Bad Tölz

I had my first, and likely last, Alpine adventure on Sunday. My roommate is apparently very gracious, because he responded to my malapropisms by inviting me to come along with his friends to a "Sommerrodelbahn" at Bad Tölz, a little Bavarian resort about 90 minutes south of Munich, which serves as a ski resort in the spring and tourist/death trap in the summer. At the time I had no idea what a Sommerrodelbahn was—it was described to me in German, and instead of admitting that I had no idea what they were talking about I nodded and said it sounded great.

After a harrowing journey from Munich (open-container laws are much more lax than in the states), we arrived at this big mountain with a chair

lift. After a long walk up a very steep hill, we arrived at a long line, composed primarily of children. You're supposed to take one of these little blue scooters and sit on it while you shoot down this concave path that looks like a luge track. You can see a picture of a very happy family doing this here.

You have almost no control: only brakes. I assumed that, since there were toddlers doing this, it could not be difficult and that one should simply sit there and wait until the end to apply the brakes. This attitude leads to injuries like this one (this is after I cleaned it up with soap; it seemed much more bloody and serious at the time):

Here's what happened: apparently the others had decided that they would all stop after the first curve so that we could ride together. I either was not told this (my contention) or did not understand (the more likely scenario). Either way, the end result was that I came roaring around the first curve, expecting to find open track in front of me but in fact finding four burly Germans. They were yelling "Bremse!", which apparently means "brakes," but I was too flustered to do anything. I don't think I've ever thought before that I was actually going to die, but I seriously did for a split second. I bowled into them and went flying into the woods. Only one of the others was at all hurt (the one in the green shirt in the picture above), and while my injuries seemed deadly serious at the time, in retrospect they are not.

They took it in stride, and had a jolly time telling all of their friends about the idiot American who nearly killed them. I'm always proud to be an ambassador.

My other favorite moment:

Andy [one of the Germans]: "Where did you learn such good German?"

Me [not comprehending the sentence]: "What?"

Andy: "Umm ... Where did you learn such bad German?"