I had a pact with a German friend to write the stories of our first time (not together, but rather the cherry-popping kind). She chickened out, and I, rather than publish my story unilaterally (which I might do in the end, quite possibly passworded), I've decided to tell you another one.

This is a true story, as the photo should tell you, a story I’ve been meaning to tell for a while but did not because I could not find the photo. There are, of course, fantastic elements: could someone be as handsome and have such big boobs, in one single package? Perhaps not. Feel free to think of it as fiction, I don’t give ein Esel die Ratte.

There are ample reasons to publish this story on another blog, as it has very little to do with Romania – except my ex-gf. But recently, in the article about a German’s trip to Romania, a reader complained that I have been getting lazy / hibernating, so here we go. He’s an astute commentator with a deep understanding of things and stuff.

The story does not feel ready to be published, but this is a blog, not a book, which is great – I’ll probably come back later to finish it.

It was the end of the previous millennium, or close to the beginning of the new one (either way, it’s been a while), and it was either fall or a cold, mountain summer. I was backpacking in Europe with a railpass and a few credit cards, and took a detour through Austria where my girlfriend, a consultant with a multinational, had just finished some team building exercises and stayed longer to offer me her privates a private Zimmer with a see-through shower cabin that infringed on her Eastern European sensibilities.

We were staying in a village with a forgotten name (at least by me); all I can say about it is that Vienna (oder Wien) takes part of its drinking water from there, using aqueducts initially built by the Romans. We went mountain biking in the rain, hiking in the rain, white water rafting (in the sun) and built quite a resilient team together, if I may say so.

LE: My friend read the article and filled in the blanks in my memory: Wildalpen
Why does everybody find emailing easier than commenting?

My second favourite activity in our village was going to the sauna. There was one (or maybe two) big wet sauna rooms and we ended up spending quite a bit of time there. There were a few changing huts and a big table nearby. Outside, a small pond was created (by the villagers, most likely) with the crisp water flowing in the woods nearby. We’d come out of the sauna lobster-red and sweating like a fatso in silk (me naked, she “decent”) and jump into the cold water.

One of the great pleasures of such a sauna is being naked outdoors, and for the life of me, I couldn’t understand why my girlfriend would not partake in it fully. At one point, either in the sauna or outside, we were surrounded by the convivial villagers (all males) who were very supportive of her relaxing and letting her bathing suit slide, but our collective encouragement could not change her mind – only nurtured her coy and smile: “but baby, do you really want me to?” she asked, incredulously. I really didn’t think there was any harm in allowing a bunch of Austrians in their 50s and 60s the guilty pleasure of seeing a resplendent, young body in its prime. And her body too.

In one such excited moment, while we were outside at the table, I noticed the sauna with its windows wide open, being ventilated from the inside. All the manufactured steam was not only allowed to escape but was seemingly pushed out.

“What’s going on?” I asked the villagers, almost mourning the squandering of this common good.

“It’s der German dude,” they said, and I couldn’t get anything else out of them.

I also thought it was rather odd that neither of them was in the sauna. “Why don’t we go in?” I asked, confused, only to be told “we’re not going”. So I grabbed my chick’s right wing and went in, where we met the German dude and his two girlfriends (or sisters?). They were all naked, possibly because, unlike my girlfriend, they didn’t have much to hide. More explicitly, they did not have much of a reason to wear a bra.

Those two German girls have prejudiced my opinion about their kind for a very long time (it was only shattered this year): I thought all the relevant German geography was flatlands and one nicely trimmed or fully shaved Blonde Forrest.

Sources / More info: wiki-anschluss, wiki-travel, austria-info, lp-austria