My Baring trip to Baden- Baden

I have to start my description of this trip with the stop at the gas station (Tankstelle) first thing in the morning. I realize that when you rent a car there are always those moments of frustration where you glare around the seat mumbling, "Now where in this fricking car did they hide the _______."  For me that object was the release to the gas tank.  I looked all around the seat, around the dashboard, in the center console with no luck.  I pulled out the car instruction manual, which is entirely in German, and tried to find something in there with the word door (Tuer).  No luck.  So I went over to the pair of guys at the next pump and pitifully asked them for help in my very broken German. They were such dears. The two came over and looked through the manual and all through the car. We hit every button that we could fine.  We opened the trunk, the hood, the windows, adjusted all the mirrors, washed all the windshields, and even had the car make up a cappucino.  Okay, maybe not that last one, but you get the idea.  At some point in the middle of this operation one of the guys pushed against the edge of the gas tank door, thinking that maybe if you pushed it in, it would pop back open.  No luck there.  However after about fifteen minutes, we went back over to the gas tank door and the same guy pushed against the opposite side of the little door and VOILA, it just hinged right open.  TA DA! We all had a collective moment of, "Ahhhhhhh."  I thanked them profusely and waved them away.

So began the trip to Baden-Baden.

Baden-Baden (or bath-bath in German) is just a lovely little town. Hildegard (my navigator) did a fantastic job of leading me there, even managed to guess when I needed to exit the tunnel despite having lost GPS signal.  The town has this lovely little stream and shopping district in it that makes for a wonderful day of wandering about.  Also it turned out that they were having a Musiktreff, which seemed to be groups of mostly high school age students from a variety of Eastern European countries performing songs and dance of their respective cultures. (Except for the Bulgarians who brought a band and baton twirlers.) I saw two groups of Polish girls singing and dancing, including the most adorable little girls whose pictures I took and will post later because the outfits were so interesting.  The Polish singing group performed an assortment of songs including a Polish verion of Doe a Deer as well as the Scottish folk song Bring back my bonnie to me.  Scottish one was done in English.  The best of the bunch was the Russian dancers who were doing all that jumping and kicking and acrobatics that one normally associates with Russian dance.  Just fantastic.  And somewhere in the midst of all this was one woman who performed a belly dancing routine.  I'm not sure where she was from, or how she fit in, but I will say all guys wandering through at that time stopped to watch.

I had a chance to watch so much of this because I stopped for lunch at a restaurant right in front of the stage.  I had a very tasty and likely very rich Spaetzle with 0.5L of beer.  That left me feeling rather pleasant and very brave, so off I went to the Baths.

So I cast off my American Puritinism and went for the totally naked bathing experience.  Fortunately Saturday was one of the days where the sexes are (mostly) segregated.  The whole thing was luxurious.  All the rooms have this Roman look to them with tile and columns and interesting mosaics to ponder as you soak.  Onto the bath itself.  You start out with a short shower so you're all wet and then you go into the first warm room.  This one was about 45C.  You put your towel down on the lounge chair and veg for the recommended 15 minutes.  Then you head to the hot room, which I think was like 60C.  That is only 5 minutes.  After that is a second brief shower.  If you happen to be a person that sweats profusely, I would imagine that this is so you can rinse yourself off.  If you're like me, you use this as a chance to cool down a little.  The following room is the true sauna room.  They explain on a sign on the wall that this is the only sauna room in the europe (possibly the world) that is heated solely by natural hot springs.  The air had the most unusual scent.  It was almost minty.  Anyway, as you sit in the room, there is water cascading over this little waterfall against one wall, presumably heating the room and creating all the humidity.  Then comes the array of baths.  First you begin with this wonderfully warm bath, then a slightly cooler whirpool bath, then an even cooler bath (that's in the mixed sex pool, although no one else was in there with me) and finally you dunk yourself very quickly into a bath of 18C (which is COLD) and you're done.  The attendants wrap you up in a towel and then lead you to the resting room where they swaddle you up and let you rest for half a hour.  As they wrapped me in the blankets, I was trying to figure out what was the best metaphor for this, swaddled baby? mummy?, but as I emerged after my thirty minutes I realized what it was: a crysalis.  And let me tell you this was one butterfly that did not want to rejoin the outside world. 

I did.  Reluctantly. The whole experience took me about two decadent hours.

After another hour or so of enjoying the sites of Baden-Baden, I headed off to Staufen to my hotel for the night... or so I thought. 

I knew that I was in trouble when Hildegard kept trying to drive me into a river to get to my hotel.  I think she knew then that it was a doomed quest.  Suffice to say that I had to park the car in a lot and then walk into the center of town to find the hotel because that whole area is pedestrian only.  I found the hotel and also found that they had absolutely no record that I had made a reservation, even though I had called them only two days earlier.  The concierge did try to help (somewhat) by calling the neighboring hotels but they were all completely booked as well.  It's amazing how quickly you can go from mildly frustrated at not being able to initially find the hotel to completely panicked because it turns out you don't have one!

I pulled out my guidebook and started calling the hotels in Freiburg, which is where I was planning on going the following day anyway.  The last hotel on my list had exactly ONE room left.  I made my reservation, hopped into my car and drove to Freiburg with an exact address of my hotel and a vague explanation as to the requisite parking deck's location.  Hildegard pulled through here and drove me right past the parking deck.  As I pulled into my parking spot, she informed me that I had reached my destination.  Not something you expect to here inside a parking deck, but clearly hotel and parking deck were very close. 

Upon exiting the garage, two different people stopped me to ask if I needed help finding something.  Seriously, I must have looked crazed with panic/stress. 

Hotel room was interesting.  It was a sort of modern IKEA dorm look.  After about an hour or so the surge of panicked stress that had hit me from the lack of hotel was finally beginning to subside.  It's completely unfair that stress should hit so quickly and easily and yet not subside as fast. 

Freiburg was very cute old town.  It's hard to explain, so I think that I'll wait until I can show some pictures because it is best left to showing some of the interesting houses as well as funny gargoyles on the church. 

This weekend is Berlin.  I might update in the middle of the week with some observations about Germany vs US.  Best left to a separate little list.

Hoping you all had a lovely weekend as well!