N.B.
Some of my descriptions in this entry (and most likely future ones too) will include references to areas and streets that I'm guessing might be obscure to some readers. To provide some context, here (make sure to click out of the pop-up ad) is a fairly good map of Konstanz with all the areas as well as the streets marked. I will try to re-post it occasionally or add it as a "useful link" to the blog page.
Saturday
That day I had to wake up relatively early because there was talk of a used bike fair in a certain veloshop 5 minutes away from my dorm starting at ten. It must be said that in Konstanz, a city where it takes at most half an hour to get to the historical center on foot from even the farthest corners of town, one should most definitely have a bike. It's usefulness increases if one takes into account that practically all of the city center is a car-free zone and that so many streets have designated bicycle lanes.
All of this meant that if I was to enjoy any freedom and efficiency in my movement around the city, I was to get a bicycle somehow.
My only problem was lack of finances. I was not willing to spend anything more than one hundred euros on the two-wheel wonder and that put me in a very low-end bracket of buyers (decent new bikes being all around 400 euro). As of yet I haven't surmounted the challenge of acquiring some mildly respectable velocipede for the much less respectable price I have to offer. I hope sometime in the foreseeable future I will prevail.
I digress, however, and forget that on Saturday morning I was much less aware of these impediments in my way and actually hoped to purchase a bicycle by the end of the day. For that reason I got up at 8, made myself breakfast (oatmeal, of course!) and was going to sit down and read for a bit before heading out. This plan had to be abandoned because Jannis woke up around the same time and invited me to go to the farmer's market. I could not pass up such an opportunity and promptly set out with him to a street a couple of blocks to the east, where we were greeted by all sorts of fantastic-smelling produce and slightly old-fashioned people.
I noticed one slight difference between the market I found myself at and the ones I was used to. Every food group was almost evenly represented, with vegetables and fruit making up less of the overall offerings. In Massachusetts (maybe I went to the wrong farmer's markets?), one could usually find more fruit and veggies than anything else. Here there were a couple of solid-looking meat, fish and bread stands and one fellow was selling marinaded/pickled foods, mostly olives and pastes.
I bought myself half a kilo of plums, a loaf of ciabatta bread, 500 grams of German honey. After I deposited all of these treasures at home I headed over to the bike shop. Surprisingly enough, given my luck with locating places in Konstanz thus far, I barely found it. In addition to this, upon arriving I was told that there was no used bike sale that day. I was instead directed to a fellow named Paul 200 meters down the road who, I was told, sold used bikes all the time. I followed the directions given and arrived at a small yard just off the street in front of a yellow house, filled with antique cars and bicycles. "This doesn't look very promising, all of these must cost a fortune" - I said to myself and asked for Paul. I was told to wait a bit and Paul did appear shortly. He looked a bit pensive when he heard my price, took me to some back storage room of his house and showed me a couple of bikes, none of which were to my liking. I know I shouldn't be picky in my situation, but I didn't really want to choose between an overweight mountain bike with no lights or fenders and a purple female-frame bike with a seat that was too low. I told Paul I might come back on Monday. Sadly, I didn't get a chance to follow up on that (but I'm getting ahead of myself again!). I then went home, feeling a bit defeated and did something utterly unmemorable like folding laundry or reviewing my documents or staring at a (Facebook) wall.
In the evening there was once more a gathering at Hafen Halle, this time for a Pub-Crawl in Konstanz. Parts of that night are to this day somewhat hazy in my memory, but I remember going to Klimerkasten, Casba, Shooters (never have the drink called Picasso in there, it's a waste of your time/money) and, finally, Shamrock, an irish pub. I remember having a great time, drinking beer, discussing whales, universal truth and lost friends. The locations of all of these places I remember only very approximately. If you were to ask me to take a group of tourists to these places, I don't think I couldn't.
I also do not remember when I fell asleep that night, but I do know that it was in my room and that it was dark outside.
Sunday (the day I almost got lost)
I woke up at around 11 again ('rise and shine' for me seems to be stably oscillating between 8 and 11), performed an inspection of the room and myself and discovered that I had drunk half of the water I prepared the night before, that my head was still in one piece, there was a very small cut on my left thumb and some muscles in my left knee felt extremely sore. I limped to the kitchen, brewed myself some Earl Grey (I'm sure that if I were ever to meet an earl who happened to be named 'Grey' we'd be really good friends, there's just too many good emotions associated for me with the name). I then tried to go online, but spent almost 10 minutes blankly staring at my Facebook newsfeed, as if expecting it to explode with updates (on a Sunday morning!). When this naturally didn't happen, I tried to write a bit, but had trouble concentrating, so as a result spent over four hours on an entry, taking frequent breaks to chat on Facebook, watch videos of German comedians (thanks, Jannis!) and stare at the walls of my room (my favorite pastime). Around 5 I headed over to Shamrock to watch what was left of a game of hurling that started at 4:30 with whoever of the international students showed up. I assumed this would also be good exercise for my knee, get some blood circulating in there, etc.
