Waschfreunde, Where Are You When We Need You?

Cycling touring in Europe last year was the best, and most aromatic, time of my life.  By definition, when you're cycle touring, you haven't got a lot of clothing along.  Brent had essentially two outfits along: one to wear and one to switch into.  I had a little more than that, but not much more.  Good thing I don't mind being stinky!

We skipped merrily through Iceland without needing to do a load, and when we hit France we found it wonderfully civilized, with a laverie (laundromat) pretty much every place we went.

When we got to Germany, though, things started to get a little weird.  Every town we asked in apologized for not having a waschsalon (landromat) and it seemed that they were quite uncommon in Germany.  A few days in we reached Mannheim where we found out first waschsalon of Germany.  Mannheim is a university town, which is why they have one.

The Waschfreunde (wash friend) in Mannheim was a wonderful modern place with brand new machines and a very VERY attentive attendant.  She greeted us, showed us how the machines worked and proceeded to help us through the whole process.  It was like she thought we'd never used a laundromat before, and we suspected that most of her clientele hadn't.

The further east we went, the harder it got to find any kind of laundromat at all, and in most of the countries we visited, it just isn't done.  People own their own washing machine, and if they don't, they use their family or friends' washing machines.  We managed to find washing machines occasionally in campgrounds, and occasionally said washing machines were actually functional.  It was a pretty special day when we found a spot with a machine, even though most of the machines we encountered beyond France took up to three hours to wash one load.

In Germany we stayed at a very nice campground that had washers AND dryers.  What luxury!  We were vexed, though, to discover that the dryers didn't dry.  Eventually Brent figured out that there was a water reservoir on the machine that had to be emptied regularly (like, several times per load) in order for any drying to occur at all.  Very strange.

Occasionally we'd get too desperate for clean clothes to wait for our next chance encounter of a machine so we'd have to make "laundry wine" which involved stomping our dirty clothes into submission in the bathtub with some water and laundry soap.

When we reached Croatia, we not only found laundromats non-existent, we also found campgrounds non-existent.  For the first couple of weeks we stayed in hostels and "apartmani" (furnished short-term stay apartments) and once in a while we'd encounter a washing machine in our apartman.  I was, shall we say, disproportionately happy to discover a washing machine in our apartman in Rijeka.  As we reached the more touristy areas of Croatia, campgrounds became more plentiful, but washing machines were still scarce.  Quite often we'd resort to the "laundry wine" trick.

Even that didn't always work out, though.  We stayed in an apartman in Dubrovnik and we were beyond desperate to do some laundry.  The apartman complex had an extensive list of "rules" including visitors being strictly forbidden to wash clothes in their rooms.  They would happily provide a laundry service for €30 per load.  Yes, that's approximately $45CAD for a single wash.  We declined and I stealthily washed a couple of items anyway.

We've been back home now for four months and I'm still not over the shock of discovering how much clothing I own, nor the luxury of washing it, and smelling sweet, any old time I want.