The relative feeling of luxury that arises when you go from sleeping on frozen tundra to a soft bed almost makes it worth alternating between torturous and normal sleeping arrangements.

Almost.

I could only be a monk in order to render my return to normal niceties all the sweeter.

But after a great sleep and a methodical breakfast of toast and jam, eggs and fruit, muesli and milk - undertaken the way a woodsman collects firewood to feed a winter furnace, I was back out in the cold in the town of Sigmaringen.

At the castle, the home of the Hohenzollerns, the family that would produce Frederick the Great, I realized I’d lost one of my warm winter gloves. After a long search, it was nowhere to be found.

No shops had gloves for sale. Finally, at one store, the cashier was able to locate a two pairs of slim aquamarine cotton ladies gloves for 50 euro cents each. I bought both. For the rest of the trip, I had one good black glove on my right hand and two doubled up aquamarine gloves on the left. Given enough time, the cold will trump all indignities.

The landscape today was fields and more fields. Nothing planted but instead just dark brown soil tilled in rows and seeded with manure. Reminded me of the fields outside Braunau.  Each field seemed to have a local hawk that would examine me before resuming its patrols.

The only traffic consisted of grazing sheep.

My right knee started to ache in the morning and after about mile 30 it sparked up light pain pangs every couple of strokes. Wished I had something stronger than aspirin.

The first sign that you are entering the orbit of a major city are concert posters. Around 4 o’clock I started seeing posters for shows in Ulm and new I was entering its ambit.

Near Einsingen, my stop for the night, there was a poster telling tourists all of the things to see in Ulm. Some True and Proud German had taken it upon himself to mark out with permanent marker all the ‘English’ words he saw being used in the poster and replaced them with Good Ol’ German words. So crossed out ‘Kulturhighlights’ and replaced it with ‘Kulturhoehepunkte.’

Though I can understand this guy’s fear of the Englishization of the German language, it’s really misplaced. The majority of words in English are borrowed from other languages to begin with. And, ironically, he left ‘Kultur’ alone, even though that’s just as borrowed as ‘highlights.’ Nearby, the term ‘Radservice’ or ‘bike service’ stood unmolested.

So, in non-permanent marker, I circled every other borrowed i.e. non-Germanic word on that section of the poster, which was about 1 in 5 words.

You get the same thing in American English. Some people rail against keeping Spanish out of our Pure God Given American Tongue and then, self-satisfied and smiling, head off to a rodeo in their Ford Bronco. Borrowed words are strange, weird and threatening…until, suddenly, people no longer realize they are borrowed and they become as American as apple pie or as German as sauerkraut.

Reminds me of when I was teaching in Austria and a student, in all earnestness, raised his hand and asked me: “What is the word for ‘Der Bestseller’ in English?”

In Einsingen, I found Dieter and Doris’ house, who were to be my first hosts via Couchsurfing.org.

They were wonderful hosts. They had two other guests from the north of Germany there as well. Dinner must have lasted about four hours, all told. Conversation ranged over travel and politics and how Horst made his fortune by shipping in and selling Harleys to Eastern Bloc mobsters after the USSR’s collapse.

I got to hear lots of Austrian jokes, which Germans apparently love to tell. There were a few WWII jokes that I will not repeat.

Dieter and Doris’ house was filled up with mementos from decades of wide-ranging travels all around the globe. Something to aspire to.

After a certain amount of shots of local raspberry liquor, it was time to sleep.