Rhein flooded

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I spent last evening talking to a very nice young lad from Oz, he's travelling to 5 different countries in 2 weeks, sounded very frantic to me !today I woke up to a beautiful blue sky, my Roomie leftbefore breakfast so I had the room to myself .outside my window I could see that the river has risen again overnight, but the trains ate still running, so Ishould be ok for my trip tomorrow. Today was spent wandering around town, reading, in the sunhine and shade as I could feel my arms getting a tad pink ! Basicly I've been very lazy today. I've just had my evening meal here at the hostel, (the food is really good here). anyway, bit of an embarrassing episode. I usualy pay for my meal at reception and the lady gives me a ticket, but tonight there was no one on reception, so I went into the cafe and tried to communicate with the lady serving that I wanted to pay her for my meal. Now I do pride myself in having a masters degree in gesticulation that can be understood anywhere ...... well anywhere except Germany apparently ! As far as I was concerned I was saying I wanted to pay for my meal, I handed her my 10€ note, and she smiled and said ah and held it to her chest and said "Danka Danka" this puzzled me and after a nano second I realised she thought I'd given her a tip ! I laughed in asuitably silly foreign tourist way to indicateI was not giving her a tip ! she seemed slightly crestfallen, but then rattled something off in German which I presumed she finally understood. She took my money and gave me a handfull of change, that I put in my purse. I then tucked into my soup, which was delicious. Then I chose my main meal and sat down to eat. I could see the lady talking to anotherlady and they seemed to be looking over at me, with much shaking of heads and shrugging of shoulders . I carried on eating and then the first lady came over and started talking to me in German, I didn't have a,clue at first what she was saying, then I understood 10 euro , she Wwas pointing to a vending machine in the corner .......... then I cottoned on to the fact she was saying. Apparently she thought I'd given her the 10€ note asking fir change, and she'd given me 10 euros in change ...... therefore I had not paid for my meal ......akward !!! I felt a propper Charlie and was suitably embarrassed. she meSt have thought I was a right nutter. The hostel I'm staying in is a real German youth hostel, with 50 kids all running around making lots of noise, but they seem very polite, and always say hello when theygo past me. One thing I have noticed here is the lack of obese people in Germany, Out of the 50 or so kids here there are none that are overweight, and walking aroun d I've only seen two people that were obese, and when I walked past them ........ yes they were English !! saying that I've just polished off a rather generous slice of apple cake ! As you can gather from todays blog I'm doing nothing but relaxing, so sorry if its a bit boring to read, but when I'm able to put photos on it'll get better. I'm off to my bed now, I'm catching the train to Ulm after breakfast, I'm looking forward to doing nothing in a new town !!

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