I am adding something to my travelling repertoire this weekend by doing something that I vowed I could never, would never do. I am going to hitchhike with Max and Anja to a few of the semi-neighboring cities this weekend. I do not think that I would have the gall to do it by myself, but they do it all the time, and say it is quite easy in Germany. Apparantly three cannot do it together, so I will travel with Anja and Max will fend for himself. I feel very Kerouack-esque.Sorry for the relative lack of communication lately, for those of you reading faithfully. School has been quite tough these last two weeks. When they say "intensive", they really mean it. Not only is the class fast paced, and not English is spoken from start to finish, but the homework is fairly difficult. A quick aside; it was such a beating for the first week or so, because they homework assignments are all explained quickly in German, and so there has been a few times that I have turned in the wrong page, or not done what was asked of me because I did not catch the nuances of what he/she were asking.
Yesterday evening was very enjoyable. Max and Anja asked me yesterday afternoon if I would like to go swimming with them this evening, and, since it has been very warm in Munich these last few days, and I had blown them off to study the previous night, I decided I would join them, though I really should have stayed in to study. They took me to an extremely nice spa of sorts, filled with water activities of varying degrees. It was a massive complex with indoor olympic-like swimming pool, waterslide, lazy-river, and an indoor-outdoor saltwater spring, with jets coming out of the floor. Apparantly it is a pretty swanky place to lounge, but for the last 1 1/2 hours each night they offer a 3 Euro price for the "commoners" to come and enjoy. A sizeable crowd partook, and it was a welcome relief after a bike ride through the city.
The best part, though, was the sauna-wing of the complex. The upper floor was a giant sauna area, which I was thrilled about, loving steam saunas as I do, but this was quite different than the ones I had been to in the States. First of all, there are numerous signs proclaiming that there are no bathing suits allowed, and so there were a host of nude bodies walking about the sealed-off upper floor. Secondly, it was coed. Once again, the European mind seems to have no qualms about nudity, and so men and women mingled together in the buff, enjoying the sauna experience.
There were rooms of different temperatures, from what I gathered, but Max and I chose the hottest one, which was filled with the typical stair-like wooden benches surrounding two large platforms in the middle of the room piled atop with rocks. After spending the first twenty minutes sweating and relaxing an attendent came in with a bucket of water. She proceed to ladel a minty liquid over the rocks that served to both clear your sinuses and intensify the heat tremendously. She then went around with a towel and waved the steam directly onto each person, and it was almost more than the body could take. My lungs and nose burned, my breathing strained, and my head was swimming, but, despite that poor description, it was such a great feeling.
When we could take no more we exited and lowered ourselves, one at a time, into a cold-water bath that shocked your system. As we stumbled down the stairs, exhausted and relieved, we vowed to return to this place at least once in the next week and a half before I hit the road.
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