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Matt and I had planned on meeting at the train station at 11h yesterday, but it didn’t quite work out. We were both early. I left my flat at 10h and stopped by the tourist information office to get info about something going on here on Sunday, and as I came out saw him in front of the train station. He had just pulled up and noticed me coming towards him. We bought our tickets (after receiving incorrect information from the train information attendant (that’s a different post)) to Bonn (€6.70 plus €3 for the bike), went to the bank, got a coke and proceeded up the escalator to the track. Taking a bike on an escalator is not all that easy.
The train ride was blissfully uneventful. Matt was tired, so he slept for a lot of it and I listened to my MP3 player. As with most train trips I’ve taken in Germany, we were late (four minutes departing Koblenz and ten minutes arriving in Bonn). We left the train station and walked into the Old Town part of the city. We didn’t mount our bikes and ride due to the fact that there were too many people.
YES! WE WERE IN A REAL CITY!
We continued walking thought Old Town (with a brief stop in the €1 shop) and went out the back towards the Rhein. Reaching a major street (I don’t know Bonn well enough to know which street it was), I noticed a cycling lane. We hopped on our bikes and rode towards the Rhein.
Bonn is very cyclist friendly. It has a lot of cycling lanes and everything is very clearly marked. It almost seemed too easy to cycle around the former capital. However, when we got close to the Rhein, we couldn’t find any way to get down to the promenade on our bikes, so we dismounted and carried them down the stairs. Reaching the promenade, we got back on our bikes and rode south.
As I’ve mentioned before, Bonn is lovely. Only people that haven’t taken the time to explore it will disagree with me. It became the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany on 10 May 1949 after beating Frankfurt by three votes. Due to its provincialness (most likely not a word), it was nicknamed Federal Village. Provincialness? Hello? I live in Koblenz, the champion of provincialness!
We cycled along the Rhein and noticed the quaint (but large) houses just across the street from the Rhein. We also noticed that the cycle paths were made of very smooth asphalt and were a joy to cycle on. After leaving the main part of the city, the path lead to a park and we enjoyed cycling along the greenery. However, I then realised that I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going. I had looked at the map on the website of our venue and knew it was past a bridge, but wasn’t sure exactly where we had to leave the cycle path. I took a guess and we left it when we saw a driveway for a very official looking building. After getting to the main road, I noticed the sign on the entryway….United Nations! Yes, we had crossed through the United Nations parking lot to get to the main road. What was even more surprising was that there weren’t any visible guards. Not even a sentry posted at the front gate (perhaps because it was Saturday?).
After laughing about the UN (not ‘at’ the UN), we continued on. Neither of us had any idea where we were, so we went to an intersection and saw that we were at Kennedyallee, the road we wanted. We had no idea which way to go, so here’s how the conversation went:
J: ‘Let’s go this way.’ [pointing left]
M: ‘Are you sure it’s this way?’
J: ‘No, are you sure it’s that way?’ [pointing right]
M: ‘No.’
J: ‘Then it doesn’t matter. Whichever we choose will be the wrong way.’
M: [chuckles] ‘Okay.’
We cycled left for a kilometer or so until the name of the road changed, the turned around and went in the other direction until we saw a sign that we had remembered and pointed us to our destination. Yes, that’s right (for those of you who are ahead of me), we were going to a Bonn Capitals baseball game again.
Those who regularly read this blog know that I subscribe to MLB.tv and watch a lot of professional (USA) baseball games on the internet. Why on earth would I want to return to a small field when I frequently see stadiums filled with 40,000+ people on a regular basis? Trust me, there’s nothing like being at a live baseball game. Matt and I both totally enjoyed the game we attended in April, so we decided to go back for the Capitals’ last game of regular season play. We had originally planned on attending a game in Cologne on 31 July, but that conflicted with the last day of the Dragon Boat contest here in Koblenz, so we brought forward the date by one day and changed the venue so that we could still see a game. Actually, I preferred going to Bonn. It’s (slightly) closer and (slightly) cheaper to get to, and is a lot more quaint that Cologne (which I also like).
We paid our €3 admission fee and then grabbed (free) cushions and went and found seats. Shortly after we sat down, they game started and the played the Star Wars theme. No national anthem (of any country), but the Star Wars theme. That one still baffles me.
