Day 474: Germanic Pragmatism

Friday 9th August

You’ve got to love the Germans. When you go use a toilet, they have none of the general shame/hiding behaviour that even dogs have. No, not them. In many, they give you a little tray. Nothing is left to chance. When you wee, it sits there so you can examine the colour, undiluted. When you lay a log, it stays there, as if in a hearth, to be examined and admired before its departure. Yesterday, after nature helped me produce something akin to a birth, I wished, for the only time that week, that I was at home. I wasn’t cool with coming face to face with my handiwork. I’d really have rather it had gone on its way without 'stopping by'. Still, perhaps it's all part of the efficiency and pragmatism that flows through Germanic culture. Who am I to complain. Trains are so often on time to the very second, and if they're late, they're very precisely so. Every silver lining...

That business aside, I was very to have had the chance to teach yoga this morning. There were five of us. I'd like to pretend it was in English andSpanish. It was in English, with the odd nugget of Spanish thrown in for the Italian-speaker who didn’t speak English much. The good bit is that we found we had a language we could communicate in. You know when you thing someone’s nice and interesting but there’s not really a way to speak to them… well, that was solved.

A very pleasant walk out in the forest and up some rocks. An ice cream bigger than my face. Lots and lots of laughing with the Slovak girls. And so much more.