Rachel’s Red Button

The Germans have some weird habits, and after 10 months here I still can’t figure some of them out. Yes, it’s summer. And it’s quite hot. And there’s no air conditioning anywhere. But I, and the majority of the population of Germany still leave the house completely dressed, meaning shirt and pants of some sort. But there is a select group of somewhat overweight German men of ALL ages who do not feel compelled to wear a shirt in public. Now, I’ll grant that this is acceptable in certain circumstances, such as: near the beach, while engaged in sport, maybe when you have a body worth showing off. But the rest of us are just as tired of the hot weather and we manage to stay clothed; why are these men excused? I know that most German citizens feel the same way that I do because you see people giving underclothed men nasty looks all the time, particularly on subway trains when they’re forced to share personal space. I guess I’ll never know.

This was defiantely the coolest thing I’ve done in a while. I went to Karlsruhe to watch the end of the stage on Friday. The riders came through so fast that it was impossible to pick out any individual riders, just a blur of colors and helmets. It was over in about 3 seconds. But thrilling none the less because you knew they were racing to the finish line. A friend of mine had a party there Friday night, and a few of us spent the night on not-so-comfortable couches. I decided to get up early Saturday morning after a couple hours of sleep and try to go see the start of the 8th stage in Pforzheim (which by the way means ‘fart home’ in German). It was actually very worthwhile because I was able to get a spot right up against the barriers with a much better view, and the riders start of each day riding slowly as a large group until they leave the start town and start the real racing. So it was much easier to see what was going on and I was able to pick out Lance Armstrong, though I was having camera issues and didn’t get a picture of him.