Up again early. This is a common product of jet-laggery: the body both wants a full eight hours of sleep, yet is so dialed in to a different schedule that it refuses to sleep through the night. Particularly galling, that theory might not even work in this case, as it’s officially 8.30pm in the states, which makes it hard to explain why my bod started refusing to let me sleep about an hour ago.
So perhaps these theories are all shite, and the simple fact remains: I am awake at 5-odd in the AM, local time, in the townlet of Kreuth, Bavaria, Germany. I arrived here from Munich yesterday after a relatively efficient day of travel. Met John/athan at the Max-Planck, hopped on the bus to Kreuth, and arrived in 1-2hrs. The weather is disappointingly rainy and grim, causing the bus’s proprietors to crank the heat inside, causing the in-bus atmo to become hot and damp and not-great-smelling, and finally causing poor DF’s ever-shaky GI to nearly revolt about 2/3ds of the way there.
I considered what would happen if this were my introduction to this new international cohort of people. “Oh, right—you’re the American who made an entire busful of people pull over to the side of a remote Bavarian mountain road while you vomited copiously.” Fortunately, I reminded myself, as I am wont to do, that they call them “waves” of nausea, because like actual real-world waves, they ebb and flow. And they did in this case (ebb, that is), saving DF from the ignominy of having roadside barfing be the first impression he made on his new international colleagues.
Arrival Kreuth, and a debate broke out over whether a nearby mountain counted as an Alp (NB: it totally was, and DF was right about this). Hence I can accurately say that I am currently ensconced in an Alpine retreat, and it is about as picturesque as you might imagine. The accommodations are what appears to be an old monastery (I am surmising because they are both spartan and adorned with occasional but very visible crucifixes).
The conference is an academic conference, and a good one, though DF will not bore you with the details, dear readers. Instead, consider the meat-intensive mystery that is sud-Deutsche chow: We all adjourned to a Bavarian restaurant (a fully legit one this time, as opposed to the urban simulacrum of Bavarian I’d eaten at the night before), and it had all the traditional indicia of its provenance that one might imagine: a sunken room with large-ish tables and benches, waitresses in flouncy dresses, white walls adorned with, inter alia, beheaded deer, etc.
But the food was almost comically unhealthy: beer served in massive mugs (I abstained, which still surprises me), a “salad” that consisted mainly of a slice of deli meat in oil, soup that was meat broth with a meatball (it was explained to me that the meatball was composed of various different kinds of meat, all of which came from locally caught and recently killed game), and eventually a really fantastic dessert that was, more or less, berry shortcake. I skipped over the main course because it merits separate re-telling: There was a huge steak, breaded in something based on onions, as well as an Alpine portion of potatoes cooked, of course, with onions and bacon, and—for the health-conscious—some roasted tomatoes, cooked, of course, with some butter, cheese, and topped with bacon to make sure that nothing on the plate could fairly be regarded as vegetarian-friendly. The waitress came by partway through the meal with a big bowl of additional potatoes, in case we weren’t already exploding with food, and a tureen of gravy to make sure we maximized the grease and fat content of the entire repast.
Oh ,and in case this was not clear, aforementioned tragically unhealthy fare was friggin delicious. I finished every last bite. So when DF re-arrives in America, rotund and with every artery clogged, you’ll know why. And you know what else? It’ll totally be worth it.
Image: view from the Wildbad-Kreuth compound; in background--possible Alp!
