.

   
So many things happening at once!

Parties raged around the clock inside the beer “tents” (a misnomer, since the structures were solid wood with real glass windows). Thousands of revelers stood on their sticky orange benches, singing along as the live bands belted out “Sweet Caroline” and “Hey Brother.” If there’s any testament to the power of German engineering, it was these collapsible benches that are capable of holding 1000 pounds’ worth of bouncing drunks without snapping in half. Beermaids parted the crowds as they strongarmed 12 Mass** at a time to thirsty patrons, and waiters wielded 4-foot-long wooden trays laden with half-chickens and brotchen. Shrill whistles announced their arrival, and if you weren’t quick on your feet, you were liable to get whacked with a wayward elbow or tray corner.

 

We had many a broken shouted conversation with German men in the beer tents, ranging from the predictable (where are you from?) to the amusing (trying to see who could correctly pronounce “car” in Spanish) to highly unexpected (a young politician trying to fix Venezuela’s and America’s problems – good luck, buddy). Almost everyone we met was curious about our cameras, wondering if we were reporters, trying to figure out why we each had a camera, and, most importantly, constantly asking if we wanted him to take pictures for us. We never could figure out what this fascination was about, but we did later notice that there were almost no cameras at the festival. Apparently everyone was either more concerned with experiencing than with documenting, or they were scared to lose or break their cameras as the night progressed!

Our cameras may have distracted us a little bit from the experience, but we made an impressive amount of friends because of them. Being two women alone at a beer festival is a surefire way to make friends to begin with, but cameras are to drunk people as candy is to children. The first day we paused to photograph a ride, and we somehow ended up taking a round of ten selfies with two Germans. A few hours later we were waiting to get into a beer tent and a person we’d never met before and never saw again convinced a security guard to let us in. Not twenty minutes later, Laura stopped to snap a photo of two enormous bottles of Grey Goose sitting on a table, and I nodded at a gingham-and-lederhosen clad man who presumably owned the bottles. His response was to immediately pull us up onto his reserved bench, where we proceeded to close down the beer hall. We have pictures with at least twenty people and I learned only one name in the process, but it didn’t seem to matter; we were all there just to celebrate the night.

 
New temporary German friends we will probably never see again!

Stuttgart proper was gorgeous as well. Sixty percent of the city was leveled during World War II, but they rebuilt a very attractive city with a charming downtown area and lofty well-used parks in the nearby hills. We spent a few hours wandering the streets during the day between our Cannstatter nights, a welcome and quiet respite from the rowdy crowds.

   
The tower we climbed (left) and Stuttgart’s Schloss (right, below)

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After Stuttgart I set off into the wilds of Baden-Wurttemberg alone, heading south down the tracks to the famous spa town of Baden-Baden for a little rest, relaxation, and recuperation.

Water is everywhere and everything in Baden-Baden, whose name literally means “Bath Bath” (or “Hot Spring Hot Spring” if you will) in German. Fountains bubble on every block and the cobble-bottomed river Oos trickles by a long promenade of grand turn-of-the-century hotels. Every building in the city seems closely related to its neighbors, all perfectly painted and sporting gleaming wrought iron balconies. I gawked at all the finery on the long walk to my humble out-of-the-way hotel. Luckily the small staff of Greek expats more than made up for the small stature of my temporary home, providing more personal service and smiles in five minutes than I am used to getting from German employees over a week’s time. It’s not that Germans aren’t friendly, but I’m pretty sure hospitality was not invented in this country.

