Wandertag

We're off to Leipzig today for the weekend! Oh boy!

I got up at 7 this morning with a plan: clean, pack, shower, and prepare a lesson before leaving for school at 10.45, so that I could teach at 11.30; school over by 2.45; rush to Hauptbahnhof to catch the train at 3.30... all of which would of course necessitate bringing my weekend things to school with me, since the train station sits right between school and home. This I did. Anna had given me one of those awesome hiking-type backpacks, with hip and shoulder straps and everything; it's the size of a small duffel, and donning it with its many pulleys and levers sort of turns you into a backpack-human hybrid. So, thus clad, I lumbered out the door and began the 1.5-mile walk to school.

Maybe a third of the way there, it starts raining. I unpack myself out of the contraption, dig out an umbrella, foist everything back on, and continue on my way, holding the umbrella so low over my head that I must have looked like some strange humpbacked animal with a flat, green canvas head. The rain picks up; the rain starts pouring. I navigate down the million stairs that are the "Treppenweg" down the hill from my house; and by the time I've gotten to the bottom, my pants are soaked up to the knee and the rain is bouncing back up from the pavement so that it feels like it's coming from all directions. The Haupstrasse is a cobblestoned muck. Slosh all the way to school... finally emerge from the storm into the entryway, and shake out my mostly ineffectual umbrella.

Boy, it's quiet here. Well, I suppose it is the middle of a class period. Shoes squeak all the way up the stairs to the teachers' lounge. Open the door. Lights off, quiet. "Hallo...?" Nobody. Go to secretary, where there is actually a light on. "Um... good morning... did I miss something? Where is everybody?"

I should point out that the secretary always seems exasperated with me. To my credit at least, this is the first really dumb thing I've done since I arrived here; but I've still always gotten the sense she rolls her eyes every time after I leave her office, even if the only reason I entered in the first place was to pick up paperwork. But this time it was real: "Today is Wandertag (hiking day). It is CLEARLY MARKED on that tiny bulletin board, underneath the other bulletin board, in the paper-and-bulletin-board-covered corner of the teachers' lounge. (Eyeroll.) Good day, Frau Eggers."

I was sorely tempted to shake my droplet-covered umbrella at her, but instead I turned around, buckled The Contraption back onto my rain-and-sweat-soaked back, and went back outside. The rain had stopped! In fact, the sun was bright and glittery. Very bright and glittery. Noonday sunlight was reflecting off wet surfaces everywhere, and I ended up stripping off every layer but my undershirt as I huffed and puffed my way back up the billion stairs and the uphill march home.

Wandertag, indeed!