This weekend my work took me to a town about 30 minutes south of Bonn, called Bad Neuenahr, in the Ahr Valley. Bad Neuenahr, as its name suggests, is a spa town along the Ahr River, a tributary of the Rhine. The town is the site of the Apollinaris spring, from which Apollinaris mineral water "the queen of table waters" has been sourced since 1852. According to the bottle of Apollinaris sitting in front of me at this moment, the company is now owned by Coca-Cola.
Nevertheless, the purpose of my visit to Bad Neuenahr was not to drink from the spring, but rather to bathe in its waters. Mineral water contains naturally occurring substances that a) make it taste sort of weird and b) make it supposedly therapeutic. Going back to Roman times, naturally occurring springs, like the one in Bad Neuenahr, have been desirable locations for wellness and relaxation. With that in mind, I suppose it shouldn´t come as much of a surprise that most of the patrons at natural springs looked old enough to remember the Roman era, personally.
As one of my colleagues and fellow spa enthusiast studies the Social Security system in Germany, and had just days before given a report on the subject, we considered this opportunity up close research on the lives of pensioners.
In addition to bathing in the mineral laden waters (I have a sneaking suspicion that the water in these baths is honestly no different than that of your average swimming pool, but then again, I am no expert, yet) we visited the various different styles of saunas offered. This, is when I really had the opportunity to see Germany. All of it. More than I had planned. Mostly just because the saunas were clothing optional. I learned as a child on a family vacation in the French Caribbean that there is a direct correlation between the age of a European and his/her desire to be naked in public settings. Germans are no exception.
I also learned how little I understand temperatures in Celcius. Like all good Americans I pretty much spaced out in elementary school when the metric system was explained, because I understood innately from birth that so long as I continue to live in the USA (or if I move to Liberia or Myanmar), the metric system just doesn´t effect my life. No matter how willingly we as Americans may export useful things like happy meals and coca cola to the great wide world, there is just no place in these fifty states where we seem to care to import things like milligrams or meters, and definitely not Celcius (scientists and other practical matters as usual excluded). My ignorance to the subject first came to light when I studied abroad in Austria and accidentally purchased a kilogram of spinach. That´s a lot of spinach.
The second time was this weekend, when I happily walked into a 95 degree sauna. As it turns out, that is pretty damn hot. My level of understanding of normal Celcius temperatures is pretty good, I think. I mean, sure I understand the formula for figuring out the actual temperature, but generally I just follow these simple rules: 0 is Freezing of course, less than 10C wear a winter coat, 10-15C, light coat and optional scarf, 15-20 light coat, 20-25C t-shirt, 25-30C shorts, 30C and up air conditioning and swimming pools may be necessary.
If I had known that I was entering a room that was over 200F, you can be certain I would not have entered, but since I had no clue, I happily partook in this traditional toxin purge. And you know what? It was delightful (for like 5 minutes before it felt like my face was going to burst into flames). Lesson to my isolationist third grade self who daydreamed her way through math class: You can do your best to hide from the world, but whatever you do, don´t hide from it in a 200 degree sauna.
But back to Bad Neuenahr. After leaving the sauna we wandered a bit through the town, where it seemed that the favored post-wellness activities of drinking beer, eating wurst, and listening to a local band play ABBA songs were in high gear. Out with the old toxins, and in with the new.
On the way back to Bonn we stopped in the town of Remagen. Remagen, which sits along the Rhine, is about 2000 years old. It is amazing to me to think that 2000 years ago Remagen was a dot on a map, but New York and so many major players in the geography of today were not yet even inky twinkles in a cartographer´s eye. Today, Remagen is still just a speck. But, through that speck one might say Germany has been, on two notable occasions, exposed.
The first time was when Caesar´s army crossed a bridge near Remagen to the western side of the Rhine and then destroyed the bridge, preventing the German tribes from crossing the river.
The second time was during World War II. By March of 1945 the Ludendorff Bridge, built in 1916, was the only bridge across the Rhine that was still standing. This allowed the American soldiers the luxury of crossing the Rhine with dry feet. Hitler saw his army´s inability to destroy this bridge, despite numerous attempts, of course, as a sign of wrongdoing within his own army and had five high official condemned to death. Ten days after American troops crossed the river, the bridge finally collapsed. More a morale boost than a major strategic accomplishment, Remagen is a reminder of the depth and complexity of modern Germany´s relationship to its near and ancient history. Today all that remains of the Ludendorff Bridge are the identical towers on either side of the river and a few feet (ok, meters) of the bridge itself jutting out over the water. The tower on the Remagen side is now a museum.
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