      
Views of the River Oos, more of a creek in fall

The entire reason I’d come to Bath-Bath was to “take the cure” – AKA bask in the natural hot spring water with a bunch of naked strangers – so I immediately dropped my stuff and headed back into town. This idea sounds crazy, and a lot of Americans gave me crap for it, but I was gunning for the genuine European experience. There is also a clothed bath for those who aren’t comfortable with nudity, but for me the entire point of moving overseas was to bust out of my comfort zone. It was awkward for the first thirty-two seconds, but then I realized it was all in my head, and that no one – not the other patrons, nor the staff, nor the scary blond lady scrubbing me down with soap and a coarse brush – was batting an eye. We were all in the same boat, not judging each other or ourselves. This was freeing in a plethora of ways, and it strengthened my conviction that we should just be grateful for the bodies we have, for they allow us to run and write and think and speak and dance and love, instead of being so concerned about what they look like.

The Friedrichsbad is a Roman-Irish bath, whatever that means. The interior was decked out with columns and painted tiles, naked marble statues and stained glass ceilings. There were 17 stations, planned out in a precise rotation and schedule down to the minute for maximum health benefits. A lazy succession of increasingly hot air baths and saunas gradually raise your body temperature (up to 68 degrees), then it’s brought back down with leisurely soaks in thermal pools. My favorite room was a thermal steam bath that was heated to 48 C using spring water, which was pumped into the room near the ceiling and allowed to trickle over an intricate metal lattice, steaming the air so thoroughly that it was a struggle to breathe. The three-hour experience was largely completed in silence, leaving me alone with my increasingly quiet thoughts; I could feel the tension bleeding out of me. By the tenth station, I felt about as boneless as a piece of seaweed. The last water-based step was an 18 C bath, which was close to 70 Fahrenheit but felt like a Polar Bear plunge after the heat. I would have skipped it, but I was worried about tarnishing my Michigander reputation, so I literally ran down the steps, dunked, and ran back up to where a wonderful lady handed me a warm towel.  She led me to a shuttered room and cocooned me in a thick mauve blanket, then left me in silence to slide into a heavy doze.

Friedrichsbad

I emerged from the bathhouse feeling drowsy and refreshed, warmed to the very core.  The sun was sinking below the hills already as I half-heartedly wandered around the town, but I could hear my nice warm bed calling me from across the city and I quickly relented to its call.

The second morning I set out with absolutely no plan for the day.  It’s an exhilarating feeling to occasionally have no purpose or goal other than fulfilling your whimsy, and knowing that no one in the world knows exactly where you are.  I struck out first along the river, walking down sun-dappled paths and catching a few inexplicable whiffs of woodsmoke before stumbling upon a public rose garden that was studded with statues.  I continued around towering churches, through cobbled alleys, under wrought-iron bridges, and up a winding staircase to a stunning veranda overlooking the city.

  
A yarn-bombed lamp post (“B-B is colorful”)

I’d caught a few glimpses of a crumbling castle ruin high in the hills, which is one of those curious things I’m always drawn to.  I decided to scratch the itch and wandered off into the woods.  Per usual, the path led straight uphill; I’m going to have calves of steel by the time I leave this country.  The old castle was unexpectedly enormous and in decent repair, with narrow passageways and well-worn steps leading all the way to the tippy-top of the structure.

       

Castle handstands, because why not (I’m also about 100 feet above the ground here, at the top of the castle as seen to the left)

I went for a long walk through the craggy cliffs behind the castle, wandering through moss-covered boulders that were reminiscent of Michigan.  I found a high rocky perch and read a few pages of Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen, trying to focus on my book instead of the sweeping valley spread out below me.  The blustery wind rippled through the treetops, rustling the drying leaves and whacking me in the head with a few acorns.  An enterprising individual had picked figs from their garden and laid them out with an honor-box next to them, so I grabbed a nice purple-and-green specimen and happily munched on its mild sweetness on the long walk back to town.

      
Altes Schloss (left) as seen from my reading perch

All told, this trip was a pretty great way to celebrate being homeless and old.  I got the opportunity to bond with a new friend, have epic conversations with drunk people in German, relax by myself in the fresh air of the Schwarzwald, and swim naked with strangers.  That’s what I call a successful week in Germany.

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*trachten = the general term for leather pants and traditional dresses

**Mass = 1 Liter of beer, the only way it’s sold in the tents