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September 29 - October 1, 2002 The next morning everyone slept in - I think the guys were happy to finally have a morning where they could do that. Xoe and I had a gorgeous view of the town of Rexingen (population of about 1000). The guesthouse owners - Sondra and her mother - were wonderful and laid out quite the spread for breakfast for us, with homemade preserves and everything. At this point in the trip, someone - and I think it was Joe - dubbed Xoe and I the Don Swensen Family Dancers, and the name was such a hoot to all of us that it stuck. Why not? We were pretty enthusiastic at each show and apparently the guys got a kick out of seeing us travel as a little troupe. Xoe and I joked that we clearly needed some quick little dance to do every time someone mentioned the Don Swensen Family Dancers. After that, every time someone used the phrase we did a little hip-wiggle-and-snap. We figured we were kind of like the Solid Gold Dancers, but with less spandex. And make-up. And rhythm. That day a bunch of us decided to go walking around the small town of Rexingen. It was Sunday and we figured nothing would be open, but the town was just so pretty. So Xoe, Bobby, Joe, Billy Moss, Billy Leach, and I all set off. Once we got going up the street, the two Billy's found a path into the woods and decided to check it out. And as they headed up the path, Billy Moss decided to moon us all. Thanks Billy, I could have gone a whole lifetime without seeing your ass...
As we walked, we noticed a young teenage girl hovering not far from us. We figured she must have been looking at Bobby, who tends to stick out as a muscle-bound, long-haired rock star. We saw a group of guys up ahead and decided to take a chance on whether or not they knew English. Bobby approached them and they seemed friendly and glad to help us, even though they didn't speak any English. We tried our best in my awful German and Bobby's gestures in English to explain that we were looking for a place to eat that was open. They gestured in a particular direction and explained in German that there was indeed a place just a half a kilometer down the road. We began heading down there when the shy teenage girl finally got up the courage to ask us if we were looking for a place to eat. Turned out that she knew some English and had heard us speaking, so she knew we were American - apparently we were intriguing. She walked with us to show us where the restaurant was. We learned that she was 15 and that her name was Annette, and according to her, her parents would think she was crazy if she told them she was talking to an American rock band. She took us to the restaurant via the scenic route in town, which was through parks, down cobblestone streets…it was pretty cool. We chatted with Annette a bit about the town, her school, and eventually we made it to the restaurant, which turned out to be a Greek restaurant. Even though I were hankering for some German cuisine, we were hungry and I wasn't about to complain. We insisted on treating Annette to lunch for walking and chatting with us. As we looked over the menu, she excused herself and reappeared a few moments later with the restaurant phone in her hand. She said, "it is my father," and immediately handed the phone to Bobby. Bobby looked like someone had just handed him a dead fish - he had no idea what to do. So he put the phone to his ear with a tentative, "uhh…hello?" Turns out that her father spoke very good English and we guessed that she was just trying to let her parents know where she was. Bobby explained to him that she was nice enough to walk us to the restaurant and we just wanted to thank her by treating her to lunch. Once we got that over with, we all had a nice lunch, at the end of which we were each given a shot of Ouzo. Bobby had no idea what it was so Annette explained that at this restaurant, which she apparently went to all the time with her parents (it looked like the only one in town), they always gave you a shot at the end of your meal. Xoe and I threw our shots down the gullet, but Bobby hesitated, so we naturally made fun of him. Annette said, "and he is the man!" Which of course put the spurs to Bobby and in a desperate attempt to save his fledgling manhood, he threw his shot down, too. The walk back into town was…warm. We all walked back, again on another scenic route with Annette pointing out various things to us. When we got back to the guesthouse it was clear Annette didn't want to leave. We felt bad but we had to encourage her to leave, so Bobby handed her a CD and gently sent her on her way. She ended up showing up later that night. A crush on Bobby, we suspect. Once again, we had to send her home, and so we made fun of Bobby the rest of the trip for taking in strays. That night we all decided to head to the Rainbow again, but this time to have some beers and just relax. We let Freddy, the owner, know and he was thrilled to see everyone back. The ten of us - the band, the manager Jeanne, Xoe, Molly, and I - ended up taking up the entire area where the audience had been standing the night before. As we ordered beer, Freddy walked over with a tray of shots that were on fire. I'm not kidding. The things were flaming. He set them down in front of us and explained that these were called Burnouts, something he'd concocted himself, and that it was traditional at the Rainbow to drink them at the start of a race, which was currently playing on the TV above the bar. He instructed us to let them burn for about three minutes, then we had to stick the straw in and suck up the shot as fast as possible. I don't do shots, so I had no idea what to do with this. Billy Leach sat across from me and pushed his shot next to mine. "I don't drink," he said. Oh, great, now I was going to have to do two of these things. When Freddy yelled, "go!" we all stuck our straws in. I got about 75% of the shot down before I could feel the heat of the flame, and in a panic I whipped the straw out of the glass, which scattered some of the flaming liquid onto the wooden table. Yay me for almost setting the Rainbow on fire! Naturally I got my fair share of teasing from Billy Moss, Bobby, and Billy Leach about being such a, uhh, messy drinker. I will say, though, that the shots were mighty tasty. At some point soon after that, someone handed Billy Leach an acoustic guitar. It turned out to be Holger, a local guy we would come to know and love! He lived in the area and played the Rainbow occasionally with his band Greenleaf. He was such a sweet guy and would travel around the area with us and Freddy showing us the sites over the next couple of days. He and his band mate Karsten even made the trek down to Langenau later to see that gig! They were such great fans and having them in the audience I'm sure really gave the band some extra support. Billy started jamming on the acoustic and someone somewhere produced a second acoustic guitar, which my dad ended picked up. The two of them took a station at one end of the room and started playing. They did songs that everyone seemed to know - "Rocky Raccoon", "Lyin' Eyes" from the Eagles, all sorts of stuff. Billy relinquished the guitar to Billy Moss for a song, and he did a rockin' acoustic version of Rebel Storm's "She Works All Day" which was so much fun to sing. We started shouting out requests, and I was sitting right near Billy Leach, so I asked if he knew Tracy Chapman's "Gimme One Reason".