The first game was pretty good until the bottom of the 8th inning when they changed pitchers. The replacement pitcher was terrible. The one that had pitched from the beginning through the 7th inning was quite good, but the new one was not. He had the bases loaded in record time and gave up quite a few runs before they replaced him (in the same inning) with a better pitcher. However, he still wasn’t as good as the starting pitcher.
The best thing? We got to sing ‘Take me out to the ball game’ during the 7th inning stretch! Actually, calling it a stretch is a bit much. No one got up and swayed from side to side (an aside, why do we do that?) and I’m fairly sure that only two people singing were the lady in front of me and me (Matt was at the refreshment stand).
During the break between games (all games regular season games are doubleheaders) we walked over to the parking lot to see something of interest. As we turned into Europastrasse (the road that leads to the ballpark), we were passed by a bright yellow (new) Ford Mustang GT. I love the new Mustangs and it was a thrill to see this one mainly due to the fact that they’re not on sale in Europe (this one had been brought over by an importer according to the website that was on the back of it). I had originally thought that it might have been brought over by a US military person, however it was registered as a German car (in a county just east of Bonn), not an American one (military people in Europe (and perhaps the world?) have number plates similar to European ones, but the country designation is USA). Matt was familiar with the Mustangs that the new ones derive their retro looks from due to the fact that there are quite a few Mustang collectors in the UK (I was surprised to learn that) and a former boss of his was one of them.
Arriving back at the field, the ball player that I had talked to back in April was quite close to where I was standing, and he came over for a chat that started off a bit awkwardly.
Cody: ‘Hi’
J: ‘Hi’
Cody: ‘You’re the English guy?’
J: ‘No, I’m American. We met a few months ago.’
J: ‘He’s English’ [pointing at Matt]
Cody: ‘Right, you’re the guy with the blog.’
J: ‘Erm, yeah?’ [it makes me nervous when people say things like that]
Cody: ‘You guys made it back, and you got to sing ‘Take me out to the ballgame’ this time.’
He went on to tell me that a friend had put his name into a search engine and ended up on my blog (from my April post), and then contacted the Bonn Capitals looking for him, and they’re now back in contact. Blogging is good, and it’s nice to be remembered. He also told me that his friend had sent him my blog post about the game we attended in April, which kind of surprised me. Luckily, he gave it a favourable review.
I nervously brought Matt into the conversation due to the fact that I didn’t feel right about just letting him stand there while Cody and I spoke. However, Cody used the word ‘blog’ a few times. This blog is a secret from all of my colleagues here in Germany (and most of my friends) so that I can post whatever I want. Not even Matt knows about it. Luckily he’s not very computer savvy (he’s only able to email and do simple searches) and had no idea what a blog was. When he asked me about that later, I was able to give him a complicated explanation that he wouldn’t understand (but didn’t lie) and that seemed to satisfy him. I was sweating bullets for a while, though.
Cody and I continued chatting (with occasional input from Matt) and I found out that he’s not returning to the US in October. He and the other American on the Capitals team have found jobs at a US military base in Wiesbaden (Air Force?) working at a gym. Between that and playing baseball again for the Capitals next summer, they hope to save enough money to afford air tickets to Australia and play baseball there for the (northern hemisphere) winter in 2006. I wish them both the best of luck.
We decided to keep in touch and he asked me if he could use the email address on the blog, so I cut him off (from using the ‘b’ word) and told him that I’d email him soon and got his email address. Heck, if he’ll be working on a US base, there’s bound to be a Taco Bell there. He can hook me up! Cody, if you’re reading this, I’ll buy!
A couple of interesting things happened when I was talking to Cody. First, he had no idea what I was talking about when I used the word ‘tart’. I have a front basket that I use (only) on cycling trips for my camera and a few other items that I might need (contact lens case, sunglasses, etc) and Matt once told me that I look like a tart when I use it, so it’s become known as my ‘tarty bag.’ I have very little contact with Americans and have adopted many British terms and completely forgot that an American might not understand it. We tried to explain it to him, but I’m relatively sure that he said, ‘Okay’ just to move the conversation along. Also, when I told him that we would be cycling 60 km (37.5 miles) back to Koblenz, he seemed to be surprised. I reflected on that while we were cycling back and then remembered that while many Europeans wouldn’t even blink an eye about cycling that far, most Americans would. Cycling for distance is a big thing in Europe (perhaps for bragging rights?), but Americans usually just take short bike rides.
