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Chemnitz In the morning we went with Kay to Chemnitz, stopping at the university to tell his boss he wouldn't be in today. Kay was finishing up a Physics master's degree on measurements of meniscuses in a vacuum. Exciting stuff, no doubt. Kay toured us around Chemnitz, formerly known as Karl Marx City, formerly known as Chemnitz. It featured lifeless brown apartment blocks, where it appeared most people lived in shoe boxes. The only object we liked was the hat statue of Karl Marx. Everything else was blasé. Kay showed Sharon a specialty store that sold dental floss. After trying a bike shop to see if they had a freewheel removal tool (they didn't), we bought baby food for Louisa, dropped off the film Kay had shot on the weekend, then went back to the university for lunch at the Mensa cafeteria. "No meals over DM3." Kay told us. I savored steak, potatoes, sauce, green beans and soup for DM2.80. Kay drove to a friend's bike shop in another town. The mechanic produced a tool to remove Sharon's old cluster, once he hammered the die into place. His motto: If it doesn't fit, find a bigger hammer. He put the old cluster on Sharon's new rim. We explained the weird clicking noise it was making. He told us noises were common on new rims nowadays, not to worry, after a hundred kilometers all rims needed truing and tightening. We stopped at Kay's parents' home. They had a grand rustic house at the edge of the village with a large treed area. His mom had studied art for five years. Her specialty was pottery and she showed us an immense kiln--they could do cremations in that sucker. Cook a turkey thirty seconds flat. Since Germany reunified and Ossies were able to travel Kay's parents have visited Italy every year. On the way home we filled the car with thirty-seven liters of gas. It cost me fifty Deutsche marks. Maybe bike repairs weren't so expensive after all. I wanted to save the sealed hub on Sharon's old rim. I tried removing the spokes using the spoke key, but found the spoke heads solidly welded into place. I ended up snipping the spokes with a pair of wire-cutters. Anja and Krict had been busy. They had picked ripe blackberries to stir into the Quark. Anja baked another huge plum cake and I snatched a piece before dinner. Anja's mom couldn't stand the sight of our grotty water bottles and she scrubbed them until they gleamed like new. They were cleaner than when we left home. We looked at pictures in Kay and Anja's photo album. Baby Louisa is certainly the apple of her parents' eye. There were nature shots of the area we hiked. Nude shots of Anja in the woods. Nude shots of Anja with the baby. Nude shots of Anja in the bathroom with Venetian blind shadows for clothes. The usual family album shots. We talked about English idioms and slang. Fat head, big head, air head, egg head, block head. Kay made up vacuum head, straw head and flat head. Better to set your beer on I told him. Dummkopf. |
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