you know you don't have a dryer...

when your washcloth looks like this:

Screens

Living in Munich, we’ve adjusted to life without window screens. In fact, we hadn’t seen a window screen until we got to our hotel in Schwerin. Our afternoon and evening went like this:

Afternoon: Oh look! One of the windows has a screen!

Evening: Oh crap! Look at all the mosquitoes! Let’s turn out all the lights, maybe they’ll all fly back outside…Hmm. That didn't work.

Evening, part 2: Rob to the rescue! In the dark, Rob jumped on the bed, ready to start shooing the mosquitoes out the window. This pic was really taken in the dark, with just the flash.

Evening, part 3: Oh crap! Carnage! Will the hotel charge us for cleanup? In the morning we used a damp towel and attempted to get some of the smashed bodies/blood off the walls.

Now we know why there was a screen in one of the windows. Lesson learned. Hotel on lake = only open the window with a screen after dark.

Update

Guess what! I'm heading back to Munich on Thursday, and that means I'm going to start updating my blog again. Woot!

For now, I'll just say that I made 18 pints of jam and jellies today.

american sauce

On Saturday night, in a little town called Wiesen, Austria, we went to a pizza restaurant. Mostly we went because they had spare ribs on the menu. I ordered the "Spare Ribs American Style" and used my best German to say that I couldn't eat MSG. This totally confused the restaurant owners, so after lots of gesturing and such they showed me the bottle of "American Sauce." I'm not sure why it's American. Instead of BBQ sauce with tomato and honey or molasses, the sauce had cheese as the main ingredient. It sounded really weird, but after all the hubbub I would have felt bad to decline the sauce, so I had it. And, actually, it was okay!

Identity Crisis III

Since Rob didn't think it was all that silly for women to have cute little bows on all their tender little underthings, I decided to take a little revenge.

Identity Crisis I

So I've been wondering...why, oh why, do manufacturers/designers think that women need to have little tiny bows on the garments they purchase? Do they think bows will make us feel more feminine? Or maybe we'll forget we're female so the bows are there to remind us? And on bras? I mean, come on, isn't the fact that we're wearing a bra enough of a reminder? Bah. I hate bows.
Here's an idea. Do the same for menswear!

Identity Crisis II

Where is it from? It's got a Cuban plate, a Ukrainian plate (upper left) and a German plate (lower left).