German Invasion

On second thought, that might not actually be the most PC way of putting things. But I honestly don’t know a better way to describe it. The only problem is that the title implies that these Germans were evil and ruthless, and they weren’t. They were nice. They were so goddamn nice.

Let me back up a little.

On our fifth day in central Italy, Brad and I took a day trip to Passignano, a tourist-y beach town on Lake Trasimeno. Instead of returning to our campground that night, we decided to crash at a cheap hotel to get a good night’s sleep somewhere that wasn’t on the ground.

We returned to the campground the next afternoon to find what had previously been a series of mostly vacant campsites replaced by a small army (no pun intended) of RVs. We couldn't help but laugh at the sight as we approached our meek little 5’x7’ tent, humble yet proud, stretching as tall as it could among this city of proverbial skyscrapers. It was quite an absurd scene, but it wasn’t what unnerved us. Emerging from the tent after setting our stuff down to find a gaggle of old couples looking at us and grinning was what did.

They didn’t stare; they looked. Staring implies that there’s something worthy of staring at, and there wasn’t. It was just us. But they looked and looked over the next few days, no matter what we did or where they were. They just never stopped looking, and they never stopped smiling, the whole time.

Just picture it. We were previously one of maybe four families at the campground. It was quiet and relaxing. We go away for one night and return to at least fifteen more campers and thirty more people, all couples, all over the age of sixty, and all looking at us. And smiling. It was the epitome of creepy. It was even creepier because we never understood a word they were saying. They looked, they smiled, and they babbled away in German (I did mention we were in Italy, right?).

The encounters we had with them over the next few days only solidified the creepiness of the situation. Every morning when Brad went to the bathroom, the men looked and smiled and said good morning to him (in German). The ladies would look and smile at me wordlessly as we passed each other on the path to the washroom. One night we wandered over to the other side of camp to find a massive congregation of them, having some sort of cookout/grin fest. And, of course, whenever we approached or left our campsite, we had to pass all of their sites, where they always seemed to be sitting, and they would look and smile as we walked by.

But nothing compared to the laundry situation.

To wash- just to wash- a load of laundry at the site cost 4 Euros. That’s about $5.50, and it struck me as a tad pricey, so we washed our first load of laundry by hand a day or two after arriving at the camp. This was exciting and exotic for about the first three articles of clothing, but after that it was a wee bit taxing on my arm muscles. So for our second load, we decided to break down and pay the money to use the washing machine the day before we left camp.

We tossed them in when we woke up that morning, then showered while the machine did its thing. When I returned to our tent, Brad said, “We should probably go get our laundry. I saw a bag of clothes on top of the washer. I think someone else wants to use it.”

So I went to retrieve our clothes, only to find the machine in mid-cycle, full of towels that did not belong to us. The bag Brad had seen on top of the washer was filled with our clothes. Instead of piling our clothes willy-nilly on the closest hard surface, the way people do with communal washers in America, someone had actually taken the time to get a bag, place our laundry inside, and sit it atop the machine. I returned with the bag.

“Well, that was nice of them,” Brad said uncertainly. “I guess.”

Which was exactly how I felt.

Disregarding it after a minute, we started to drape our laundry over our clothesline, the whole time aware of, but by this point slightly accustomed to, the Germans looking at us. Then one of them came over to us.

“You speak-a English?” the man said, smiling.

“Yes?” I replied uncertainly. This made his smile grow wider.

“Here,” he said, and he held out a tote bag I hadn’t noticed before. “You use this for hang clothes.”

I looked in the bag. It was filled to the brim with clothespins. There had to be at least two hundred in there. “There-a should be enough for you,” he remarked. I’m still not sure if he was joking or not.

Not knowing what else to do, we thanked him and made use of the clothespins. They weren’t really necessary, but were certainly helpful.

“That was nice of them. I guess.”

After returning the rest of the bag (we’d barely made a dent in it) and telling the man we’d give him back the others tomorrow, Brad and I left camp to spend the day in a nearby town called Castiglione del Lago. Threatening clouds filled the sky in the afternoon, and thunder sounded occasionally, but no rain fell where we were.

“I wonder if it rained at the campground,” Brad speculated as we sipped sodas outside of a café.

“I hope not,” I replied. “Our clothes would get all wet.” After a pause and a sip, I continued, “Although, if it did, do you think the Germans would take them inside for us or something?”

We both laughed at the absurdity of such kindness.

When we returned later in the day, the sun was shining, but the streets and sidewalks were wet. It had clearly rained. We hurried back to our campsite, worried that our clothes were soaked, only to find the clothesline bare.

“Oh my God,” I said, “they really did take in our clothes.”

Not only had they done that; when we unzipped our tent, we found our clothes sitting inside, completely dry and folded neatly in a stack.

“They folded our clothes. They actually folded our clothes.”

This was how I picture the situation to have gone down: German neighbors see the dark clouds roll in over the surrounding hills. German neighbors look nervously at sweet American couple’s drying laundry, fluttering in the breeze. German neighbors wait, not wanting to overstep any boundaries unnecessarily, until the rain begins to suddenly fall in sheets, and they hurry out to take down the laundry amid the downpour (which takes twice as long because they have to undo all the clothespins). German neighbors look at the sorry pile of damp laundry in the middle of the floor of their camper, and, not wanting to appear rude, use their hairdryer to complete the drying process, then fold each article carefully, even brown-haired American girl’s underpants, creating a perfectly symmetrical and even stack of clothes that they carry to sweet American couple’s tent when the rain stops. They unzip the tent flaps with caution, taking care not to let any of the fresh rainwater roll off the flaps and into the tent, and place the stack on the floor. They complete the gesture by placing a chocolate mint atop the stack, but, on second thought, decide it might be too much, so they remove the chocolate and zip the tent up, leaving it without a word of explanation or a request of thanks.

The group of Germans left the next morning, camper by camper. The couple that had lent us the clothespins, whom I’m sure were also the ones who had folded our laundry, were gone before we woke up, so we never got a chance to thank them, and we didn’t know whether any of the rest of them spoke English. All we could do was smile and look as they rolled out like a caravan.

And just like that, as mysteriously as they had come, they were gone.