Matt and I stayed for the first five innings of the second game and then decided that it was time to go (17h30). We had 60km to cycle home and figured that with stops (photo breaks and rest stops), it’d take us about three hours. I told him that I had to use the toilet and went off. When I came back, it had just started raining. The thunderstorm got worse and we decided to seek refuge under the awning of the snack shack with all the other spectators. Had I not have taken time to use the toilet, we would have been right in the middle of the downpour and soaked to the bone.
While it was raining, I explained about how rain delays work for baseball games in the US to Matt. The grounds crew comes out and covers the dirt part of the field with a big tarp. If the rain lets up, they uncover it and resume playing. If not, they cancel the game after a certain period of time. Shortly after I told him that, I saw the Capitals baseball players run out onto the field and cover up the bases and home plate with tarps (they put wood and other heavy thing on them to keep them from blowing away). They were drenched!
The rain ended around 18h, and we cycled off (after I took a few photos of the flooded field). We had no idea how to get back to the Rhein, so we went back through the UN parking lot and eventually got to it.
We cycled on.
We talked (again) about how lovely Bonn is and how nice the cycling paths are there. We cycled along the smooth pavement and the immaculately manicured grassy areas in marvel of what this divine city has to offer and made our way out of town.
Remagen was our first major stop. I had been told that it was quite nice, so insisted on stopping here for a break. I got my way and was able to take a few photos as Matt relaxed. We walked out bikes through this very attractive town and then mounted our bikes again and cycled off.
However, we didn’t get far. Just south of Remagen, we came across a wooden, covered bridge on the cycling path! It was charming, so of course I had to take a photo of it. We also stopped (for the culture bit of our ride) at the Peace Museum Bridge. Matt had never known about the bridge, so I explained a bit of the history to him. Here’s how the conversation went as we were cycling off:
J: ‘That was the cultural part of our ride.’
M: ‘You’re full of surprises. What else have you got up your sleeve?’
J: ‘Wait til you find out what you’re making us for dinner!’
[laughter]
We cycled on and 12 km later we were in Bad Breisig.
Bad Breisig was also very attractive, but we didn’t wander around it due to the fact that a dark cloud was coming our way. We had two choices, either seek cover in a pub or cycle on and try to beat it. Due to the fact that we’re both saving money for our end of year trips, we cycled on. Well, kind of. We got a couple of kilometers and then realised that the dark cloud had started raining on us and retreated to an area back in Bad Breisig that was under trees (and kept dry) and had benches we could sit on and wait out the rain (it wasn’t a thunderstorm). We spent fifteen minutes there and then left.
Several kilometers later, we ended up in Bruhl, but that didn’t thrill us. It had started raining, so we decided to head for the nearest pub, however the cycling route had an unmovable gate on it and we couldn’t get back to the Rhein or even to a place to wait out the rain. We cycled up the hill and turned left and looked for a place to seek shelter. Of course, we were in the only village in Germany that didn’t have a pub or restaurant open on a Saturday evening. As the rain got heavier, we got desperate. We cycled down many roads of the village seeking shelter and finally found it under a group of trees (this one wasn’t a thunderstorm either). The benefit? Matt got to rest his legs and I got to take rainbow photos. Conversation:
J: ‘Hey, let’s go look for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!’
M: ‘Mate, you and I will never find a pot of gold.’
J: ‘No?’
M: ‘No, it’s just not meant to be for us’
J: ‘You’re probably right.’
We cycled on.
We reached Andernach at about 20h20 and as we were entering the town, the conversation went like this:
J: ‘Wow, what a beautiful castle across the river.’
M: ‘You’re not taking a photo of it.’
J: [chuckle] ‘Why not?’
M: ‘We’re not stopping!’
J: ‘Okay.’
While cycling through Andernach, reality hit. First of all, both of us know that Matt can’t easily cycle as far as me, and I also know that he refuses to tell me when he’s had enough (and I was somewhat sure I had been seeing signs of that). Secondly, we were both wet from the rain and I know that being wet makes me cranky (and it probably does the same for him). Thirdly, we were losing daylight. The sun would be setting in about 40 minutes and we had 26 km to go (I don’t enjoy cycling after dark on unfamiliar territory and would probably have been cold). Fourthly, it looked like it was about to start pouring down rain.
