So much has happened. I have been moving so fast that it has been difficult to find the time to write in my journal let alone write on the internet. As I was leaving Hesse I stopped in a small town called Holz Minden to watch the German v. Poland game. It was a small town and there were hundreds of people, more than could ever fit n that town, in the town square. It was packed. There was food and beer and a huge screen to watch the game on. I learned there why the Germans need us in America. Without us they could not properly celebrate a football victory. Ready for this? Imagine hundreds of young Germans in an old market square singing Queen's We Are the Champions and then YMCA's Go West (what that has to do with winning is beyond me- it has a good beat I guess) followed by Monty Python's Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (yes, British I know but likewise an odd song for celebration). It was like a strange flashback to prom or something else in high school. I was wiating for Free Bird or We Don't Need No Education or some other rock anthem. And I thought those Canadians had done odd things with our music. Strange. In Hamlin I met, one right after another, very nice people ready to talk about anything. There were four German men in the restaurant where I ate lunch who kept telling me how brave I was and how if I had any problems to come to their town and they'd help me out. Then it was the two Dutch motorcyclists who camped near me. We talked for hours because they spoke very good English. They found my tent proposterously small. They had been to Hungary and Romania and were heading back home. They asked me the same question that everyone here asks me. Fahren Sie ganz allein? Are you travelling all alone? I say yes and then people generally ask, do you get lonely? To which I generally respond with a blithe shrug and a crooked smile that is suppossed to suggest that I am indifferent to being alone and then I laugh and say "No because I keep meeting nice people to talk to." The one man, Pip, who I talked with at length about traveling alone summed it up in the way that only a non-English speaker speaking in English properly can and said "Alone, but not lonely." Yea, that's right I said. But secretly I felt reasonably assured that we both had experienced a full realm of aloneness and loneliness. It was not a prespective that one arrives at and then comes to live in ever. It is a discipline that one works at whether out in the woods with bears or on the road in Europe with nice people who are quickly there and just as quickly gone. When I got back to the campground that night after having watched three English women treat a German security gaurd, the Asian people that they had bought there food from, and just about everyone else with horrible disrespect, I talked with Pip for an hour or so before bed. He had been all over, had two daughters, and a side car for the motorcyle in which his daughters sit and and go camping sometimes with their dad. He treated me to his ideas about life and travel and people. Pip gave me his number and told me if I found myself lonely in Amsterdam, he laughed at the impossibility of that, to give him a call. I must now take time out to talk about serendipity of another kind. There was tennisball sized hail in Leipzig last weekend. I was about to hit the road today when I found this cafe. In the 10 minutes that I've been here it has gone from sunny to raining so hard that I can no longer see across the street. Who knows? So I left Hamlin feeling quite tired but needing to keep moving. I went to Hildesheim and had finally one of those days that I had been bracing for. I got lost several times trying to get there, no bike paths that are marked with signs, and so I eventually found a train station and decided to stop. The guide book had said that Hildesheim was a prize jewel of Germany. It boasts over 700 half-timbered houses blah blah blah... It has some of the most important buildings in Germany.... I got off of the train and it was immediately arresting. It was US-styled shopping as far as I could see. I walked for blocks and blocks of tourists and McDonalds and shoe stoors and on and on... The town was totally confusing and it occurred to me that there was a game in Hannover that day and that Hildesheim was likely taking the overflow of visitors. I was tired and it was raining. I went from place to place looking for a bed and what I found was the strangest room I have ever stayed in. The shower was without hot water, the light was not nough to see by, it was hot and smelled of cigarette smoke. A sign on the wall claimed that the toilet may explode and my tv kept going in an out. I took a cold shower and went out to find some food. Instead I found a nice crack in the street where my front tire went to live for a time. I ate the curb for dinner. Thankfully not literally. There is some magic that says that no matter how I fall I will land on my elbows. I swear if I was a cat or butterd on one side I would still land on my elbows. Mom can attest to this and the Shaner school nurse and my friend Seth from an icy night in Topeka delivering newspapers. Now I have matching wounds. On my left elbow is Kassel, on my right, Hildesheim. Well, I limped off to a corner and sulked. I battled the gathering gloom of my attitude. I tried to fend off questions like "What the hell am I doing?" I decided to concede defeat for the day. I bought chocolate and beer and went back to my room. The next morning I was determined to improve my attitude. I packed up and headed out. I looked at thet sky and knew it was waiting for me. No more than five seconds after clipping into my pedals the sky unleashed a driving, cold rain. I pulled under a gas station awning and contemplated perspective and perdition. I looked in the gas station and beheld the tools for getting back into the saddle. I decided to buy a new (and presumably better) map. I also filled my thermos with coffee and of course purchased the obligatory chocolate. I stepped outside, put on my neoprene booties and was renewed. I sat and drank coffee, ate chocolate and waited. In five minutes or so when the sky gods had learned that I was not to be defeated so easily they gave up. I moved on knowing that I had not seen the best of Hildesheim and it had not gotten the best of me. I was backtracking now, moving west of Hannover which was goofy but I had made a reservation and a drunken winter night in my apartment months ago that I had never bothered to cancel. So I went. Here I learned another lesson abot Germany spatial structuring. The room I got was in Hannover. No actually in wasn't, it was in Barsinghausen which itself is sort of a suburb off Hannover. So I got to Barsinghausen. I couldn't find my street. I looked more closely at the