As I mentioned, I did not remember where any of the pubs were so it took me over half an hour of trial and error to locate Shamrock. Luckily for me, the game was still on when I did finally find the place and friends from Ireland, Czech Republic and America were sitting there. I joined, got a Guiness (pricey stuff in Germany, I later discovered) and saw Kilkenny beat Tipperary and reclaim the Irish national hurling championship title again, as I was informed by the Irish present, after winning it consistently for at least the past decade.
After the game ended, we proceeded to use the white paper place mats on our tables to first list all 32 Irish counties, then all 50 US states. I think when we did a tally, we ended up one short on the number of counties and 2 over on the number of States. I was never strong in arithmetic, however, so I could have been wrong. I left around half past 8.
Two memorable things happened on my way home. First of all, I came close to actually being lost. I took some of the winding streets in the center of town to get to Paradies, from where I planned to take the pedestrian bridge over to my side of the river and follow Markgrafen Straße home. However, I missed the street that led directly to the pedestrian bridge and made a right turn several streets later onto Brüelstraße. When I later that evening (already at home) consulted a map of Konstanz I understood that this was in fact a decent way to get home by itself (passing the Paradies dorms and crossing the Rhein via another bridge). At the time, however, as far as I could tell in the dark and rain, I was bearing too much to the left. At some point I even suspected I was headed for the Swiss countryside. While on any other day this prospect would not have daunted me, at 9pm on a rainy Sunday night before my first Sprachkurs lesson the last place I would have seen myself heading were the fields of Switzerland. So I ultimately retraced my steps to the right street, took the pedestrian bridge across and was home shortly before 10. I then frantically ate some plums (see below why), brushed my teeth, wrote this entry and went to bed.
The second memorable occurrence during this walk home was my first attempt at ordering a Döner. I had been meaning to do this for a couple of days and this was my chance: all of the other stores were closed, I hadn't eaten properly since breakfast, the weather outside was miserable. I walked into a place called, I think, Paradies Pizza and started figuring out their menu. I have an inexplicably serious weakness when it comes to fast food menus: for some strange reason (perhaps it's lack of practice or just some idiosyncrasy of my reading skills) I can never order anything from a fast food joint properly and manage to botch up the simplest requests. When I go to restaurants and even plain eateries or coffee shops, all works out well. And yet a trip to McDonald's or Dunkin Donuts is always a nightmare of misunderstandings, duplicate orders or mixed up combos and it's always because I didn't understand what an item on the menu says. I had hoped this would be different in Germany, but I apparently was wrong.
The menu at Paradies Pizza contained the usual extensive list of various types of foods offered by the place. I found the Döner section, reviewed all the choices available, but could not understand all of the ingredients mentioned in descriptions of items. All the while the picture next to the Döner helpfully illustrated the product by showing a picture of a flatbread filled with various food stuffs. I tried asking the fellow at the counter which Döner he would recommend, but he didn't understand me. I assumed this was because I made a mistake somewhere in my German and asked him in English, but he still didn't understand me. I then decided to go with something simple and ordered the first item on the list called a 'Döner Box'. As I was waiting for it to be prepared, I kept wondering why 'Box' was in the name and speculated that maybe this was because the flatbread was made to look like a box or perhaps I got several minidöners in one box... To my horror, however, the fellow at the counter took a chinese-food-style take-out box and filled it with meat shavings and french fries, then topped all of this fatty 'goodness' with something similar to ranch cheese and handed the whole mess to me.
I was starving, so I swallowed all of it on the way home, but the following questions kept bothering me: "Since when is a meal prepared with no vegetables or fruit and this amount of fat and cholesterol instead? Why is such an item on the menu of any self-respecting eatery? And finally, how on earth did I end up with this abomination of a meal when I had so much else to choose from??"
I was so unimpressed with carbs and meat by the time I got home, that I required some other kind of food to settle my mind and stomach. Luckily, I had a considerable supply of plums from the day before and proceeded to blissfully consume a couple. Someone won't be ordering from fast food places for a while.
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