On Sunday, I attended the Stiftskirche here while B headed south to play lacrosse. We were both pretty sore and miserable after covering a full 32 km/20 miles Saturday evening. We ran from Tübingen to Unterjesingen, to Pfäffingen, to Poltringen, to Wurmlingen, to Rottenburg am Neckar, to Hirschau, and back here. Although I got totally exhausted, and B ended up trying to steal apples from trees to sate his hunger, it was a lovely way to get a sense of the countryside. According to all the weather reports, we are coming to the end of the summery fall weather we've been enjoying, but the beautiful weather has been bringing out people in droves. Our run through Rottenburg was complemented by the presence of medieval knights celebrating medieval week in full dress.

While my Sunday was a restful recovery day, B headed three hours away to play lacrosse with his old team. They won both their games by a substantial margin, but he hasn't stopped moaning and groaning since. Last night, he was even doing it in his sleep, until I (mostly asleep also) tearily begged him to stop so I could get some rest! We both break out in longing exclamations whenever we see a bed larger than the narrow pallet that serves us on more or less alternate nights. We've even started imagining that a full-size bed might be large enough, while back in the US, a king-size was the minimum we could handle.

This evening we headed into the Altstadt to hunt for a grater. Ever since returning from this summer's trip, my favorite meal has been som tam (green papaya salad) and tom yum (spicy sour soup with mushrooms or similar). However, green papayas are quite expensive in Europe. In Norway, we paid 11 Euros for two, while here, the going rate is 1.30 Euros for 100 grams (a large papaya is about 500g). An unorthodox solution, albeit delicious, turns out to be buying very unripe papayas at the local supermarket (YES! there is one!! Right next to the historic nuns' house!!!), which cost 1 Euro each, and using those instead. However. The kitchen, to dignify it with an undeserved name, that we are currently using, does not include a grater. The other day, I made papaya/cucumber salad with a peeler, but it took about an hour and my hand was cramping for some time afterward. So, grater needed. Did everyone but me know that graters can cost over 50 Euros easily? Of course, the Altstadt tends expensive, but that is pretty out of control. Especially when the Verkäuferinnen give you evil looks for not wanting to spend that much! We did find a cheaper one eventually, and just gorged on papaya-cucumber-lime-lemon-habanero salad. Thankfully, the Asian market is just around the corner.

Everytime we go somewhere, we decide just to walk by the new place to look at it. Even though showering in the kitchen and using the bathroom in the room that leads to the attic will be somewhat inconvenient, and we'll miss the cable TV with 42 channels that has been keeping us updated on all soccer events (hello, Mourinho!! and will Klinsi be hired?), we cannot wait to be able to shut the door on each other. Our landlady was wondering how that can be such a necessity after only six months of marriage. Perhaps the camping mattress has something to do with it?

Yesterday we furnished pretty much an entire kitchen for a total of 18 euros. This included buying a full set of Ikea pots and pans, never used, small and large plates, coffee cups, a frying set (but that seems made for pasta--easy draining!), a small marble cutting board for cheese, a wooden one for other things, and more. There is such an excellent used store here! We also hopefully found a fridge. Yes, we pretty much have to furnish a whole kitchen, although there is hope that we only have to find a fridge and not a stove as well. The stove may arrive early in the month. Our kitchen, while very stylish (stone floor!), is hardly... modern. Given that we now know that there are documents on the house our new apartment is in that go back 500 years, that is not, perhaps, difficult to explain. (Which also explains why the floor in one of the rooms tilts.) Tempting as it is to go crazy in the used store buying cute individual pieces, we need to get a sofa first so we can build things around it.

B is hoping to start playing lacrosse again soon, while I really want to be able to settle down and get to work. But while there is still so much undone, and we still take turns sleeping on the camping mattress, and space is still so tight, it´s hard. We measured our new place yesterday (some 50+ square meters, just over half the size of the old place), and took a measuring rod to the current one as well. No wonder we feel cramped! It is a beautiful total of 17 square meters (ca 180 square feet). I thought it looked rather like my high school room, where my best friend and I shared 12 square meters, but of course that did not include a kitchen area, bathroom, and shower--so no wonder there´s no room for two beds!

But no more complaining. In two weeks or less, we´ll be living in our charmingly inconvenient 15th or so century apartment.

We have the apartment. We move in October 4. Everyone who is planning to visit us: you are going to LOVE this place, and there will be plenty of room. Although not perhaps very much furniture!

