Apologies in advance to those who find crude stories and scatological humor disgusting.  On the other hand, those of you who know me will not be surprised by this story… or the others that will follow in this series.

Bill and I have just returned from our long weekend in Austria.  I dubbed this trip the Beer and Fucking Tour, not just because I want to be profane, but because we had plans to visit a couple of places in Austria with the word “fuck” in their names.  Of course, in German, “fuck” is not a bad word, but juvenile English speakers like Bill and me get a kick out of being harmlessly naughty, especially when it comes to using foul language.

Originally, we were going to visit Switzerland, but I started trying to decide where to stay and noticed how even average hotels cost an arm and a leg.  And I remembered we wanted to go to a couple of beer spa places in Austria.  I determined that we could string those visits into our trip, so that’s where the “beer” part of this tour comes in.

After dropping off our dogs at the kennel on Friday morning, Bill and I loaded up my Mini and headed toward Franking, Austria, a small town not far from Salzburg.  We were going there because I wanted to visit the Landhotel Moorhof, a traditional, Austrian, family run inn that offers beer baths.

I first heard about the Moorhof when we lived in Germany the first time and had hoped to go there then.  Unfortunately, we ran out of time and I was left wondering if we’d ever make it there for a visit.  When you live in Germany, it’s easy to steal away for a quick weekend in a country hotel.  From the United States, it’s a bit harder to plan visits in such out of the way places.  Your time is limited and you tend to want to see the bigger, “bucket list” stuff.  Now that we’re back in Germany for the time being, I decided to make visiting the Moorhof a priority.

To get to Austria from the Stuttgart area, you have to drive on the hellacious A8, a road that utterly defies the stereotypical German autobahn experience because it is perpetually backed up.  We did indeed run into some traffic on A8 as we headed toward our destination.  The heavy traffic made our first kilometers creep by.  As we traveled east, I started feeling like maybe I was about to get a visit from Aunt Flow.  It was also getting close to lunchtime.

Bill tends to stress over lunch because he knows that I get really cranky when my blood sugar drops.   It doesn’t take long before I’m in full on “hangry” mode.  He also has to keep an eye on the time because a lot of places in Germany stop serving lunch at 2:00.  We were not in danger of being too late for lunch as we approached the boundary between Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria, but I was ready for lunch and I needed to use the bathroom.  We stopped at what looked like a nice hotel with a restaurant, hoping to score a decent meal.

As we entered the restaurant, I commented that it reminded me a bit of a Shoney’s.  The lobby had lots of tacky souvenirs, wines, and elderly folks wandering around.  As a matter of fact, the place was teeming with people, many of whom appeared to be at an advanced age.  That didn’t really bother me much, except I couldn’t help but notice that there seemed to be few places to sit.  I told Bill I’d hit the restroom and then we could find a table.

When I got to the ladies room, I found it full of women already waiting to use the facilities.  The bathroom only had three stalls and one was out of order.  I took my place in line and waited.  Suddenly, one of the women using the toilet let out a tremendously loud fart.  My eyes widened and I happened to catch the expression on a German woman’s face.  She looked as surprised and ready to laugh as I did.

As I struggled not to crack up with embarrassing guffaws, I heard several loud plops as the woman proceeded to unabashedly unload what must have been a prodigious dump into the toilet.  Of course, hearing that made me giggle even more.  I noticed a couple of amused and disapproving looks on the faces of the women waiting with me, so I continued to try to maintain a straight face.  I failed miserably.  Suddenly, it occurred to me that if the stall with the farting woman opened up next, I’d soon be sitting in a very polluted place while I tended to my own business.  That realization sobered me somewhat.

Finally, it was my turn.  Thank God the stall that was free was not the one fouled by noxious emissions.  I went in and discovered that yes, indeed, Auntie Flow had decided to come along for the ride.  I tended to myself, washed my hands, and got the hell out of the ladies room so I could bust out laughing properly.

I found Bill and we wandered around the restaurant in vain, looking for a place to sit…  We finally ended up at the Burger King next door, where I had a perfectly terrible fast food burger that tasted like it had been sitting under a heat lamp for a half hour.  It was also the only non breakfast meal I ate during our trip that didn’t include beer.  But hey, at least once lunch was over, the bathroom was totally free.

When Bill and I got back in the car, I noticed a shitload of tour buses.  I didn’t realize that those would be the first of what would be many tour buses full of octogenarians touring the same areas we toured during our trip.