Maybe I had other people take my sheets in for me usually. Or maybe I just didn’t change my sheets that often. I am not sure why, but I only have one memory of going to the bed-linen exchange in the Studentensiedlung (student village) in Freiburg, Germany, where I was an exchange student.
With the exchange, spoiled little students such as I didn’t have to wash our own sheets. This was a good plan, because the coin-operated washing machines were not worth shit: In their eco-obsessiveness, the Germans designed these appliances to use roughly one gallon of water to clean a load of laundry. It was depressing to watch your clothes flop around in there, slapping weakly against the glass porthole in a sad puddle of water made like runny cement by the gray scentless eco-laundry powder.
This single memory consists of going to the basement of another dorm, where a two-piece door’s top half was hanging open, and there was a man in there, the Bettwäscheaustauschmännle. Even though I was only 20 and didn’t know much about the world, I found it curious that they employed a full-grown man just to take in all the laundry. Not wash it, that was done elsewhere. This was just the drop-off place.
Why not simply have people drop it off in some kind of bin? I was about to find out the answer.
Like a silent film sped up, he was organizing the sheets in sharp, jerky movements when I walked up. Like the movements of Marines when they are folding a flag after taking it off a coffin. Or reform school children from the 1940s eating a “square meal” — arm straight upward from bowl, hold it, now straight horizontal line to mouth, straight line back to above bowl, now back down, in a straight vertical line. Make a square!
I stood there watching, with my sheets. In a giant pile. I had ripped them off my bed, gathered them in my arms, and walked down to the bed-linen accepting door because it seemed like the right thing to do.
Bothered by my presence and even more by the presence of the bundle in my arms, he said No, no, no, and shook his head. This is not how we do it. Oh, I didn’t know, I said with sincere regret. What do you want me to do? Fold them right! Neatly! But why? You’re just going to throw them in the washing machine, aren’t you? This is like putting on a suit and tie to take a shower. Just do it, let’s see if you can do it.
I fumbled around with them, trying to use the narrow counter atop the bottom door-half as a folding table. With increasing exasperation, the Bettwäscheaustauschmännle sighed and watched, sighed again more loudly. Shaking his head, his eyes firmly closed, like I was a despicable criminal.
Alright, now they were folded to the best of my ability. “So?” I asked in German: “Like that?”
I was grinning agreeably. With a mirthless smirk, he muttered: “So ungefähr.” “Sort of like that.” And he angrily grabbed my bundle of sheets and put it near the others to be properly folded, by him, so that it would look nice for going into the washing machine.
Tags: Germany