The final straw was when we were crossing some train tracks on our way out of town. Matt’s tires slipped and he was launched off his bike. I was in front of him and only heard his yell and the bike crash, to which I responded ‘Oh my god!’ and circled around to where he had landed. His bike was still on the pavement, but he had been thrown into the dirt on the side of the road and was a bit bruised and scraped up. I made sure he was okay and helped him up. One of his elbows was bleeding slightly, so I took a napkin out of my ‘tarty bag’ and dabbed the blood off it. It wasn’t anything serious, just a scrape that had started bleeding.
I asked him if he was okay, and he said he was fine. I didn’t believe him. We had a serious talk, decided to take the train home and cycled back to the Andernach train station (2 km). We bought our tickets (€3) and we went into the restaurant and had a couple of drinks (orange juice, €1.20) while we were waiting. Some drunks tried to engage us in conversation (it appeared to be the only place open in that dismal town at 20h45 on a Saturday) and we tactfully dealt with the one that was civil with us and barely responded to the others. After two drinks, we went back out front to retrieve our bikes and Matt asked me what one of the drunks had said (my limited German is much better than his close to non-existent German). I told him and then felt his temper rise.
Matt is fully aware of the fact that he has a bad temper and tries as hard as he can to control it (and is successful 99% of the time). However, being in the states we were, I knew I had to act. He asked me to explain what the guy had meant, otherwise he was going to return to the restaurant and ‘Have a word with him’ (translation from Mattspeak to English: ‘Tell the guy off’). I explained the difference in English and German grammar, and the guy had made a mistake and directly translated something from German to English that can’t be translated how he had done it (his English was dismal).
What had the drunk said? He had attempted to ask me a question (in English) about Matt and used the term ‘boyfriend’, something that is totally different in English than German. He had really meant ‘friend’, but in German all nouns have genders (unlike English). A male friend can be translated as ‘boyfriend’ just as a female friend can be translated as ‘girlfriend’.
We proceeded to the platform and waited for the train. We sat down for a bit and talked about this and that, and then boarded our train (which was surprisingly on tine). Twenty minutes later, we were back in Koblenz (once again, surprisingly on time).
After mounting our bikes, we headed down to the Rhein and then cycled along the promenade to Mosel. There’s a ‘Dragon Boat’ (crewing) event going on this weekend and we decided to see what was happening in the evening (actually, I decided that we’d see what was going on and Matt agreed to come along). A band was playing and I thought they were okay, but he didn’t like them. We went back to the statue area, sat down had a beer and talked about nothing in particular. We joked around, chatted about a few serious things and anything else that happened to come into our minds. We left at 23h35 and I arrived home at 23h45.
Our cycling trip only ended up being about 40km, not the 60km we had planned, but we still agree that we had a great day out. Bonn was very nice, the Capitals game was a lot of fun and most of the cycling we did was a good time.
Photos
Baseball related
I’m home from a day that didn’t quite end up as we had hoped it would, but agree that it was still a quite good day. Details soon.
Yes, it’s a second hand, fourteen year old €50 piece of crap, but I love it. I love cycling long distances on it (my saddle is surprisingly comfortable), commuting to work on it, goofing around on it, etc. Sure, most people’s bikes are better than mine, but I love mine.
I am so well-known for always having my bike with me and cycling everywhere that I’m becoming predictable. In a class we were talking about predictability and I asked my students was they thought I was doing this weekend. Klaus looked at me and said, ‘You’re going cycling.’ He was right.
I am.
*note* Apparently Blogger has lost the first part of my post. I’ll rewrite it when I have time*
…additional mail in rebate on it. I hadn’t used it since my trip to Spain in May, but decided to dig it out (it was still in the rollie bag I took to Spain) and have a listen. I’m glad it did, because it added a new dimension to cycling alone. The songs from my Spain trip were still on it, so I listened to them as I rode. Even though it was the same music, it felt ‘slightly different’ than the ‘strolling music’ I had listened to on holiday. However, I still enjoyed it.
From the beer garden, I spent time goofing around on my bike. What does goofing around mean? I don’t really know how to describe it, but I cycled along the Rhein promenade, cycled rings around a few flower structures (not on the grass), etc. It was a lot of fun.
