Day One - Toilets and Windmills

Somehow I managed to consistently stay one day behind on this.

Let's start with a brief description of the drive. Everything in Germany is green right now. Like, my god, they have trees not just on the sidelines, but even in the divider between north and south-facing roads. It' all fields and crops and bushes and I don't even know. My male overseer would be having a field day with this landscape. I chatted with my German sis for a while, and then we entered the rustic red houses of the city. It was like I hadn't just lost a day in my traveling, but instead a couple of centuries. Dark bricks layered the walls and roads of every house, the roofs were shingled and heavily slanted, the river was directed this way and that under a sharp bridge, and everywhere there were signs in the gobbledygook of their language.

We passed by the Weser River (pronounced "veysah"), at which point my German mother informed us that this had been the waterway used in the Pied Piped fairytale, where the rats of the small village were lured to their deaths by the music of a mysterious man's flute. The village is also a real place, apparently, but I most likely won't get to visit it.

We arrived at their house after a short while, and it didn't look like much from the outside. However, stepping in the door was an entirely different experience. It was modern, elegant, and very compact. It would like to focus on a few points in particular. 

First and foremost, the toilet. Now, I'm sure you're familiar with the way American toilets work. There is a pool of water at the base of a porcelain bowl, and a handle to flush on the side, which produced a satisfying gush of water upon pressure. But then Germany was all like "naw man, we gonna make two pools, one for flushing and one to just sit there and look at our impressive German deuces. And we're not going to bother with a handle. Oh no. We'll put a plastic tablet into the wall, and you push inward like a secret-magic-portal or something, and a entire waterfall is going to jet out of your toilet and blast your unfortunate droppings into another dimension. Then you have to press the other side to get this torrent to halt, lest you're swept away with it. That's gonna be what we'll do". 

Germans, man. I may never know.

Then locks are on every door, expect they're more like keyholes from both sides, and you can insert a key into either side to lock them. That's actually pretty brilliant right there, as it allows them to switch all the keys in the guest room to the outside, and trap me in like a snoozing baboon in the morning.

Also, all the glass doors can tilt inwards when closed, allowing airflow as if they're windows. They look broken, and it weirds me out, but that's actually pretty sweet.

And through these glass doors you can see the sweeping chartreuse fields of grass and whatnot, with a bucketload of windmills on the edges of everywhere you look. Apparently the power from this makes up over 10% of their energy produced, which is awesome. They also look pretty futuristic, which is an added bonus, and very weird in contrast to the old-town vibes of the village.

I hugged my German father, and we went in to make eggplant-sandwiches, a speciality of my G-sis, which were utterly delicious, in case you were wondering. We hung out, and talked until my sis fell asleep, and then I fell asleep on their couch.