reservation. There was yet another spatial modifier. It was Hannover-Barsinghausen- and now Bantorf. I was at 50 miles, beat and still had 5 or 6 to go. More than that I made this reservation because I thouht I could explore Hannover. I was now more than twenty miles away. This address still claimed to be Hannover. Oh well, I walked into the place and it was and inn- restaurant in the front with a bar and rooms behind. I drank three beers and chatted with the bartender, Melanie about soccer and whatever. She was so chill, the place was deserted, the beer was cold, and the food was excellent. For a long time I just sat there watching soccer and didn't even care to shower or move for that matter. That night after finally having a shower and coffee (before more beer) two regulars came in. Frank and Dietmar. They were the best. They spoke slowly and carefully so I could follow along and told me all kinds of things about this corner of Germany. Frank's adventures were a little like those of Baron von Munchausen. Dietmar was an older man and could apparently not hold his beer so well. He did that drunk guy thing where as he told his stories he kept getting closer and closer to my face. Then he'd crack himself up and slap me on the back. I was in heaven. All the while I was trying to watch the US team struggle along. We bet 3€ a piece on the game and nobody won. I turned down more beer and they bought me another. When it was time to go there were hanshakes all around and I retired to my room feeling elated at a wonderful success compared to the previous day's misery. The next day, yesterday, I headed to Wolfenbüttel. The weather was great again and I did 21 miles in about and hour and a half. I felt great. I was soon lost however and after my odometer read 55 miles I knew I wouldn't make it all the way. I found some ice cream, beer, chocolate, and shade. I then picked my tired butt up and found a train station in Hoheneggelson. I waited for the train which came promptly and I soon saw that to my disappointment te train car was at least three good feet above the train platform. Now these trains come and go fast and anyone who knows me knows that I hate to make people wait. So putting my bike with all the bags into the train was something less that a gloriously crafted, well-engineered moment. In fact it made me good and pissed off. I decided than and there to make the b******s wait next time lest I tear some muscle in my back or slip a disc or something. This day had been good but now it was a toss-up that seemed to be going against me. At the Braunscheig trainstation I had to switch trains which included going down two flights of stairs (no elevator, who knows what people in wheelchairs do) and back up two flights on the other platform. I shook my head at my future undertaking. I held the brakes and eased the bike down the stairs. Yes I could have taken the bags off, but then I have to feel ok about leaving bags in a busy train station laying against the wall. Anway I got it done- down and up. I was done. Totally. Luckily for me, on the train to Wolfenbüttel I met he two nicest people in all of Germany; Gaby and Gabi. They were returning home from a tour of their own and inquired about my plans. I had none- I said that I hoped to get a room at the youth hostel in Wolfenbüttel. They were quite sure that none existed. Camping I said then but they could not think of a campground in Wolfenbüttel. I asked them where they lived. "Wolfenbüttel" they said, which of course in German I now know means anywhere in a 50 mile radius from Wolfenbüttel. They were both 40-ish mothers of families who lived about 7 miles outside of Wolfenbüttel and Gaby invited me to come stay with their family. She seemed sure of what she offered and I, being on an adventure, was inclined to accept. I followed them to their town of Denkte and when we had stopped I checked my odometer. 65 miles in perhaps 75 degrees. Garby's family was very nice and they had a nice house with plenty of room. It was so nice to be in a home. They spoke almost no English and we struggled through hours of conversation in my halting German. They asked me about the US and I aksed lots of questions that had been hounding me for days. We ate dinner and watched the France- S.Korea game. I couldn't believe my luck and how sweet they all were. Gaby and her husband helped me plan routes for the next day's journey to Quedlinburg. In the morning the were of to work but Gaby sent me over to Gabi's house and I breakfasted with Gabi's family. It was all so surreal and I felt so comfortable with their maternal helpfulness and Gaby's confident assurances that bicyclists were one big family that I went along with whatever they said. Gabi's daughter, who was 23 and entrancingly pretty, was appalled that in the US we could only drive so fast on the highways and insisted that we take a short turn on the autobahn. If there is some way to say no to a pretty girl wanting to drive you real fast, so to speak, I don't know it. Anyway, we got up to 150km per hour and I think were only limited by the age of the small car. It was great. I got the Gaby/i's addresses and will sned something when I can. Before bed last night as I stood in Gaby's guest room and was finally alone, I could only shrug and shake my head at how amazing life can be. Here were people, how did I meet them? What circumstances caused that to happen? When Gabi's daughter (somehow I can't remember anybody elses' names) was driving me around Wolfenbüttel and past the Jaegermeister distillery, she asked me what Americans thought of Germans and I said that people always say how friendly they are and how this had proven that for me. She shook her head and said that there were plenty of nasty Germans and that I had had great luck to meet her mother. And she was right, I shuld not generalize. Like Max said, there are arslochs everywhere. It is something like luck. Of course I do not believe that good things happen to good people or bad things to bad or that we in any way get what we think we deserve. I found that crack in the street in Hildesheim that pitched me onto the curb and I found the Gaby/is on the train. The two are not connected in any other way except that I experienced them both. And yet, they do not simply equalize one another. After the crash I looked to better my attitude. After ther Gabi/ys I have not looked to decrease the hope or elation that I feel in relating to other people. There is some lesson in there- somewhere. One is a transitory state that should be intolerable and te other is where we should strive to live. Or maybe that's just the perspective of someone lucky enough to travel through a German summer by bike eating ice cream, beer, and chocolate. The rain is over now and I've gone on too long. Back to the bike.