There is both a washer and a dryer in the common room of our guest house. They are each about half the size of an American appliance. And they are full of incomprehensible options, some that even Google Translate does not understand. The main choice you get is the temperature, with options of 30°, 40°, and 50° (Celsius, of course). There are other things like "Automatic", "gentle care", etc that seem to control washing times. And there are two soap dispensers labeled I and 11 (yes, a capital I, and then eleven, though I think the right interpretation is one and two). I found a reasonable wash cycle, at least by the second load, and apparently I am pretty close on the amount and selection of soap additions, as the clothes seem to be clean but not overly soapy. However, the clothes come out closer to soaking wet than spun dry. Some extended work with Google Translate helped me find a 6 minute spin cycle that runs separate from all the other cycles. You wash the clothes on whatever cycle you like, and then reset the dial and run the spin cycle.
There is a drying rack in the common room, and after taking to a Canadian who had more experience than I did with the appliances, I decided to use that for at least the simple things, but I thought our pants and Mr. R-T's polo shirts would look better from the dryer. Even with them spun dry, I could not find a cycle that would dry them. It would run for about 25 minutes, declare victory with items too wet even to iron dry. I did one pair of jeans on the 'jeans' cycle for 5 iterations and now it is hanging up to finish drying. It being a hot day and the common room having direct sun, I think most of this will dry by nightfall, but just barely. It's clear that doing laundry is going to require a bit of planning, and we shouldn't launder anything we are going to need to wear in the next 48 hours. (Maybe more if we get a rainy streak. I have no idea how that impacts the drying, but it can't help.)
An interesting wrinkle. German washers and dryers don't turn themselves off at the end of the cycle. You have to do it manually.
Next the hiking. It was lovely. I was worried about my late start, as the high today is predicted to be 86°; but it was easily 10 degrees colder in the woods. What was billed as a 6.6km (4 mile) hike ended up as 6 miles, in part because I found the hike startpoint in a very roundabout way. I have a page called "Wanderwege in Duisburg" (Hiking paths in Duisburg) where this was very loosely described. Once I found the path (it sent me to the zoo parking lot, of which there are several. It was the third one I encountered. They don't show up in Google Maps satellite view, because they are all completely tree-lined.) The trail was on lovely wide tree-filled paths (see picture right), except for when it took bike paths and a few times a sidewalk. Maybe half of it was close to the highway or railroad tracks. A few hills (fitbit gives me 200ft of vertical), but mostly just lovely, well marked trails. This one was called the A2, and every time I was concerned I was on the wrong path, an A2 sign came to my rescue (see below). There are lots of other paths marked on the trees, so next time I'll try something new, not covered on my sheet. But I'll bring a peanut butter sandwich or something -- I was relieved to recross my steps about 1pm, as I was getting hungry.
We are heading for Amsterdam in the morning, so no more news till Monday.(Oh, and as you can see, I have figured out how to get pictures off my phone, but I haven't completely mastered getting them positioned in Blogger yet.)
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