A Little Piece of German Chocolate: Take The Stairs

You all thought I was kidding, huh? About that whole, one blog post for the rest of my time here thing. Well I was, but I did manage to go...what, almost two weeks without writing anything. I always think it's a personal responsibility of mine to chronicle, in written form, my mishaps as a blogger. Two weeks is pretty bad so hopefully I'll make up with it with some major posting during the next twenty days of the first month of winter.

My Guidebook to German Winters

Winter, that's something that is fresh on my mind. It's pretty cold out. As such, it requires consistent preparation. I have to garb myself in layer upon layer of clothing before stepping out to face the elements. Now I'm a logical human being, that means I like to spend the least amount of time possible out in the cold. That means that usually when I'm in the cold, I'm heading somewhere. That means that my journeys outside are usually pretty short-lived. One thing that isn't short lived is the excessive sweating that happens afterwards. Gross, right? Really simple equation actually: wear warm clothes, head out into the elements, exercise (in my case, biking) and then enter a warm environment.

It never fails. I'm always sweating. I could probably amend my previous rant about water if I could find some way to desalinate all the water I lose through my pores.

The funny thing about the first three paragraphs I just wrote is that they lead up to the phenomenon that I've experienced so consistently in Germany:

No one is fat.

I know, I know, it's an exaggeration, obviously there is someone, somewhere in Irgendwo, Deutschland, that's fat. I would love to befriend that one person and figure out how in the hell he fell through the cracks of German society. Seriously, if I could do some massive study of average weight in Germany, I'd not be surprised to see it was 20 or so pounds less than the average in the United States. At first you might want to think, "well there's a smaller sample size, of course there going to be less fat people" but I'm talking proportions and percentages here. Here...let's do a social experiment. If you're in a large enough university, go into your next class with 300+ people in it and count how many people you would quantify as "overweight." I'll do the same.

What'll 2018 Look Like?

Done. Zero.

Now this is no decry that Germans are a super race (I tread softly using this analogy, given Liebe Deutschland's grizzly history with the term, just my creative prose leaking through) of people who can't happen to gain weight, it's simply an observation about a culture that enjoys movement more than convenience and activity more than comfortability. There have been many a times I've been tempted back towards my "American roots" of laziness. Now c'mon, baby America, you know I love you, but you've really let your figure go. I'd like to say that with a surplus of food, resources and wealth inhabitants of a country gain weight but this is ridiculous I can't make excuses for your laziness anymore.

Let me clarify though, just because everyone here isn't overweight doesn't mean everyone is ripped either. That's certainly also not the case. I've also marveled at the opposite, which is, it seems very few Germans like to do anything "extra" along the lines of working out. Which isn't really a condemnation, since they stay in good form despite their lack of a punctual workout regiment. That's not really the point, I'm not suggestion we should all look like Barbie & Ken, or whatever the crap the newest variation of girl's dolls are called, but we could definitely take some tips from Germans:

“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Walking . . . is how the body measures itself against the earth.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Now I'm not sure my German buddy Friedrich was completely right about this one. I mean...all of my blog posts have been written sitting down. But Miss Solnit was on to something. At least you should get the gist. Get out and walk. It's fun, it's beautiful and you get a perspective you can never experience the world in a car, bus, plane, boat, etc. the same way you can as with your own two feet. If you just have the time, anything is in walking distance and there's certainly nothing wrong with slowing down for a few hours.

Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.

- Mark Twain

"What makes the desert beautiful,” said the little prince, “is that somewhere it hides a well."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Although I've complained, stressed, whined, and ranted about German's shortage of easily accessible water, it is my most often consumed drink. Granted, it beats out beer by like .01 percentage points. (50.01 to 49. 99%). I think this is pretty normal for this lovely culture. I see water drinking everywhere. Hardly is there a Coke bottle laying around, or anything loaded with sugar like we see in the United States and honestly, it does the body good. Wonder why those Milk drinking adds never sold some creative ideas to Dasani or something...