Of course we could just have the laundry service at the motel do it, but at $4.50 per t-shirt, we could easily spend $50 to get some necessities freshened up.
Greg first Googled "Laundry Service" to see if he could find a place that maybe did laundry by the pound. But that didn't produce a more affordable price. Even the laundry lady has to make a living I guess.
So I tried Laundrymat and !!! Success!! There were 5 or 6 in the area. I think we thought it was a no brainer from there. But, if you have thought that buying soap, or buying the machine operation for a load of laundry is intuitive, take a look at this. . . 
We were able to tell that we would not get the discount rate of 2.50 E because you have to come between the hours of 6 and 10 a.m. We were in the 3.00 E time zone. It looked liked....
after studying these instructions very carefully....
we still had no idea what to do.
Thankfully, there was a merciful woman doing her laundry, watching us, and willing to intervene.
No, No, No! Das ist Weichspule.
Oh. We were sure we had just purchased the wrong thing, but not sure why. (We had bought softner rather than Vollewaschmittel (powder for a white load) or Colorwaschmittel (I bet you can figure that one out!). So she got us squared away on that, showed us where to put the soap...
(the hidden compartment behind the Meile), and then pressed the buttons to start. Which colors would you push? She pushed the black and green. But, alas, nothing happened. We were looking at where to put the coins in since that is what we are familiar with in the U.S. But the washers have no coin slots. Those clever Germans have a central control panel.... 
We had our clothes in washer 11 and 12, so back to this panel, put our Euros in, and punch 11, put more money in and punch 12 - like a vending machine! Thankfully, that did it!
She asked me (I think) to pick what temp I wanted for the white load. I said 90 C, but she didn't approve of that, so I took the next choice down 60 C. Then 40 for the colors. We'll see how it all works out.
I am thinking we should just take all the wash back to the motel room and strew it about the room to dry rather than to try to match wits with the dryer.
I have noticed that these dryers are smart. Even when the time is up, they stop turmbling, but every 2 or 3 minutes they will tumble the clothes around a time or two to keep them from getting wrinkled.
There you have it. If you ever find yourself at an Eco Express in Hamburg, you should know what to do!
I noticed the lady who helped us, finished folding her own laundry and quietly sat down and waited until our washing machine load was done and we had properly gotten our laundry loaded and started in a dryer. Wasn't that nice?!
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