After goofing around, I cycled south on the Rhein promenade, past the South Bridge, and down a way. I then dismounted my steed and sat in the grass for a while and read my Croatia travel guide for an hour or so. I then decided to cycle north on the promenade for no certain reason. I guess it was due to the fact that the tourist area was calling me, for some uncertain reason.
As I was cycling there, another person cycling pulled out a bit in front of me and as I was approaching, I noticed a Phillies baseball cap on him. I thought to myself, ‘Matt has one just like that,’ and kept pedalling. I then noticed his shirt and said to myself, ‘Matt has a shirt just like that,’ and kept pedalling. As I approached him, I noticed his green and white bike and said to myself, ‘That’s the same as Matt’s bike.’ To prove to you how daft I am, it took me until I was along side the cyclist to realise that it actually was Matt (and he was quite surprised to see me too). We chatted for a bit and then parted ways.
The people we work with know that Matt and I spend weekends together cycling, drinking and whatever. However, this weekend Spence had decided to invite Matt over to watch DVDs, but not me. Honestly, Matt is the one that our colleagues like better. He’s a happy-go-lucky guy that gets on with everyone. I’m not, especially by Spence. He thinks that I’m a grump and have hidden implications in everything that I say.
Example 1:
Spence: ‘I know three Americans with your first name and all of you are grumps.’
J: ‘You only see me in the mornings. I’m better in the afternoons and evenings.’
Matt: ‘He really is.’
Spence: ‘Oh.’
Example 2:
*in a teachers’ meeting*
J (to the boss): ‘We need to use our part timers more.’
Spence: ‘We have part timers?’
J: ‘Yes, you, JG and G.’
Spence: ‘I’m not part time!’
*he works 40% fewer hours than the rest of us*
J: ‘You’re not?’
Boss D *trying to calm Spence down*: ‘He’s just on a reduced hours contract.’
J: ‘Oh.’
Example 3:
Spence: ‘That was a rough class. I had to give them a few words in German.’
J: ‘Why?’
Spence: ‘You know how it is, when they can’t understand you it’s easier to give them the word in German.’
J: ‘I never speak German to my classes.’
Spence: ‘But sometimes they don’t understand you.’
J: ‘It doesn’t matter. I use hand signals, drawings and other things of that nature when they totally don’t understand me.’
Spence: ‘Yes, but there are those times when….’
J: ‘I’ve never found any reason to speak their language to them.’
Spence (quite put off, in a muttering ‘fuck off’ tone): ‘I haven’t been teaching as long as you.’
Example 4:
J (friendly tone): ‘You have quite a big day today.’
Spence: ‘What do you mean?’
J: ‘You have three classes.’ (*he usually has one or two classes per day*)
Spence: ‘What are you saying?’
J: ‘I’m just saying that you have more work than usual. Nothing bad meant by it, just trying to be friendly.’
Spence (*suspicious tone of voice*): ‘Oh.’
There are other examples, but I won’t write about them now.
Moving on…
Matt and I parted ways and I continued cycling along the promenade til it met the promenade along the Mosel. I spent more time listening to my MP3 player and goofing around, and then cycled home around 18h30.
This evening? I had originally thought I’d lie on my blog and say that I’d be listening to classical music and drinking a bottle of wine, but I’m not (as far as the classical music goes). I would love to have been invited to Spence’s house to watch DVDs (as more of a symbolic gesture). Fact: I’m not jealous.
The above may be due to the fact that have many undealt with insecurity issues from my past.
(edited on 31 July at 00h04..reason is in the comments)
This was a very difficult subject for me due to the fact that I try not to take somber photos. After consulting a dictionary in search of a broader definition of the word, I decided on one that I took in Pisa (Feb 2005) on a gloomy (somber) day.
‘Virtual Earth’ wipes Apple off the map
Photo of Apple HQ shows single warehouse, empty parking lot
Thursday, July 28, 2005; Posted: 4:16 p.m. EDT (20:16 GMT)
CUPERTINO, California (AP) — As software rivals, Microsoft wants to wipe Apple Computer Inc. off the map.
With Microsoft’s new Web service for satellite photographs, the world’s largest software company has sort of achieved its goal.
Internet sleuths discovered that anyone using Microsoft’s new “Virtual Earth” Web site for a bird’s-eye view of Apple’s corporate headquarters saw only a grainy overhead photograph of a single warehouse and a deserted parking lot.
Apple’s sprawling campus and eleven modern buildings — nowhere to be seen.
