Travel weekend #2

Feeling moderately bad about my recent lack of updates and with nothing better to do, I thought I would type up another one.

Currently I am sitting on a train at some random German station which I cannot spell due to my lack of German … special letter things on my keyboard. I spent the last 3 days just out side Karlsruhe with the old landlords of my parents and am now headed back to Friedrichshafen for the last month of Bible school... tear, tear – but those are quickly wiped away by the thought of my last 3 weeks… So long Germany, hello Europe!


This weekend I learned 2 main things. The first being schizophrenic weather is not exclusive to the lower mainland. Germany has its own fair share of messed up weather… I just hadn’t experienced it before as the weather in Frieds is pretty simple: sunny and dry or foggy and cloudy. I didn’t see anything unusual the first evening I was there as it was dark – an expected characteristic of night, the morning however, was a different story. At breakfast, it was sunny. Cleaning up, it started to hail. Slowly the hail turned into snow and after about half an hour began to stop. Then I was given a tour of the barn aka – hay and FATTY rabbits.


(Incase this turns out to be unclear, italics = thoughts, non italics = words)
Christian: opens the door to 2 of the pens (out of 8)
Alicia: Oh, these are cute. I really hope they aren’t growing them to eat like everything else that they have… but they do look rather plump. Why does he [the father] have them, are they just pets?
Christian: Yes, pets. He enjoys growing them. But then when they are big we eat them, the rabbits.
Alicia: Oh… I suppose it would be a stupid question then, if I asked if he names them. Maybe I’ll just make a remark about having never tasted rabbit before. You eat them. I’ve never had rabbit before. Does he still name them anyways?
Christian: … Um… I don’t think so.

Contrary to popular belief, I do think about what I’m saying before I say it… sometimes my mouth just doesn’t pay attention to what my brain decides.


After the rabbits he took me into the other part of the barn where there was a legit hay loft and I felt like such a city child when I asked if I could climb the latter that went up to the third floor. I climbed the ladder… then he asked if I wanted to see the small church of their town. I said sure, it had a sweet looking tower thing and I wanted to see how old it was. (only about 100 years old)


While we were inside the sky had been nice and clear, but on the way to the church it started to snow. Lightly, but still snowing. We went in, 5 minutes later we went out. By that time the snow had picked up considerably. Then he asked if I wanted to walk to a place where I could see the whole village. It wasn’t very big (hence the term village) and so I didn’t imagine that the walk would be incredibly long. It wasn’t… but the snow made it seem like it took years. By the time we got back to the house it had snowed so much that the front of my jacket was completely white and my hair was so wet that I had to blow-dry it. 5 minutes after we got back the snow stopped – completely. It was insane. Then we had dinner (but German style: cake, bread and coffee) and as we were eating I looked out the window and it was POURING rain.


That was yesterday. This morning was similar. It stopped snowing during breakfast, we went for a walk at noon and it starts snowing again! This time big, fat and fluffy flakes as before but much more wet! I wasn’t so much of a snowman when we got back as a …drenched waterman. 5 minutes after changing out of my wet clothes I looked outside and it was completely sunny. Weather is a strange thing.

The second thing was not so much something that I had not been aware of as I learned over Christmas and on outreaches that Germans don’t seem to think that I eat enough, but it became much more difficult to refuse food when I couldn’t decline in German. My mother had warned me that they would feed me lots, but I should have been preparing and stretching my stomach for this weekend months ago. I don’t think I have eaten so much in one weekend – ever.

The moment I walked in the door was the moment my freewill regarding food was lost. When I got there, she (the mother) was making what I thought looked like biscuits because she had rolled the dough and was in the process of cutting them with a glass cup when I came in – as far as my cooking expertise bring me, I feel as though glass cups will assuredly make nice, round biscuits – perhaps it is, but that’s not what she was making.


