Sunday 31 August 2014

Kletterwald

    Gail again. Mom's last post was all about move-in day, which was trying and taxing (five hours in Ikea, for those who haven't read it, and much more than that) but the day before, I did something much more fun. Dad took me to Kletterwald (http://www.kletterwald-neroberg.com), a ropes course in Wiesbaden, the city where we stayed until we moved in to our new apartment. I've climbed in Kletterwald many times before this, but now that I'm older and taller I can do the more challenging courses, which are much more fun, with more ziplines. Dad sat on a bench and read and napped while I did some of the courses.I loved it as much as ever, although the easier ones were very crowded. 
    There was one couple right in front of me who wouldn't go to the next platform until there were two spaces open, so that they could always be together (three people were allowed on each platform.) As you can imagine, this seriously clogged up the works. When they got to one platform, they just stood there, talking to each other and their friends on the ground, ignoring the growing mass of irritated people trapped, three to a platform, while they discussed everything under the moon. They eventually told me to go in front of them, but when a little girl, about six or seven, did the zipline-type thing to get to that platform and got stuck, they wouldn't help her. They just stood there obliviously, and only helped her when an employee was summoned to yell at them to for goodness's sake help the little girl stuck on the zipline. When I was younger, I got stuck on that same obstacle; it's hard to make it all the way to the platform with so little body weight. I felt really bad for her. Finally, when they decided to go, they looked at the next obstacle and chickened out, having to be rescued by the same employee, which meant that no one could move on, since, counting them and the guy rescuing them, there were already three people on the platform. The little girl who was behind them did the obstacle with ease, but they were so incompetent and  oblivious that they couldn't make it. I'm sorry that I've wasted so much space with this pair, but I was very irritated (and still am, for that matter.)
    Other than that, I had a wonderful time. The last course I went on was one I had never done before and featured one zipline that went from one tree to another that must have been at least two hundred feet long. The course also had a maximum height of seventy feet, which was exhilarating and amazing. Mom was shocked, but I protested that since dad was napping when I did the course, I couldn't ask for permission, and thus was free to go. She was joking about not wanting me to go that high, mostly, although she did spend about fifteen minutes making sure that I was being extra-extra-extra-careful. I was, and still maintain that I'm safer up there than I am on the ground. This was proven in that, after spending two and a half hours in the treetops without the littlest scrape, I tripped over a tree stump in the first five minutes on the ground and got a beautifully skinned knee. As far as anyone else is concerned, I got it from scraping my knee on the tree bark as I came down, got it? One gets out of a higher course by jumping off the platform and being lowered to the ground, as a matter of fact, so it isn't that much of a stretch to say that it happened then. It was in the same, oh, ten-minute time frame, so who will ever be the wiser?
    With everything as hectic as it is, it'll be a couple of weeks before I can go back, but I'm looking forward to it. With luck, I won't hurt myself again tripping over...I mean, um, heroically rescuing a little girl being held captive on a platform by an evil...um...Well, maybe it still needs some work. But I have plenty of time.

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