Der Hausmeister

You can hear him before you see him. The caretaker for the Hochschule is a gentleman in his 50s. He's always got a smile on his face when you greet him - but communication proves difficult (even for the Germans); he's got a heavy Hessian accent. (Hesse is the state I live in. When I flew to Germany last fall, I was sitting next to a couple for almost 20 minutes thinking "what language is that" before I found out they were German and from Hesse.) The students and residents here laugh that we never need an alarm on Saturday morning. Every Saturday he's out with his leaf blower - a large gas-powered apparatus - at about 9:30 - to the bane of any student who reveled into the wee hours on Friday night. (Last fall I saw him blowing the leaves out of the trees in a preemptive strike.) So, here is how I will always remember Herr Reichel, "der Hausmeister" (this picture is worth the "click" to see a larger version):