Wednesday, 21 July 1999
Nuremberg, Germany

We continue to not only enjoy ourselves in Germany but to marvel at some of the strange German customs and some of the strange things that we do. Let's start with the language. We are back at class and maybe that is helping and maybe it is giving us just enough confidence to be dangerous.

Take for example the day I am waiting for the apartment manager while he is on the phone. I temporarily walk away from the desk to read a sign. In the meantime another lady comes into the room. I thought she might also work there and be able to answer my question. So in my best German I asked her if she worked here. She gave me the weirdest look and said something I did not understand. Well, I got my question answered by the manager and on my way back to the apartment I realized that I had asked the lady if I worked here. She probably figured if I had to ask her if I worked here she could find a better place to get her question answered. This type of communication is a daily battle. You go to a restaurant and think you ordered soup but you get something else. Upon further looking into you see they did not screw up you just botched the German.

Then there was the poor waitress who after putting up with our German all evening finally gets us to pay and start to leave. She makes one fatal flaw. She says something in German to us and we start to go back and forth between Sue, myself and the waitress trying to figure what she said and what she wants. After a few minutes of this one of the other patrons said out loud she just said have a nice evening. So we wished her well also and went off into the night figuring she would be at home later telling her family about these crazy Americans she waited on.

We are getting better. I know this because we were treated just like real Germans the last time we went out to dinner. They have this procedure that when you want to pay for dinner instead of having everything you ate on their pad instead you are suppose to recite back what you had and they copy down what you say and charge you accordingly. In most cases when they know you are a tourist they do it the way we do in the states but the other night the guy came up and said bezahlen and I started to rattle off what we ate. So we are getting there. Then again God knows what I paid for.

OK now for more strange stuff when you go out to eat. In the majority of restaurants you do not wait for someone to seat you. You just walk in and find a seat to your liking. Now if all the tables have people at them do you stand and wait? Why no, you just look for open seats and you go sit down with whomever. It gets stranger yet because just because you sat with these people does not mean you are to socially intermingle with them. You keep to yourselves and they do the same. Wait there are a few rules and that is when your seating companions are served you are to wish them a good meal and when they leave you are too wish them a good night or say good-bye. I think they do this because there are so many people in this part of the world that they need to use every bit of space at every moment possible.

View of the Zugspitz from our hotel room. More pictures...

We continue to enjoy the sites of Germany from our trip to the Alps complete with climbing the snowfields on the 4th of July. It is pretty weird to be in a foreign country on the 4th. They not only do they not care it is the Fourth of July but have no idea of why they should. It really makes you aware of how self centered you are about where you live and what is important.

Now getting to the Alps is exciting in itself. We drove. Everything you here about the driving is true. Thank God we came from Boston so we at least had the first lesson. If you move here from Minnesota or something you may not be able to handle it. They are more polite than Boston drivers but they are also much faster. I was driving around 180 (you figure it out) and cars were blowing by me like I was standing still. Now you have to realize that not everybody is going that fast. This is what makes it even more interesting. Imagine you are going 180 in the right lane or the middle lane (it is highly illegal to pass on the right and they do not do it) The guy in front of you is doing a mere 120. So you check your mirrors and start to pass. Well, here comes some guy out of nowhere because he was going 250. Life gets very exciting for a few moments. This is why the train is a nice way to travel in Germany.

The other terrifying thing about car travel is buying gas. It is sold by the liter what ever that is and the Deutsche marks register goes around almost as fast as they drive. So to the best I can figure a tank of gas is costing around $40 to $50. How is that for scary?

Well, that is all the culture I can write about for now. I need to go and practice my German.