Mother: aslkdj lakdjeoij lskdjfawieojalkj vlakjseijfsa f (German)
Christian: Would you like to have some tea or coffee?
Alicia: Non-bodenseehof good coffee! Coffee would be nice, thanks!
Christian: Would you like bread or cake?
Alicia: (Not knowing the perils of this answer) Cake is always nice, I love cake.
Mother: laksdfa ;asldkfa poeksg ljkwesf
Christian: You must be very hungry as you missed lunch.
Alicia: Oh, no. I made myself a lunch package at breakfast and ate that on the train here, I’m okay.
Mother: alskdjfaei lkjsdfaolejifa lskj
Christian: You should have bread instead of cake.
Alicia: I’m not that hungry (truth), a little cake would be enough (I really wasn’t even hungry enough for cake but if I was going to eat something, at least it would taste better than bread)


I felt rather proud of myself for being able to convince them of my lack of hunger, until minutes later when I was ushered into the dinning room and found, to my dismay, bread, cheese and meat but no cake. It wasn’t that horrible, until I was GIVEN the two largest pieces of bread… I would have taken the smallest one.


Then she left … and came back a few minutes later with the first batch of dumphlesomething (what she was making – I’m still not 100% sure how she made them, I was curios so she gave me a crash course… but I can’t cook and am hopeless when it comes to remembering directions. The biscuit-dough things were placed in a pan with hot oil and then she quickly added a solution of water and salt, closed the lid and waited until all the water was off the lit before opening it and flipping them over.) They were really good but rather oily and salty. I had one.
Sometime after coffee we had (a light) dinner – potato soup and salty biscuit things. Then desert – more coffee and then she made me try a piece of cake.
Day 1: 2 pieces of bread, cheese, meat, 3 cups of coffee (it magically kept refilling itself), 3 salty biscuit things, 1 bowl of soup.


I will spare you the details of HOW they managed to feed me so much on days 2 and 3, nor will I list all of the ways I tried to get out of eating so much (I tried, I really did! But to no avail) … I’ll list off what I was fed:


Day 2:
Breakfast: 1 giant bun thing with cheese & jam, 2 cups of coffee. Breakfast somehow managed (in my mind… but I’m pretty sure in reality as well) to extent into lunch…there was no end to it all.
Lunch: 1 Giant bowl of noodle soup (If we had stopped here, I would have been content.), roast beef, gravy, … dumplings? Fruit salad, ice cream.
Mid-afternoon tea: There were 4 cakes on the table… She served us each a piece of the first one. Then each a piece of the second… nobody else had the 3rd… I only, very reluctantly, let her put it on my plate because I thought everybody else was going to have some as well… but no, just me. I had 3 HUGE pieces of cake in one sitting… I am positive that my digestive system hates me. I probably burned more calories digesting the food than I would have doing anything else.
Around 9, I was still stuffed, but somehow the conversation found its way to typical German stereotypes – lederhosen, beer and pretzels… Cue the pretzels. I think the fact that they couldn’t understand my refusals (if Christian didn’t translate) in their mind gave them the liberty to put anything and everything they wanted onto the plate in front of me. What do you do, as a polite person, in that situation in a country where it is dreadfully rude to leave uneaten food on your plate…? What can I say, I’m a Hufflepuff.


Today was also more of the same… although it was good because they let me serve myself (that is, after the pre-served soup) so, still full from days previous (and the soup), I took very little and refused anything else.


It’s been 6 hours since I last ate anything and I am STILL full… I gave my stomach a poke a while ago and still found it to be solid – and I don’t have abs. She gave me a package of food (2 sandwhiches, 4 pieces of cake) to take with me… I think I’ll have to give it away once I get back to school as I won’t be eating for the next 2 weeks.


Later - Walking back from the trainstation to the school, I ran into 5 guys from here and wouldn't you know it, they were hungry. I don't think I'll tell them who ate the food, but I think I will say that it was thoroughly enjoyed.