Disappointing results in the Stadtlauf today, although I beat 2/3 of women and B was in the top 1/6 of men. Still, we were both hoping to run somewhat faster. It got HOT, though, and it took the first half of the first round not to be stepping on people´s feet and trying to pass all the time. We´re still trying to focus on the marathon. But in any case, all disappointment forgotten as we will 1) NOT be paying $2000 just to move in somewhere 2) NOT be staying in an apartment of 250 square feet much longer 3) NOT be dealing with brokers and other suspicious strangers 4) NOT be commuting in from Stuttgart 5) NOT be living outside the Altstadt 6) NOT be using my ENTIRE stipend JUST to pay the rent. So yay!

We have a lead on an apartment! If we believed in anything superstitious, we´d be requesting lots of good karma or some crap like that, but oh what annoyance, it´s out of our control so all we can do is hope. This place is amazing. In contrast to yesterday´s very expensive one, this apartment is charmingly run-down as it is in a house that is probably several hundred years old. The place is full of beautiful old-fashioned dark wood-work and even has a gorgeous brown ceramic wood-burning stove in the kitchen. The family renting it out has not advertised it (we heard by word of mouth) and the father is a theologian/philosopher who knows Ratzinger, among others. They are Middle Eastern, so instead of setting up an appointment to view the apartment, we were invited for coffee and cake. The mother had baked the cake specially! Turns out we have lots in common and finally, ten minutes before we have to leave, we get to see the apartment upstairs, which is still being renovated but is SO PERFECT: there´s even a view of the Marktplatz. There´s plenty of space, more than we need, and again the shower is in the kitchen and the bathroom in the hall, but in a charming/cute way rather than in the unappealing un-cared-for way of the last place. Plus, the room that the bathroom is in is directly adjacent, and also contains the absolutely most stunning old stairway up to the attic. We have no idea what the rent would be, since that is one of the things that didn´t come up, but I suspect manageable, and it would be flexible in relation to our time here (i.e., not having to pretend that we´re planning to stay forever). As B said, if he had less theological backbone, he´d be tempted to say that we were meant to have this apartment. Although perhaps it is just a mirage? We both agreed that we can stick it out for two more weeks where we currently are IF and only if we have the prospect of this place on the horizon.

We´ll hear on Sunday.

I Formaggi di Umbria

Artichoke Flowers

So I knew there was a reason we moved to Tübingen. Admittedly, since we've been here, we've found it difficult to remember what it was. But now it is clear: the Umbrian-Provencal market opened in the Altstadt today. HEAVEN!! Perhaps the highlight was the pasta with truffle sauce (4 EUR), but also the pecorino with grape must, or with truffles, or the horse milk cheese that we bought (at least that's what it seemed to say! It's really good), or the pickled salted lemons from Provence, or the panforte, the amazing bread with walnuts and olives, the unfiltered tasty olive oil, or I know not what. An orgy of eating has reconciled us somewhat to the difficulties of existence (more banking problems, for instance).

The market fills up the entire old city with people from all over the region. While local restaurants take advantage of the massive crowds of people as well, there are plenty of salespeople who speak only French or only Italian. Indeed, the cheese guy asked B if he was really Italian? Which, not so much, but cool. We also stocked up on baby artichokes for only 3.50 EUR per kilo, which we will clean and deepfry tomorrow. We're both running pretty much daily, which leaves B starving all the time, and the fridge here is only half-size, so we do a lot of shopping.

We also saw the most gorgeous apartment ever today. Yes, it's the one with the $2000 fee, and there's pretty much no way we can make it work, but what if we can't find anything else? The apartment is much larger than we had realized, with a separate bedroom, sun on all sides (it's the highest floor), an absolutely amazing kitchen--indeed, the whole place was renovated in April, but the guy who has it now is a commuter and was hardly ever here, so he couldn't justify keeping the place. I don't know if we could get it even if we could somehow borrow the money from somewhere, but it is simply the nicest place I have ever seen to live--nothing over-the-top fancy, just so simple and perfect. And since we've finally found the bike path that follows the Neckar, running would be literally at our feet.

We're both getting a bit nervous about the Stadtlauf on Sunday. Not that I have any intention of racing, due both to my general slowness as well as the fact that we are in the middle of the hardest weeks of marathon training, but it turns out to be such a big deal that it's going to be hard not to get carried away. It's the highlight of the market weekend, all the stores will be open, world champions and Olympic medalists are running, and every newspaper and TV show in the local region is talking about it. Hopefully we'll manage to focus on the fun, cheer each other on (B is running with the fast runners, me half an hour earlier with the slowies), and not injure ourselves. After all, the marathon is the real goal this fall.

Here is one of the concept cars used to test trial steering mechanisms.

The chic exterior of the Mercedes-Benz Museum.