Konstanz – The Narrative

So Friday my language course planned an expedition to the Bodensee – known as Lake Constance for English speakers.  The plan was for everyone to gather behind the language institute building and depart promptly at 9am, and we almost made it, but one of the language tutors, who was responsible for the scavenger hunt around the city, overslept.  So we left a little late and then drove over to pick her up outside her apartment.



The day before was my birthday, and a couple of the women in my class baked me some brownies, so shortly before departure, I had to switch busses because they wanted to surprise me.  It was fine with me, but it meant that I didn’t get to hang out with most of the people I usually hang out with, at least on the bus rides.  This was probably a good thing since it gave me the opportunity to get some reading done.  It’s not that I don’t want to talk with them, but they spoke most of the time in English, so instead I turned to my iPod and read some Kant.  We took a bathroom break at some point, and I shared the remaining brownies with my friends from the other bus.

I had planned not to do the scavenger hunt/game when we got there, and just wander around the city, but at the last minute I decided to play along with everyone.  We had a group of like 7 people who all wanted to play together, but they would only let us play in groups of 4, so we all took the same route (there were 3 different routes) and headed off.  It was a mixture of finding out information about various locations as well as asking locals for pieces of information as well.  I can’t say that we cheated, because I don’t think we did, but Aslı had borrowed a couple of travel guides about Konstanz from one of the people on her floor in the dorm, so we were able to answer some things by just looking them up in the book.  This gave us plenty of time to wander around on our own as well.

There was a girl in our group, who wanted to play the game, and didn’t have a group, so we included her in our adventure.  She didn’t talk much –I don’t know that her German is that great, but I think she’s also very shy, so I’m not sure which to chalk it up to.  Anyway, when we were finally finished with the game, and grabbed something to eat, we wrote her name on one of the sheets that we turned in.  This will become important later.

At the appointed time, we gathered together on the pier and boarded a boat to Friedrichshafen.  Bodensee is the biggest lake in Germany.  It lies on border between Germany and Switzerland, and one part of the lake borders Austria as well.  You can take a boat to each of the three countries in one day and explore the little towns.  There are also a couple of islands that are really cool.  The one that I can remember is named Mainau.  They have beautiful gardens there, and when I was there years ago, they also had a butterfly house inside a wintergarden which was really quite beautiful.  But we didn’t do any of this.  Instead we took the long way around to Friedrichshafen.  Normally the trip between Konstanz and Friedrichshafen shouldn’t take too long, but this was a 2 hour boat ride, in the wind and fog.  I mean I could have gone inside, but whatever.  It was a nice trip and we had a good time.

Along the trip there were seagulls flying next to the boat and because of the wind, it looked like they were standing still.  Now, I grew up around seagulls and think that they are disgusting flying rats, but I’m sure there are people who think that they are beautiful birds.  I can see maybe taking one picture because you can get a really good shot of the bird when it’s gliding/flying in place about 5 feet away from you, but honestly this was a 2 hour boat ride and EVERY time the gulls would fly next to the boat there were squeals of joy and excitement.  My biggest concern was making sure that they didn’t crap on me – because that’s what those beasts do.

Anyway, once we got to Friedrichshafen, we boarded the busses and headed off to an organ concert at a beautiful Basilica not too far away.  We were running late, and traffic was terrible, but we got there listened to the organ.  There’s a long and completely implausible story about the organ, that I’m not going to put down here, but it involves a deal with the devil.  Whatever.  The concert was beautiful, but you have to really enjoy organ music to really have truly appreciated it and unfortunately, I’m not really an organ music connoisseur.  But I enjoyed it for the time it afforded to look at the basilica and be silent in a beautiful church.  I lit a candle at the back of the church, and then we all piled back into the busses for dinner.

Dinner was good.  It was a buffet which is not really traditional for Germans, but they had a few really tasty salads.  The schnitzel was a little thicker that I like it, but the Spätzle and Kartoffeltaschen were super tasty.  It was during dinner that we learned the results of the scavenger hunt.  Now we assumed that the answers on both sheets were the same, so if one of our two teams was going to win, something, then the other team would win as well.  They called 3rd place, and it wasn’t one of our teams, so we figured that we would be 1 and 2, but then they called second place and it wasn’t one of our teams either.  At this point we assumed that we hadn’t won anything, but when they called our team – Vera (Hungary), Dorota (Poland), Diana (the shy American), and me – it was pretty awesome.  We won chocolate – what else – and shared it with our other team mates who did not win, along with everyone else at the other tables.  Honestly I don’t need a ¼ of a kilo of chocolate, but I still have some left.

After dinner, we headed home, which seemed to take forever, but I finally arrived back in my room around 10:30, skyped with Andy, and set my alarm to head off to Munich the next day for Oktoberfest.