+48° 35' 0.62", +7° 44' 16.42"

Finally, we get everybody checked in, and head up to our rooms. My room is on the fourth floor—it's kind of angular, like somebody tried to hide the attic beams of an old building by disguising them as geometric modernism—but it's nice. Actually really nice. I haven't done the euro-dollar conversion yet—my brain is still too foggy from lack of sleep to do the calculations in my head—but it seems affordable, as long as this is the only room that is still on my credit card at checkout time. I've got to talk to Henry about that.

But I don't spend much time in the room, just set down my luggage. The guys from Henry's entourage are waiting for me downstairs, in Le Bar—that's right, the hotel's bar is actually called Le Bar—and they've offered to buy me a beer. The thing with jet lag is that sometimes, like right now, you're dead tired but so buzzed from daylight and caffeine that a couple of beers sounds better than a nap. Besides, I'm eager to meet these guys, find out what their story is.

In the bar, Bendedikt introduces me to rest of what he calls "the strange six"—the founders and organizers of a group called Reilinger Kraichbach Schlabbe, or RKS, which seems to be devoted to the production, preservation, and use of something called the "BierWagen." I meet Stefan, Philipp, Andreas, Florian, and Manuel. Over the first beer, which is very good, by the way, I learn that "the strange six" are all from a small town near Speyer called Reilingen, that they are currently enrolled, for the most part, as engineering students at the University of Heidelberg; that they are all monster snowboarders; that they usually do their snowboarding in the Black Forest, but they are hoping to catch the last snows of the season in the Alps on our journey to Canossa; that they love American pop culture, including the Simpsons (which they watch in German), the songs of Hall and Oates (which they Karaoke in English), and a web-comic called XKCD, which they quote incessantly—"It is ze only comic in ze language of calculus!"

"I zink you have ze wrong press conference," says Philipp, and the rest of them start making a noise—not laughter, exactly, but a thin, ritual parody of a laugh.

"Is that a line from XKCD?" I ask.

"Yah, yah!" says Andreas. "Ze vun about ze G-Spot! Did you read it?"

"Not yet," I say.

By this point, I think we're on Florian's round. Each time one of them orders more beers, I protest, but just pro forma, to give them an excuse to back out, if they want to—I'm not quite sure what the rules are for rounds-drinking in transnational Europe. But then I notice, kind of sideways, I mean this is the third or fourth thought crowding around my mind at that moment, standing in the background, trying to get my attention, that they are putting the beers on their room charges, and that means—I can barely hear this thought, the bar is getting too noisy—that every damn drink has been going onto my credit card.

This thought waves at me one last time from across the room, and then gives up and goes home, because by this point, I'm insisting, loudly, that it's my turn to buy.