Microsoft is blaming an outdated photograph for the oversight.
(well, at least for me it is)
I have a lot less work due to the fact that it’s ‘holiday season’ here, so I unintentionally have a three day weekend! Hooray! I work 7h30 – 9h, 9h30 – 12h40 and 14h30 – 16h and then am free until 7h30 on Monday!
Plans for the weekend? Friday? Relax. Saturday and Sunday? Yes, I have plans. Stay tuned for details.
**** Update 17h31 ****
Everything’s done. Laundry, grocery shopping, etc. That gives me tomorrow to relax, Saturday to have way too much fun and Sunday to find a happy medium.
Life is good.
2h – Get up and take a painkiller
3h – Wake up.
3h30 – Realise I can’t get back to sleep, get out of bed.
4h – Watch baseball.
7h30 – 9h – Teach.
9h15 – 9h25 – Have a slight work related altercation with Matt (it was also resolved in that time period ).
9h30 – Bite my tongue to keep from telling a member of our administrative staff what I really think of her after she brings something very trivial to me that has nothing to do with me.
9h 35 – 9h40 – Leave work, cycle home.
10h – Get back in bed to try to get a bit more sleep.
10h03 – The city starts trimming the trees (with a very very loud machine) across the (narrow) street from my flat.
10h10 – Give up all hope of getting anymore sleep and get up.
At least it’s partly sunny.
**** Update – 11h36 ****
It’s now raining. So much for the cycling I had hoped to do before returning to work at 14h.
**** Update 20h30 ****
The day ended up being pretty good. Read on.
I decided that I wasn’t going to let all of the above get me down, plus I don’t like having problems with Matt, so I took charge of things.
The rain stopped around 11h55 and the sun came out, so I packed my daypack with my Croatia guidebook, journal and camera and cycled down to the Mosel. I figured that if I got out of the house and did things I liked, I’d feel better. I was right. After doing some trip planning and journal writing, I felt calmer than I did in the morning. When I arrived at school at 14h, I felt great and had a big smile on my face. I’m sure that the sunny weather and the unexpected rise in temperature (and humidity) from 25ºC to 32ºC had a lot to do with it (the temperature wasn’t supposed to rise until tomorrow).
My classes went well and then I came home. However, just as I was about to tune into a baseball game, a thunderstorm started so I signed off of the internet and went to battery power to ensure that my computer was safe from harm.
So, here I am, watching baseball and thinking about both the upcoming weekend and my upcoming trip to Croatia. Life is a lot better than it was this morning.
Legal ones, that is.
The toothache I had last week reemerged Friday evening, just in time for me to miss all the medical professionals, so I got some aspirin and hoped it’d go away. It didn’t, so I grinned and bore it (including on the cycling trip on Sunday). At 11h today, I went to the nearest dentist for an appointment and got one for 19h40. The problem was that I was still pain. I asked the receptionist if there was anyway someone could quickly look at me and issue pain killers, and she seemed quite unconcerned about my pain and coldly replied, ‘No,’ in a ‘I’ve made an appointment for you, now get out of here’ tone of voice. After all, it wasn’t her that was in pain so why should she care about me?
I made it through the rest of the work day and went back to the dentist’s office. I was escorted into the examining room on time and the dentist came in ten minutes later, totally understandable due to the fact that they can sometimes run over. I’d rather have him be late than do a quick job on someone in order to be on time.
I told the doctor that I was pretty sure I knew what was going on. The wisdom tooth on the bottom right of my mouth was probably pushing into the other teeth and causing the pain. I also told him that the last time I had dental surgery, the dentist was a butcher and caused me A LOT of pain. He looked in my mouth, told me that my diagnosis was right, had some x-rays taken and then told me that he’d have to extract the tooth. I had been expecting that.
We then tried to fix a date for it to be done on. He asked me if I wanted it done the next day (today) and I told him that that’d be fine. However, after finding out in his computer that there weren’t any slots available, he said that the earliest he could do it was Thursday at 18h30. I wasn’t sure about that due to the fact that I have plans for the entire weekend, and the last time I had this done I had about a four day recovery period. I explained that to him and asked him what he thought, and he said that it’d be better to do it next week, so we scheduled it for 8h20 on Tuesday. He asked me what kind of anesthetic I wanted, and I said that I didn’t want to feel a thing. He recommended ‘putting me in a little sleep’, to which I agreed. He also gave me something to kill the pain I was experiencing at the time (a ‘local’ something).
