Wait, where was the hand washing?

Last page, second paragraph

Ah, I see.

They might rinse their hands to remove obvious dirt but using soap is far off as far as I know.

I think you're putting too much weight on the vocabulary choice, especially given that it's a translation of a Japanese take on medieval European practices. They did in fact rinse their hands with water, and lots of people would probably call that washing, without getting caught up in details of soap use.

E.g. https://www.worldhistory.org/Medieval_Hygiene/ talks about "it was also a common convention to wash hands before and after eating"

"Monks had their own special areas for washing, including at Cluny Abbey in France which had a lavabo or large basin where hands were washed before meals."

"The Great Hall of a castle or manor typically had a similar large basin for visitors to wash their hands"

And before we get carried away with how clean this was: "We know from records that they had towels, which were changed twice a week while the water was changed only once a week."

Rye bread is so good. I've been stocking up on proper german rye breads whenever I can because they're hard to find in the usa. It's crazy how nutritious a single slice is compared to white bread.

It's normally the French stereotyped as serious about bread so this is indeed a fascinating conversation lol

Well, the French have a couple of white breads they're famous for, while Germans have about 300 bread varieties, in every colour and shape you can imagine (well, as long as you imagine different shades of brown and yellow. But you get my point). So there's much more to argue about.

last edited at Nov 18, 2024 10:04PM

Rye bread is so good. I've been stocking up on proper german rye breads whenever I can because they're hard to find in the usa. It's crazy how nutritious a single slice is compared to white bread.

Whole wheat bread is pretty nutritionally superior to white, too.

As a German, I've never felt so insulted in my life as while reading this chapter, and there's a lot I get to hear about my home country. Finally I understand why people waste time on stuff like "sensitivity reading" ...

The idea that a German baker would be impressed be the flavorless sawdust pressed into vague bread shapes over freshly baked(!) real bread defies any reasonable belief. It's like suggestion to an Italian that frozen pizza is just as good, or to a French that processed cheese is perfectly acceptable, or to an American that ... well, forget Americans, they are hopeless, but otherwise!

This must be the most german thing I've read here lol. (The thing with the cutting puzzled me too, though.)

To be fair, Japanese convenience products have a reputation for being rather high quality compared to us. But even so, people have no idea just how serious Germans are about certain foods. Bread, mustard, pickles, etc. Especially anything that's machine-made, partially or not, suffers severe scrutiny here, which applies to most modern bakeries as well. So I've no doubt that a medieval baker in their prime would've been able to turn even the lousiest flour into the stuff of Gods.

Rye is still rather common in all of northern Europe, by the by. I feel like people are really sleeping on it, it's great stuff.

I was not ready for the Bread Discourse.

I know that in the Middle East people used plant oils as soap since ancient times, but no idea what it was like in Europe.

I know that in the Middle East people used plant oils as soap since ancient times, but no idea what it was like in Europe.

"oil as soap", you mean like the Greco-Roman thing of rubbing oil on your body and scraping it off? Medieval Europe knew about real soap, oils+lye/ashes. Really nice soap was from Castile, with an olive oil base. More local soaps used animal fat, and were likely used more for laundry.

Or at least that was my understanding; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap#History is a bit more complex and different. But medieval Europe definitely had soaps.

Yeah soap has been a thing for a while, it's pretty visibly obvious that oily things don't rinse off like normal dirt and so you need something to deal with that. It's use in personal hygiene like routinely washing hands is what's fairly new.

I love how serious Germans are about bread.

From my experience living in Germany, Germans x Bread is OTP. I never heard of anyone else who considers eating bread with butter and tea a proper dinner, but Abendbrot is a thing.

last edited at Nov 20, 2024 7:14AM

I love how serious Germans are about bread.

From my experience living in Germany, Germans x Bread is OTP. I never heard of anyone else who considers eating bread with butter and tea a proper dinner, but Abendbrot is a thing.

As a German, it absolutely is OTP. So much so that German bread culture was declared a UNESCO Cultural World Heritage. We get that bread :D

I look forward to more of our cute modern Japanese engineer who was able to get all of these modern amenities working in the Middle Ages.

I would not have guessed this was yuri if it wasn't for the tag. I didn't see a hint of attraction between the two, even while they were bathing.

this is what I’m afraid, that there is 0 yuri and only slice of life between friends :( really hate the usage of Yuri tags for friendship or subtext

I look forward to more of our cute modern Japanese engineer who was able to get all of these modern amenities working in the Middle Ages.

I would not have guessed this was yuri if it wasn't for the tag. I didn't see a hint of attraction between the two, even while they were bathing.

this is what I’m afraid, that there is 0 yuri and only slice of life between friends :( really hate the usage of Yuri tags for friendship or subtext

The original gives it the Yuri tag on Comic Walker, so we'll see how it goes.

This manga is so cute that I almost forget the premise is that one girl has lost all her friends and family to a plague, and the other girl doesn't know if she'll ever get to meet her own family again. And they're bonding over that.

