Cloudy Germany, Sunny England

I spent last week in Germany for a work trip. I get to go there every three months in order to check up on some of my people there. This time around I didn't spend any extra time there since I just took over two days before I left for Germany. However, in the future I plan on spending at least a long weekend there after every trip.

Germany was good, but since I was working I didn't get to see much. I did have some time on the last day as my flight was in the evening. I went to Heidelberg castle and the Gutenberg museum. The castle in it's current form was built in the mid 1700's. It's claim to fame is having the world's largest wine cask. How big is that, you ask? Just over 58,500 gallons. It is absurdly large and not functional. After only a year or two of use, it started to rot from the inside (they were never able to fully fill it) and it was too expensive to fix. From then on it was empty.


The Gutenberg museum is home to the first books ever printed. Unfortunately they didn't allow any photography, so you'll just have to take my word for it: they were old. The exact date of printing isn't known, but somewhere between 1452-5 Gutenberg started making Bibles. The first ones, which the museum had 3 of, are called B42 (Bible with 42 lines on each page). The museum also had a large selection of other printed works from the 1450's through today. My favorites were the pictures from the 1400-1600's. A lot of them looked like cartoon drawings from today, but (to put it in perspective) some were created when Christopher Columbus was a young boy; almost 40 years before sailing to America. For some reason I always imagine people from the distant past to be angry and without a sense of humor; however, a good number of the pictures had people smiling, making faces, or doing something funny. Maybe it is just that famous German sense of humor that is timeless and unstoppable.

I got back to England last Thursday night and the weather has been amazing. Super sunny, warm air, and almost no wind. It's a bit of perfect, as the Brits (or is it the Aussies?) say. As I mentioned an earlier post, Harrogate is a city of parks. What I didn't mention (because I had no idea) is how crowded the parks get when the weather is nice. It's like every living creature instinctively swarms the the manicured grass and flowers. I have never seen so many pale, shirtless hungover men in my life. I'm generalizing a bit here, but the Brits like to drink. It doesn't really matter where they are or what time of day it is. Walking past pubs at 9:00am on a Sunday, one would assume that it would be empty. In the US, if you saw someone drunk at that time of day you would probably think them to be a college student preparing to attend a sporting event or a raging alcoholic levelling out the shakes. But here, respectable looking people in collared shirts and expensive shoes are cranking away at drinking off their hangovers. No day of rest for them. Later in the afternoon they mosey on over to the park, take off their shirts and sun their white bellies. Their bloated faces are doubly assaulted by the alcohol and sun; it makes for some red faces.


In regards to the question of where I will be living, I put in a bid on a flat (apartment) last Thursday. It definitely needs some work, but it only has holes in the doors, not the walls like the place in Leeds. The carpet is old, dirty, and bunched up all over. Under that are those old white tiles that measure 1'x1' and are most often found in schools built in the 1960's. If I buy it, I would plan on replacing all of the flooring with wood, maybe bamboo. Some of the walls are painted (badly, but that's easily fixed) and some of the walls are wallpapered (also badly and not as easily fixed). There are a couple of spots in the cupboards (closets) where the cement wall is flaking off. The kitchen doesn't have any appliances; no hob (stove), cooker (oven), or refrigerator. There is some water damage in the second bedroom and mold. Hopefully it is just where the last people dried their clothes and not an issue with the foundation or window framing. All in all, it seems livable. Hopefully the realtor gets back to me in the next day or two regarding my bid. I went 5% lower than their asking price and the place has been on the market since last fall. It's a repossession.


Lastly, here is a short video of some bagpipers playing in the park next to my flat. Notice how perfect the weather was for a Sunday afternoon. I read three Mitch Albom books this past week (even though I wasn't a huge fan of any of them) and I started on some Mark Twain short stories today after the bagpipers finished playing. I'm starting to do the same thing I did when I was in Japan: reading too much and not wandering in my new surroundings. I hope to fix that next weekend with a trip to... somewhere.