Finally, it came time for drugs. He prescribed Clindamycin-ratiopharm (referred to as Cli from hereon) for an antibiotic and IBU-ratiopharm 400 akut (referred to as IBU from hereon) for pain. Here’s what I don’t understand…the package of Cli has 12 capsules and I have to take four a day – that’s three days. However, there are seven days left til the surgery, so this means I have to be inconvenienced and go back for more later this week. Why didn’t he just prescribe enough til the surgery? I didn’t find this out until I got to the pharmacy and it was too late to go back to the office and ask.
A few other outstanding questions:
1. Will I be okay to make it home by myself after being under the influence of a sleeping agent, or should I have someone take me home (I won’t be driving)?
2. Is it possible to get the prescription(s) for after the surgery filled before the surgery?
There are a few others that I though of last night, but forgot to write down. I’ll make a list as I remember them today and have someone that speaks German better than me call the office and find out.
How do I feel about all this? I’m still apprehensive about it due to the bad experience previously-mentioned, but this doctor seemed to actually care about his patients so I’m a bit more at ease. However, still nervous. The dentist’s office was quite nice and inviting, so that probably had something to do with it as well. It’s on the 4th floor of a seven storey glass medical centre and every room has a good view of our city.
Will my optimism remain? Time will tell.
Prices? €10 quarterly co-payment for the office visit and €5 for each prescription. The only additional charges will be for more prescriptions.
Well, not quite, but we did cycle to Nassau, Germany.
I met Matt at the school at 11h and we cycled over the bridge to the other side of the Rhein, and then down through Lahnstein to the Lahn River. The weather was mostly sunny and about 20ºC, so it was a pleasant ride. As usual, we talked about everything and nothing, enjoying the weather and each other’s company.
Matt and I cycle well together. We don’t feel the need to prove that one of us is faster than the other or can cycle farther than the other, we just cycle for fun. I enjoy cycling with him because when we go out, it’s clear that we’re going for the day and for a long distance. Granted, we both know that I do more cycling than he does, so I’m mindful of that and ask him from time to time how he’s doing. However, he’s too proud of a person to tell me that he’s tired and nothing ever becomes of it.
The cycling routes along the Lahn River are quite nice. They’re well defined and are purely for non-motorised traffic. A bit bumpy at times due to roots that have grown under it, but still enjoyable. There wasn’t too much traffic, but there were a lot of ‘Sunday cyclists’ out that we had to overtake.
We passed many ‘campgrounds’, but they were more like caravan parks. People park their trailers and put up elaborate awnings, tents, etc, some even put up fences. Frankly, I couldn’t imagine spending a holiday like that and wonder why they like it. We also passed a couple of locks, not unlike we did yesterday but on a smaller scale.
The Lahn is a quite calm river, more like the Mosel and the Rhein, but quite a bit more narrow than the Mosel. There’s no barge traffic and not much boat traffic, so it was a quite tranquil ride.
We reached Bad Ems 17 km later. We had visited Bad Ems for Rheinland Pfalz Days last month, but hadn’t really visited much of the town. We had the fortune of hearing music when we pulled into the city, and decided to lock our bikes and walk across the bridge to find the source of it. It turns out that a jazz band was playing, so we listened for a while and also had a beer.
From there, we cycled on through a village that started with a D and onto our goal of Nassau. However, being the amateur photographer I am, I saw a building that was begging for a photo. I looked at Matt and said, ‘Come on, look at it and tell me you don’t want to take a photo of it? [a rhetorical question due to the fact that he doesn’t have a camera and thinks I take way too many photos (which is entirely possible)]. He said, ‘Go on, take your photo,’ and then we cycled on to Nassau.
Why Nassau? It was a compromise. Matt wanted to cycle no more than 40 – 45 km and I wanted to go more than 60, so we decided on 50. That was Nassau, due to the fact that we had previously cycled down both the Rhein and Mosel.
Nassau wasn’t all that impressive, but we eventually found out that it had a castle, so we cycled towards it. Kind of. Most of the way was uphill, so we walked our bikes up a lot of it (Matt made it up the first hill and I only made it half way up). Trust me, these weren’t just hills, they were minor reproductions of Mt McKinley (okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but it felt like it at the time).