Speaking of germ theory, I was surprised to see the reference to hand washing in the chapter, since as far as I'm aware that's also centuries into the future. They might rinse their hands to remove obvious dirt but using soap is far off as far as I know. Typically proper handwashing is credited as a 19th century invention, and looking it up just now I learned that at least in America it wasn't until the 1980s that it started to get promoted to the general public as important, rather than primarily being for doctors and such. Which is rather dismaying lol. I guess this helps explain why as recently as the 2000s I've heard American men insist they don't need to use soap after peeing.

Anyway that sure was a hell of a lot of bread Rachel made all by herself. Could 3-4 cartloads of bread be feasibly made in one day by one person using these intense practices? Should we assume she's got some apprentices of her own just off camera, maybe?

Oh yeah, Missed the handwashing part. As for the bread, the baking process usually only takes a couple dozen minutes at most per batch (most of the work would be advance preparation of the dough), so baking could, in theory get wrapped up quickly enough. There were legal regulations (assize laws) regarding how much bread a baker is supposed to produce per baseline amount of flour (not very sure about the Holy Roman Empire). Because of this, the size of loaves fluctuate based on the determined flour standard, but a medieval bakery (from what I know of England) could easily go through 240lbs of flour in a day, and by the time we have proper census measurements (17th century) we know that it wasn't uncommon to have one bakery for about 500 people with each adult eating about a pound of bread per day. Considering that the baking technology hadn't changed much by that time it isn't unreasonable for Rachel to feed a village. Typically a baker would have an apprentice and a helper to stoke the fire though, but I guess Rachel is just super amazing.

ah~ yes 14 century girl and a VR headset a classic :]

Before anyone starts going off about the life expectancy, it is true that in rural areas up until like... relatively later, the lives of people around 20 were prioritized in cases of war, disease, or famine. So people who were younger or older were more likely to die, thus making years past 30 less and less likely to be survived

Seeing the healthy contemporary germans in Rachels home town hit hard.

Germany has tons of sorts of bread, but the quality took a huge dive to cut costs. Most bakers, if they haven'tquit already, use cheap convenience blends so there is almost no difference to bread in supermarkets. It's a very hard job that has terrible pay and working conditions. German customers usually prefer cheap quantity over quality anyway. Unless you have too much money I guess.

You know, if the plague hits the village, Ema's sister could probably get them some medical supplies. Apparently there isn't a vaccine for it, but the plague does occasionally show up (Google suggests that there's ~7 cases in a year within the US), and Antibiotics should be pretty effective against it. (A strain from before widespread use of antiobiotics should be even easier to treat that way)

You know, if the plague hits the village, Ema's sister could probably get them some medical supplies. Apparently there isn't a vaccine for it, but the plague does occasionally show up (Google suggests that there's ~7 cases in a year within the US), and Antibiotics should be pretty effective against it. (A strain from before widespread use of antiobiotics should be even easier to treat that way)

If the Plague does hit the village, that probably means things have gotten bad elsewhere, but they're probably fine (as long as they take normal precautions. Don't go near sick people, make sure to stay clean) Cities were hard hit during the plague because they were cramped and the various vectors which plague spreads are more pronounced. In rural villages? Not so much.

Speaking of germ theory, I was surprised to see the reference to hand washing in the chapter, since as far as I'm aware that's also centuries into the future. They might rinse their hands to remove obvious dirt but using soap is far off as far as I know. Typically proper handwashing is credited as a 19th century invention, and looking it up just now I learned that at least in America it wasn't until the 1980s that it started to get promoted to the general public as important, rather than primarily being for doctors and such. Which is rather dismaying lol. I guess this helps explain why as recently as the 2000s I've heard American men insist they don't need to use soap after peeing.

Pulling this out of my ass rn (though I'm also curious bout the authors sources and might invest age more in my own time whenever this current rut of waste is over) but I'm pretty sure miasma theory doesn't exclude handwashing. It's not too much of a jump to go from bad air to the bad air sticks to your hands, so in order to keep them clean wash with water and soap ash or washing thing of choice.

Forks were indeed late. Spoons, not so much. I've never heard of the Church having an opinion on how you eat, unless maybe they had an anti-knife thing for "please stop killing each other at dinner".

Semi related but the Royal Navy forbade forks and knives for a long time (until 1897!) as it was considered unmanly and "prejudiced to discipline".
Urban filthiness might be more of an Modern period thing, like the 17-1800s, when population grew quickly and faster than the big cities could cope.

Yep! Medieval cities were cleaner than people usually think of. Though I should also point out it's also because the lively hood of people differed. Most people are farming peasants and tied to the land they work.

It also depends what city your living in and where your loving in that city. For example if you're living in London it's likely much more filthy than something like Constantinople or any of the cities of places that actually matter.

last edited at Dec 31, 2024 9:29AM

Bwahaha, boys and their dragons.

That was a funny little outing from those three into the future. And Rachel looking at the future of her town and thinking that things would be fine, no matters the lows they went through first, is a very positive and hopeful take on the future. Almost blindingly so.

Bwahaha, boys and their dragons.

That was a funny little outing from those three into the future. And Rachel looking at the future of her town and thinking that things would be fine, no matters the lows they went through first, is a very positive and hopeful take on the future. Almost blindingly so.

Yeah despite all of the horrible shit that has happened in history humans have survived, and there will be more horrible shit that humanity survives as well I imagine. Just gotta hold on to those we care about and take steps forward, even if they're little steps.