When I travel overseas, I like going to the laundromat.
Beyond the obviousness of it being a place to do your wash much cheaper than any hotel laundry service (1 pair of socks – 5€ – wtf?), you also meet the most interesting people.
Today, for example, I met a couple from Australia there. They live in Roxby Downs, South Australia, actually (home of Olympic Dams, one of the world’s largest uranium mines, don’t you know). They said it is in the desert where they commonly have 40 days straight of 105 degrees.
They are traveling with their teenagers for a month. It’s all of their first time abroad (going to Bali apparently doesn’t count as going abroad).
They had been to London, Paris, Amsterdam, and now Berlin. They liked it but said they it was “eye-opening.” They missed the openness of Australia. The City was too dense. “Too mush rubbish and the smell, . . well, blimey.”
I told them to come to the States because we have wide open-spaces. They said they wanted to once the kids finish growing up. Just them this time.
We talked about the Berlin Wall when we were growing up, and about how the Germans got pushed into WWI, but definitely started WWII, and what it was like to see what it actually did to this City.
I never got their names. They didn’t ask for mine. We aren’t going to email or Instagram one another. They aren’t going to stay at my house when they come to the States, and I won’t be visiting Roxby Downs probably ever (40 days of 105 degrees wtf?).
We are just fellow travelers, pleasantly passing the time together, doing the wash.
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