Spaghetti Ice-cream and a Spa

 How spaghetti ice-cream looks after one has taken two bites of it.

 Today I did something kinda brave--at least for a non-urban American: I took a train to one of the many spa towns near here, all of them built around thermal mineral springs. The one that was recommended to me, and also the closest as the crow flies, required a train and then a bus and then another bus. I wasn't THAT brave! Plus, even though it was closest to Bielefeld, it would have taken over an hour to make the trip, with waiting to make the transfers. This was just too complicated. Perhaps if I still lived in a city and relied on mass transit to get around, I would have thought this sounded reasonable. But I have not lived in a city for over 30 years!!

Anyway, I looked at the map, walked over to the train station, and asked at the information desk if the spa at Bad Oeynhausen was anywhere near the train station, as I could see a train listed for Bad Oeynhausen, and I knew that meant it likely had a thermal spring spa. The answer was 'yes' (and the fact that it has a spa confirmed), and so I bought a round-trip ticket, took the 20-minute train ride, and then walked in the most lovely town,

The main street of Bad Oeynhausen

Beautiful old houses along the cure-park

The main pedestrian shopping and cafe street

through the most lovely park,

One of the rehabilitation clinics

One of the many, many fountains throughout the park 

 in absolutely lovely weather, to the spa. The park is called a "curepark", being the setting for a large campus of various rehabilitation clinics, many of them gorgeous (google on images of bad oeynhausen, for photos that do the town and the park better justice than my little phone could). The town is filled with people undergoing various kinds of rehab, and with their family members.  It looks very much like a very lovely tourist town, but a young woman who lives there said that it mostly serves the patients and their families.

A huge geyser-like fountain; it goes up to 40 meters high

And yet another fountain 

I went to the spa, Bali Therme, located in this park also, and went in every pool of water I could find!! The water was warm, not hot, and filled with the kinds of carbonated mineral salts that make you float. There was a fun area with a strong current where you could kind of ride on the water. There were various whirlpools and places you could lie on the bubbling jets. there were simple swimming or water-exercising areas. There was a group of moms introducing their babies to the water, and oh, how wonderful it was to wave hello to many of those babies and get toothless smiles back.

The best water therapy "pool" was actually 2 long, narrow, shallow pools right next to each other, one warm and the other cold, each with a bottom that felt like walking on the beach, with sand and smooth rocks. What one did was walk the length of one, and then go into the other and walk the length of it. The depth was about up to my knees, and the first time around, going into the cold water was a bit of a shock. But after that, it was wonderful!!!: relaxing and energizing at the same time, and it had the interesting effect of absorbing my brain, so it was somewhat meditative, as well. I know that going back and forth from warm to cold water is good for the nervous system in general; I suspect it also tones the immune system (I couldn't read the German explanations!). Oh, a local friend just told me it is supposed to be good for the circulatory system. I am trying to figure out how I could reproduce this at home (not just in the shower, but walking).

Okay, okay, I'm getting to the explanation of the "spaghetti ice-cream." Everywhere we go (and I remember this from Poland, too, when I was there in the summer) there are as many ice-cream cafes as there are "regular" cafes in Paris. People seem to live on ice-cream and coffee drinks here. The ice-cream cafes always have lots of people of all ages at them, eating ice-cream, and one sees lots of people of all ages eating ice-cream cones while walking, also.
These ice-cream cafes offer all kinds of beautiful ice-cream works of art. I have NEVER seen such dishes offered anywhere in the U.S. I have been. These are not the same thing as ice-cream sundaes; they are beautifully and artfully designed and made; maybe I should say they are works of architecture, too.
One of the common kinds of ice-cream dishes is what is called "spaghetti ice-cream."  I am not much of an ice-cream eater; a couple of times each year, I have a small dish of some special kind of ice-cream, not a sundae. But I saw a woman eating one of these dishes of ice-cream at a lovely cafe in Bad Oeynhausen, and I asked the waitress what it was. "Spaghetti," she answered, to my confusion, until she opened the menu and pointed, and then I understood.
Basically, what they do is put the ice-cream on the dish through something like a play-doh factory, and the ice-cream comes out like spaghetti!!! It sits in a pretty pile on the plate, and on it are added such things as whipped cream (under the ice-cream, for height and deliciousness), fresh strawberry sauce (as the tomato sauce), cookies (as the meatballs, and for decoration), and some sort of shredded stuff, for parmesan cheese. They also do this to various flavors of ice-cream, so one does not have to have white/vanilla spaghetti ice-cream.
So I ordered this dish, and when it arrived, I realized it was large enough for 3 people to eat and for all of them to feel quite full. I told myself that I would of course only eat about a fifth of it, but I did end up eating half (my stomach did not like this too much, later). The whipped cream and the strawberry sauce were just too yummy for me to stop eating! I left the "meatball" cookie, but did eat the oblaten/waffle cookie, because, come one, who doesn't love those?

So it was an absolutely lovely day in Bad Oeynhausen (oh, for lunch at a cafe, I had spargel (asparagus) bruschetta, with what must have been small bits of ham, and hollandaise sauce. This asparagus thing is great, and it turns out to be really, really good for us! Hooray!!

And I didn't even look up the town to see if it had any bad history!! How's that? Oh, but it IS on the Fairy Tale Road, which unites a large number of towns, cities and villages that are related to the Grimm Brothers. It turns out that Bad Oeynhausen has a fairy tale museum!