Untertertia Part 2

This is another one of those posts with no particular point - just another collection of recollections (with a few pictures added)...

First off:
Words can't describe the "Stella Rheni" - pictures are required... It's hard to believe it was used for student dorms. They've since stopped doing that :-) Here's a recent picture of the front of the villa (it overlooks the Rhine River):


The Obertertia rooms were on the 2nd floor and Untertertia on the top floor. I was in the room to the right (facing the villa) of the center cupola.

But the exterior was 'modest' when compared to the interior... Here's a recent picture of the cupola room:

The mosaic tile work on the floor? The picture does not do it justice... I spent hours mesmerized by those intricate patterns...
What you can't see in this picture is all the relief work on the ceilings. The dome at the top of this room was roughly 40 feet above the floor and was covered with relief sculptures of cherubs and/or angels (I don't recall exactly which). Regardless, it took your breath away...

Now - you may find this hard to believe, but back in the day the cupola room was where we played table tennis. The table was centered right over that mosaic... Frankly, that room wasn't good for much of anything else :-) The chandelier did pose an interesting obstacle for high lobs... And we used to try to hit the top of the dome with the ball but nobody ever got close...

Next:
Here's a picture of my Untertertia class at Stella Rheni. We were sitting in front of that center door in the exterior picture (above) - it was blocked off when this was taken:

I'm in the "middle row" - third from the right. Yeah it doesn't look like me - I was really thin from all the gymnastics and I was trying to grow my hair long. The tall guy on my right was one of my roomies but I don't recall his name.
This was an impromptu pic taken on the "visitors' weekend" so not everyone was there. Notably absent is Victor Emilio Sanchez Maldonado (there will be a separate post on him later).

In retrospect neither Hacki nor Remi were still at Ako at that point so the cow tail incident must have happened before April - that same path also led to the soccer fields...

And - the guy closest to the left edge of the picture was the one who tried running with his eyes closed. That's Gerd next to him - he was a really good friend. We worked out a sign language so we could 'talk' during study hall without being detected... He could shoot a soccer ball harder than anyone I'd seen - I had a scar on my left wrist up until just a few years ago as a result of blocking one of his close range shots... (Yes - given the right velocity and rotation a soccer ball can draw blood...) ... Gerd ended up becoming a gynecologist and still practices near Kaiserslautern.

Next topic:
A few days after we moved up to the villa one of the "Obertertia" kids skipped past us singing some idiotic little song. And after he passed I said something like: "That is one seriously goofy dude!". The guys with me were visibly upset and told me that I could not say that because he was a prince from one of those old German monarchies...
My response was something like: "OK... That is one seriously goofy prince!"
I honestly couldn't believe that they still kept track of royalty a century after it had ceased to have any meaning... I guess that's just the 'American' in me... To quote our founding fathers: "Royalty??? We don't need no stinking royalty!" :-)

Final topic:
The showers at the villa were in the basement. There were 2 or 3 if them for about 70 kids. I think I went down there twice during those 3 months... And I wasn't the only "infrequent visitor" :-)