Beating the heat sounds good at this point; it needs some form of punishment.

Well, any day after a mountain climb would typically be a let-down, but not so much today! I have to admit, a lot of us were getting kind of home sick pretty much exclusively for air conditioning.

RANT: It was 95 degrees today, and the sun is much stronger here. Since no one in Germany has air conditioning, you might see a German: A. In long-sleeves, not sweating; B. Doing hard labor in the sun, not sweating; or C. Embarrassing Americans by how much he or she is not sweating. We really do look like sweaty little pigs in comparison. A lot of German women carry big collapsible fans and fan their non-sweaty faces in a lackadaisical manner. Meanwhile, the American women are making tiny paper fans out of pieces of paper, dabbing themselves with already damp napkins, or just looking disgustingly hot in general. As a group, we’ve only come up with a few complaints, and the AC issue is seemingly always on our minds. In Germany, one wakes up sweaty, travels sweaty, and goes to sleep almost sweaty. In Alabama, the humidity is terrible of course, but at least there’s an escape. We dodge the heat from the car to the next air conditioned building. It’s just different here, I suppose. Also, caps on plastic bottles here are ridiculous. Water bottles, coke bottles, you name it. I’ll take a picture and show you; the caps have pointy, annoying wings. Other than those two complaints, though, Germany is amazing and I’d LOVE to come back someday in the Spring or Fall when the weather is mild!

Today, some of us made a ridiculously warm trek to the grocery store a few blocks away (my purchased items today: four .75 liter bottles of wasser *water*, a Capri Sonne (yes, Sonne!), and two Kinder Eggs). Afterwards, we ate a too hot meal at the Mensa (hot pasta in a hot cafeteria with too many bodies is a terrible idea), and headed to class. After the first lecture, those not enrolled in the class were allowed to leave, but Katie and I decided to wait (we had planned a Fountain Tour 2010 and the rest of the group was in the class and had to stay). I fell asleep in two armchairs, and awakened only to a fly looking at me from my arm. I had been asleep for all of five minutes. In any event, we killed time until the others were through, and left on Fountain Tour 2010. There are fountains EVERYWHERE in Europe. Some are sensibly placed, and others are just seemingly placed by eenie meenie miney mo. We knew which fountains had tempted the sweaty, but ill-suited for fountain wading, Americans before, so we wore swimsuits under our light clothes and headed to our favorites. We waded in huge fountains with multiple sources of spraying water, and tiny barely babbling fountains; it was an ingenious plan for the hottest day of our stay. One extremely deceptive fountain ate Katie (well, not really, but she did slip from standing in a calf-deep spot to falling in elbow-deep), but overall it was a success! After fountain tour, we ate at the Bratwurst place near Albertplatz, hit up laundry in preparation for Berlin, and watched an episode of The Office (I guess to remind us of the blessed air conditioning any office building in the US would happily provide). It’s supposed to rain tomorrow and potentially cool off here, so Lord willing: we might stop collectively sweating for five minutes or so.

Until then your clammy friend,

Lorilyn