The next day we and a few guys from the band were going to do a little shopping. Freddy explained that the place to do shopping for things to take home to the US was in Freudenstadt, a busier town nearby in the Black Forest. We headed there and had lunch at a great little cafe. At this point I had yet to have any German schnitzel, something I swore I was going to have on this trip after having lived on it at a German restaurant back in Florida for years. Freddy and Holger took us on a nice scenic route through the Black Forest and we had a great day shopping in Freudenstadt. I picked up a stuffed beaver for the novelty effect. I demanded that everyone see it, too. Molly and my Dad shopped for a cuckoo clock (which my husband, Lenny, forbade me to buy). Molly came out of the shop glowing - she said she bought the biggest…gaudiest…most ornate cuckoo clock in the shop. The kind with the deer head and the pinecones and the leaves and probably a kitchen sink, too. Meanwhile, Holger retold a story to us about how when he was about six years old, he was terrified of the bird from the cuckoo clock that his family had. So much so that they had to permanently close the door so it wouldn't come out and scare him! Poor Holger! The next day we would all split up into two groups. By now, everyone was realizing that they needed to do some laundry. Sondra from the guesthouse tried to locate a place where we could do laundry, but apparently there were no laundromats anywhere nearby. But since Strassbourg, France was only an hour away, it was decided that those who wanted to do laundry could go to France to do it. So Molly, my dad, Xoe, and Jeanne headed to France to do laundry. That's right. They went to France solely to do their laundry. They reported back to us later that the laundromat they went to was probably has the best view of any laundromat in the world - you can see pics in the gallery. According to them, driving in France is even more terrifying than driving in Amsterdam. I didn't think that could be possible. (At this juncture of the diary, I'd like to thank my dear sister Xoe for washing some of my laundry that day while I went and saw a castle. *sniff* You're such a sweetie!) The rest of us hung out and waited for Michael from the bar to show up. We'd met Michael at the Rainbow during the acoustic jam when he sat at our table and enjoyed the music. A great guy! The day before he'd run into Bobby and Billy Leach as they wandered around town, and he'd said he was interested in taking us to the local music store and maybe showing us some of the sites. When he showed up, he had a piece of paper in his hand - it was a printout about a castle nearby. He asked if we'd like to see it. Well, of course! It turned out to be the Castle Hohenzollern, and so off we went with Michael - John Cooper, Bobby, Joe, Billy Leach, and I. The castle was amazing. It looked straight out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail perched up there on the hill, but without the dismal rain of England to muck things up. We all walked around the castle with our mouths open, snapping pics left and right. It turned out that the tour was in German only, so we would have to walk with the group but not understand a word they were saying. Fortunately, Michael was kind enough to translate the pertinent information for us so we got something out of the educational portion. As we walked into the main hall with the vaulted ceilings, Billy Leach looked like he was going to pee his pants with excitement. As the rest of the group moved forward, Billy said he would love to sing in that small cathedral-like area, and so he quietly began to sing "Amazing Grace". It sounded beautiful!
Along the drive to and from the castle Michael taught the guys a new German phrase: "busen zeigen!" I was all the way in the back of the van so unfortunately for me I didn't hear what the phrase actually meant, but it wasn't too hard to figure out the context. So for the rest of the trip the guys tried as hard as possible to get pretty girls to zeigen their busens. And somewhere in there Billy Leach used the power of his phrasebook to figure out how to request a showing of the busens a bit more politely. (Hint: it still doesn't mean you're going to see them, though.) I'm telling you, between the vaginal infection request and the busen zeigen, I'm wondering where Billy got this phrase book because it sure wasn't the one the rest of us were using... Meanwhile, Billy Moss was teaching the local citizenry his own phrases: "Kill It and Grill It!" and "Spanken Sie Deutsch!" It became kind of a rallying cry through the trip. That night the group reconnected and we had a night out at Cafe Sonne, a local restaurant, and here I finally satisfied my schnitzel craving! The place was owned by Holger's mother (we would learn that everyone in town was related in some way, it seemed - Freddy and Sondra were cousins, and Sondra's mother worked at Cafe Sonne), and Sondra, Holger, Freddy, and others joined us. It was a great experience having dinner with such wonderful company. The food was utterly fantastic, and the hosts served us shots of homemade plum liquer. Wow, dangerous stuff. Unfortunately, by this time the cold I'd acquired was in full swing and I decided to walk back to the guesthouse to try and give it some rest. Since this was our last night in Rexingen, however, I did manage to do a nice late night walk around the town before we left. Talk about your dark skies. The next day would be the start of the hectic, last portion of the trip. It was off to Langenau! |
