The only dependable way to do laundry in Germany...

Well I know I was going to continue the Darmstadt tour, but I had to share this experience with you all. I promise I will go ahead and finish writing up the next tour stops tonight or tomorrow and they will go up every other day through next week while I am in Alabama and, thus, will not be having these wonderful German experiences...

So the answer to the statement in the title of this post is: by hand

I had it all planned out today... I was going to take off work early, go do my full workout routine to make me feel better and then head home and get a head start on the 4 hour adventure that is doing 2 loads of laundry. The amount of time it takes to do one load in Germany totally confuses me. This is a culture that is so focused on eco-friendly everything that they have taken the fun out of driving and will even fine you if you mix up your garbage (everything must be separated and tied up in individual bags provided by the garbage company). But none of this matters when it comes to laundry because why not let our washers and dryers run for an hour and 20 minutes? Sounds completely 'eco-friendly'!

Anyways, enough on that rant... I filled up the washer as I have done dozens of times in the past and let it go. I came back after the hour and 20 minutes was up only to find that it was stuck halfway through its routine with my clothes soaking in soapy water behind a tightly locked door. So what'd I do first... hit it of course... that didn't work. I started trying to manually cycle through its routine, but it kept doing the same 5 minute pattern and then shutting off... still locked. After about 15 minutes I got frustrated, hit it once more for good measure and then went upstairs for the wondeful journey of calling the recpton staff to explain the problem...

I knew what to expect, but I had to try. Just like all the other times I have called for the internet, hot water, cleaning service, or any of the number of things that have gone wrong throughout my two and a half month stay here, I was going to get the whole "I don't know, it should work, I'm sorry, thank you bye" bit. No difference this time. She said I would have to wait until Monday afternoon when someone could come and try and figure out how to get my clothes out of the washer and suggested that I should go out tomorrow and buy some new ones... in my pajamas, because that's all I have left, but she didn't know that... I hung up.

Well I went back downstairs and hit it some more and let the time expire, turned it off and on and unplugged it and then sat there staring at the machine... willing it to release its demon-ish grasp it had on my poor clothes. After about 10 minutes I heard a click, and the door could be opened... only to spill all the soapy water all over ther floor... at this point I didn't care, that is now their problem. Hopefully the dryer still works properly...

Anyways, now I'm doing the rest of my laundry in the shower with my feet with the toothbrush cup covering the drain... glorious, I know, but after all, it is the only dependable way to get your laundry done.