We biked into a soccer field\u00a0east of Heidelberg around\u00a02:00pm\u00a0to eat lunch.\u00a0 A man in thick clothes and\u00a0clad in\u00a0a motorcycle helmet greeted me with curiosity, but without a smile.\u00a0 I prepared to be told that we ought to find some place else to eat.\u00a0\u00a0Instead he said something ambiguous in German.\u00a0 “Essen,” I said,\u00a0miming\u00a0the action fashion\u00a0models disdain.\u00a0\u00a0“Nicht hier,” said the\u00a0man.\u00a0\u00a0My heart sank.\u00a0\u00a0FBR\u00a0was\u00a0again being banished\u00a0on account of looking too homeless.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Luckily,\u00a0Drew came over\u00a0and cleared up\u00a0our\u00a0misunderstanding.\u00a0 The helmeted man thought I meant to buy food.\u00a0 Of course there\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0much food to be had in the soccer field.\u00a0 Once Drew explained the\u00a0purpose of our peculiar stop, and that we had already purchased food, the\u00a0man\u00a0retreated from his\u00a0motorcycle and\u00a0searched for\u00a0a key.\u00a0\u00a0“Don’t you want to sit down?” he asked\u00a0as he opened up the\u00a0food and drink stand usually opened only during games.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Our legs, used to being cramped and pinned into unnatural angles as we squat or sprawl on the ground, quivered at the site of the table and chairs inside the stand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Werner Winterscieid, as we later discovered our lunch sponsor’s name to be, hastily swung open the shutters, instructed us to not drink the water from the faucet, and scribbled down his name and phone number in case anyone came by and wondered who authorized us to use the concession stand for a picnic area.\u00a0 The lights for the field didn’t work, so he scrambled about trying to get them on for a game that night.\u00a0 He kept saying he was going to leave, but instead just wandered around.\u00a0 He finally did leave, but came back right away.\u00a0 He offered us each a lemonade beer from a crate we’d been eyeing since we gained entrance into the shed.<\/p>\n
He left again, and this time didn’t come back till we had almost finished cooking the soup.\u00a0 Pete used his German to chat with Werner, who not only acted as caretaker for the field, but also coached children’s and adult soccer.\u00a0 He said he enjoyed working with younger kids though he is currently coaching the adult village team.\u00a0 Once the kids got older things became too serious.\u00a0 “If the team wins, the players are good,” Werner explained the philosophy many coaches have to deal with, “but\u00a0if the team loses the\u00a0coach is bad.”\u00a0 He said he\u00a0didn’t like the\u00a0way Germany has changed in the last few decades.\u00a0 He’s seen people become\u00a0more and more private and self’-interested, less trusting,\u00a0and caring less about the community.\u00a0\u00a0“Things are too easy here,” he claimed as he shook his head of greying locks,\u00a0“so people have to manufacture problems.”\u00a0 “In Poland people are poor but happy,” he claimed through a rueful smile.\u00a0 “Here they are rich and unhappy.”\u00a0 He left again, but not before giving us\u00a0a basket-full of heart-shaped waffles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He returned with a car and distributed coffee.\u00a0 The warm brew revitalized us on a cold day.\u00a0 We cleaned up the concessions stand and wished him good luck with his games.\u00a0 We traded addresses and he walked off into the field wheeling a chalk line-painter.\u00a0 I added heart-shaped waffles to the list of things I owe random travelers in the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We biked into a soccer field\u00a0east of Heidelberg around\u00a02:00pm\u00a0to eat lunch.\u00a0 A man in thick clothes and\u00a0clad in\u00a0a motorcycle helmet greeted me with curiosity, but without a smile.\u00a0 I prepared to be told that we ought to find some place else to eat.\u00a0\u00a0Instead he said something ambiguous in German.\u00a0 “Essen,” I said,\u00a0miming\u00a0the action fashion\u00a0models disdain.\u00a0\u00a0“Nicht […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-here-you-will-find-the-posts-that-jim-wrote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}