When we finally reached the top of the hill, we were both quite tired so we sat leaned our bikes against a nearby tree and sat down to take a rest. About ten minutes, I said to him, ‘It’s time to walk some more,’ and he said, ‘Go on and do what you need to do, J. See the castle and take photos.’ This was the first time I had realized that Matt wasn’t as keen on seeing castles as I was.
I took off up the approach to the castle and marveled at its architecture. I love German castles and frequently wonder how the people that built them accomplished their tasks so many hundreds of years ago. The castle was no where near the caliber of many of the others in the area and there wasn’t much more than a restaurant (with staff dressed in medieval garb) and a tower, but it still proved to my liking. There was one tower that was still intact and one could climb to the top of it (for free), which I gladly did. I have no idea why things like that interest me so much, but they do. I called down to Matt after I got to the first landing, and he looked up and said, ‘Where are you?’ I replied, ‘Up here,’ and he saw me.
After I had finished fulfilling both my sightseeing and photography obsessions, I returned to the place we had left our bikes. Oddly enough, Matt was standing up and waiting for me. He told me that he had fallen asleep for a few minutes and then had gotten up and stood up for a bit. I asked him if he had woken up feeling a bit less edgy than he had been before, and he said, ‘Slightly.’ I know Matt well enough to know that from his previous behavior on this trip, he had been acting slightly aggressive, which wasn’t normally part of his behaviour pattern. I knew why (the details aren’t important), but didn’t ask him as I didn’t want to exacerbate the situation(s).
We cycled on.
We found the real cycle path and bypassed village that started with a D and cycled on back to Bad Ems. In Bad Ems, we heard a classical music group (piano, violin, guitar) and I told him that we had to stop for a brief moment due to the fact that one of us (me) loves classical music). We stopped by a couple of local banks (we use different banks), and when we came out of the bank he uses it started to rain. While standing under the awning of his bank for five minutes, we decided that our next stop would be Maximilian’s in Lahnstein and then cycled on when the rain let up.
We passed the same places we had passed on the way there, but were still focused on or goal of 50km. Most of the fun of cycling with Matt is the conversation we have. I totally appreciate it and hope (and also think) he does too. Cycling is good for both of us because it gets us out of our flats and onto the open road, so to speak. We both love anything that deals with traveling, and cycling does that for us. We ride to (and stop in) places we hadn’t previously known exited and savour all that Germany has to offer.
As we left Bad Ems, the rain got heavier. We joked that a little black cloud would be following us home (in a metaphoric way), and it did. We took a quick break after a while and then continued on to Maximilian’s.
After locking our bikes near the food and drink stalls, we went in search of nourishment. Matt found a veggie burrito and we both ordered fries and beer. We arrived there at 16h22 and shortly after that, the moderate rain turned into heavy rain. We waited it out and left an hour later.
The pavement was wet, so we cycled on carefully, but were unable to continue along the river due to the fact that the port had been closed off, so we returned to cycling a bit inland until we saw an opening to get back to the river. As we were going down the cycle path, something not all that favourable happened. Here’s how the conversation went as we were going down a steep embankment:
J: ‘Be careful, the leaves on this part of the pavement are wet and quite slippery.’
M: ‘That’s why I’m doing the smart thing and……’
J: ‘Oh shit……’ [bike loses traction, slides out from under me and crashes on top of me]
M: ……walking my bike down.’
M: ‘Are you okay?’
J: ‘Yeah, fine.’
We cycled on in moderate rain after that and when we were on the bridge, I noticed that both of my legs were bleeding and said, ‘Remember how I said I was fine?’ to which he replied, ‘Yes,’ to which I responded, ‘I might have been a bit optimistic about that,’ to which he said (after showing him my legs), ‘Shit! Do you want to go to your place and clean up?’ I told him that we were out in the rain and that I wasn’t coming back out in it, so no. I wasn’t dying and knew that I could quickly clean up in the restroom of the pub.
We reached our destination 6 km later, and I scurried into the restroom and wiped all the dried blood that I could off (which, by the marks, I realized had been caused by spikes of a pedal digging into my legs during the previously mentioned incident), and the rejoined him for a couple of drinks. We spent 1 ½ hours talking about whatever before returning to our flats.
All in all, another great cycling trip, despite the unforeseen circumstances.
