GERMANY

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		Introduction Having worked at Wye temporarily for Georg Cadisch I was required to continue the job in Germany for a few months when he extended the contract. So, Donna and I drove to Hohenheim University in the suburbs of Stuttgart. There I continued my research into the effect of elevated carbon dioxide on populations of free-living nitrogen fixing bacteria in soil. Georg, Thomas, Barbara, Mingrelia, Tee, Jun and Carolin were a nice group of people to work with. It was damned cold at times but it gave Donna a chance to enjoy real snow rather than the dusting last Christmas. We travelled most weekends and did our best to see the sites, taste the food and sample the culture. Thomas kindly introduced us to the Karneval in his home town. Below are a few stories and pictures from our time there when I wasn't working.
	PICTURES -- More photos from Germany and the rest of Europe -- More Pictures
	Rothenburg om der Tober One Saturday we went to a medieval town called Rothenburg om der Tober. It’s just over a hundred miles drive away from Stuttgart and is one of the stops on the so-called Romantic Road that runs through Bavaria from Wurtzburg south to the Alps. Things looked a bit dodgy from the start when Jun, one of the people going with us texted to ask if it was still on. Of course it was. It wasn’t until if we got out of bed we saw his concern. There had been a moderate fall of snow overnight and it was still coming down. Still, we had faith in the Germans to clear our path. Even the University has its own snowplough. I spent a considerable amount of time getting a couple of days worth of snow and ice off the car. The icicles that secured it to the ground also supported my weight when I got in, only breaking when the engine was started. The group gathered, all on time except for Jun who after waking us up withy the text message had gone back to sleep. The journey to the edge of Bavaria began with one Brit, two Filipinos, a Malaysian and a Venezuelan. Most of the route was autobahn and the snowploughs and gritters were out in force keeping the roads clear but creating traffic jams. Rothenburg o.d.t. had more snow than Stuttgart. The walled medieval town looked beautiful blanketed in white and there were some dangerous-looking impressive rows of icicles hanging across many of the upstairs windows. Since most of our number came from countries where snow is not allowed, and even my home in England sees precious little of it nowadays, the snow, as you may have already realised played a major part of our entertainment. Snow balls, sliding, making holes, face imprints and a lone snow angel were all part of it. Snowballs are also a local delicacy – a ball shaped crispy cake. We traversed the medieval walls and had a rather one-sided snowball fight where I was thirty feet below at the bottom of the wall and the other four pounded me from the top. I could call it unfair but then it was me who started it. Stupid. We ate German food and looked around the streets, market place and a big church that would have faired well as a cathedral. Colourful old half-timbered houses and steep cobbled streets made me think of Rye in UK but this was bigger and better. Some of the postcards showed that we only saw the half of it as in the summer it is a mass of colour with flowers flourishing from window boxes. Eventually it was time to make the journey home. We all used the loo first in a public toilet that bizarrely also appeared to be someone’s house. Back in the car, a few wheel-spins, skids and tight, sliding circles on the snow-covered car park until my passengers felt sufficiently nauseous and we were off. It was a shorter but slower, uneventful as we didn’t get lost until we were actually in Stuttgart. It’s good to get a chance to see the parts of the city that you would never want to otherwise.
	Trash One thing, amongst many, that impressed me in Germany is their handling of waste and level of recycling. It’s strange at first to get used to having to separate your household waste into three. One is paper, one is humus (that is degradable, compostable stuff, not the stuff that the Greeks eat) and the other is what is left over. These go respectively into green, brown and black bins. Then there is glass and metal which both have their own homes to go to. I didn’t know at first where the bins we should use were and so I went out with rubbish on a night-time mission to find somewhere to dump it. I put the unsorted lot into a black bin near the local shops. Now I know of where our bins are and also have learnt to sort the trash properly. I still don’t know where our local glass and metal recycling bins are. Also I haven’t figured out what is paper. Is it only proper paper? I think card counts but does tissue? Do cake wrappers? Progressing on the glass front I realised that the local supermarket has a machine that people put bottles in. I took all our bottles on our next shopping trip and inserted them one by one. The machine expertly assessed each one and gave me back those not purchased from that shop. How did it know? So I got rid of some bottles and even got given money for some of them, but I still have several to dispose of.	Toilets Toilets are something that have often interested me on my various travels. I will forget all the others for now, such as the squat jobbies in some of Asia and France, and the paper-free bum wiping options, and concentrate on the German design. Exceptions are the same as those in UK but the rule in Germany is what I choose to call the inspection pan design. Instead of the faeces falling directly into water with the associated problems of splash-back from particularly dense logs, vorschung durch toilett allows the turd to land on a solid surface. No embarrassing splashing noises and no wet arse. However, you now have a steaming piece of shit two inches from your cheeks and none of its odour is quenched by the water. Thirdly, when you turn around to flush it is difficult to avoid looking the beast straight in the eyes. I’ve been told that the Germans like this. It is a healthy practice to examine the faeces from time to time looking for parasites and so on. Hm? I would conclude that there are pros and cons to the design and whilst I’m tempted to bow to the superior Deutsch technologies, my judgement cannot help but be clouded by a frightening experience ten years ago with a similar one in a Dutch bar. But that’s another story.