If you like three seasons in a day then you would have loved Baden Baden today. There was sun, there was rain, there was wind and then it repeated (with the wind sometimes coming with the rain and sometimes with the wind). In one thirty minute period, looking out my window, there were dark clouds, heavy rain, then bright sunshine!

I practiced again with Carole DeBruin in the morning. We hit for 30 minutes, then it rained hard, we did some grocery shopping, and then the rain had stopped, so we got in another 45 minutes to an hour during which it rained off an on. Then it rained quite hard and we finally stopped.  And it was not even noon yet.

I went back to my apartment and did some laundry…having realized that what I thought was laundry soap was actually fabric softener…so I had to redo my wash. (I don’t read German, but something seemed off, so I googled the name of the product and it was indeed fabric softener. I thought it was just mild detergent since it had a photo of a baby on the bottle!).

I needed to get a racquet strung, so I took my racquet back to the club for stringing. When I went back for it, I found a set of mangled gut and a racquet strung with some sort of black string that looked like poly, at what tension I had no idea and no one could tell me! The girls who were working the desk told me that the transport driver could take me to a tennis shop where I could get it restrung. There were some things lost in translation (for example no one could tell me WHEN the transport/shuttle would arrive). But I waited a bit and then he took me to what I thought was going to be a tennis shop. It was a huge store called “Decathalon”, something like a Dick’s sporting goods on steroids. After some discussion, I had it strung there. The store had lots of sporting gear, from bicycles to archery to soccer to tennis to yoga. And free wifi as well! The “discount” Dunlop balls were about $15 a can (for 4 balls). Others were considerably cheaper though, more like $6 for four balls (Babolat).

While I thought I was waiting for my racquet to be strung I visited the rose garden nearby. The courts were being dried too.

So that was my day, the racquet adventure took about four hours.

I play tomorrow afternoon, weather permitting against a German player, Gunda Jacks.

And there are obviously a lot of dog lovers here…

Draws here: http://www.itftennis.com/seniors/tournaments/tournament/info.aspx?tournamentid=1100038588

Photos here: https://goo.gl/photos/ppQJmr1VSydtATEB7