My First Chick Fight In Germany

It started out like any other day here.  I chose the nicest of my 6 outfits to go to the American Women's Club 40th Anniversary celebration.  The mayor (Burgermeister) of Oberursel would be in attendance. I know, just like in the Christmas cartoon.  I couldn't believe there really is a Burgermeister Meister Burger.  I didn't personally get to meet him to talk to him about the whole "no toys" thing but I'm sure we'll meet up again, and I'll see where he stands on the issue.  The venue for the event was beautifully set up and we gladly checked our coats in at the front before proceeding on to the stage to practice our skit.  That's a whole different story about how 2 weeks after being here I'm on stage taking part in a skit in front of a bunch of people I don't even know.  Anyway, the event was over at 12:00 but Carrie and I were there late talking so it was after 1:00 before we went to get our coats.  The problem arose when Carrie couldn't find her little plastic number tab they give you when you go to check your coat in.  We searched everywhere, went through her purse twice, looked on stage until we finally told the coat check lady that Carrie had lost her number.  The coat check lady didn't speak English so we had another woman there helping to translate.  We'll call the coat check lady Olga for now.  Olga tells Carrie that she must go find the number.  Carrie tells her that we looked everywhere and it's lost.  I tell Carrie that I only know 7 German words but I'm pretty sure that the signs says that if you lose your number then you have to pay 2.50 euro.  Carrie tells Olga she will give her 2.50 euro but the lady says no she must go find her little plastic number.  Carrie says "No, I've looked and I can't find it so I'll just pay the 2.50 euro."  Olga tells her that she will have to wait until everyone has left the building and then Olga will search the building for the plastic number.  Meanwhile there are only 6 coats left hanging in the whole place anyway.  By now there are about 5 people watching this whole brawl take place so being a true friend I hold Carrie's purse while she walks behind the counter to get her coat herself.  That's when my first german chick fight began.  Olga came at Carrie yelling who knows what but she definitely didn't like Carrie on her "coat rack" turf.  Carrie tells her that she'll get the coat herself.  Olga calls the manager of the venue.  The manager and security come.  Women are everywhere trying to get Carrie's purple raincoat which really wouldn't have fit Olga so I'm not sure why she wanted it so badly.  The manager comes over, gives Carrie her coat and to this day we are pretty sure that Olga is scouring the Stadthalle looking for Carrie's lost number.  Moral of the story is.  There must always be order and if there are 350 coat rack numbers and one is lost then that is not order or Olga really wanted the purple raincoat.

Valuable Lessons

1.  Curry is in everything.  I know....you say to yourself (much like I did) it can't be in EVERYTHING.  No, it is in everything.  Just this week I learned that curry is in ketchup, chinese lo mein, cream of broccoli soup and Old El Paso taco seasoning.  I thought for sure taco seasoning from Texas wouldn't have curry in it, but I was wrong.  You put that spice in the taco meat expecting to smell chili powder and you get this P U of curry.  Note to friends:  Please include packets of taco seasoning with all shipments of corn tortillas.

2.  Everthing is recylced here and don't even think of putting it in the wrong place or throwing it away at the wrong time.  There's a yellow bag, black bag, blue trash can, special neighborhood cans for green glass, white glass, brown glass and paper.  Make sure you know all the german words for those colors prior to arriving at the designated trash can.  By the way, you can NOT put trash in the neighborhood trash cans on Sundays.  Sundays are quiet days and you cannot make noise emptying your garbage.  This was very hard for Greg to accept since he doesn't like to be told what to do.  The rebel wanted to throw paper in the universal paper garbage can on Sunday but I had to convince him that it was a major rule breaker and we didn't want to be "THOSE" neighbors our first month here.  The great news is that everything has a place and gets recylced.  The bad news is that you walk around the kitchen with garbage in your hand for 5 minutes trying to figure out where to put it.

3.  Banking is very different here and seems to be much for efficient.  No checks.  Everything is done by account transfer.  When you get a bill you also get an account number of where to transfer the money to.  If I owe you $100 you just give me your account number and I transfer it to your account.  All you need to be able to do this is a pin number.  Everyone gets a personal banker when they open an account so this should all run smoothly you would think.  We've had our account for 2.5 months and much like our furniture we still haven't gotten our pin number.  Now everyone knows that Greg can get anything from anybody even if he has to call the president of  Marriott.  Unfortunately people don't understand that here and although he wants to tell them that he will be sharing with all our friends and neighbors (of which we have 1 of each) that they should not do business with Deutsche Bank, nobody seems to care.  If he could just tell people off as well in German as he does in English I know we would be getting somewhere.

Driving in Germany

This week was my Figure Out How To Drive In Germany week.  First of all, they do drive on the right side of the road so I was already one step in the right direction.  Fortunately the car I have has a navigation system.  I don't think the British lady the lives inside speaks German very well because she never says the name of the street she just says to turn right in 100 meters.  After passing many right turns I have figured out approximately how far 100 meters are and am making far fewer u-turns.  U-Turns are a whole task in themselves.  First of all, many of the streets are only as wide as one car and so the making of a u-turn is not possible.  It's best to just follow the road until it comes out somewhere, reset the navigation system to where you were trying to get to and start over again.  I have now driven around the American Womens Club three times trying to figure out where to park.  Parking is either in garages, on the street or in designated areas.  Even the grocery store has only about 10 parking spaces since everyone walks to the store.  If you park in an area that has a blue P then you put this card in the windshield that says what time you got there and the police BELIEVE YOU and you won't get a ticket.  Haven't figured out where you get one of those just yet.  Parked there any way and hoped for the best.

The other crazy thing is that if you are in more residential areas there aren't stop signs.  If you are driving down the road and there is an intersection coming up on your right then it is your responsibility to slow down and give that person the right away to pull out in front of you.  That is unless you see a yellow diamond sign on the street somewhere.  If you see a yellow diamond then you have the right away.  I know, you can't even picture it.  Think how I feel in the car.  I keep stopping all over the place because I'm not sure who is supposed to go first.  I just keep the windows up and the radio on so if someone is screaming at me I can't hear them anyway.  Probably wouldn't understand what they were saying either.

Our First Week

We just finished our first week of being in Germany and over all we did pretty well.  When planning an air shipment in the future a couple things to remember to bring.  #1 -  a measuring cup with metric measurements and more clothes.  We found that it's really hard to make pancakes from a German pancake mix without knowing how much milk to put in.  We all could use some different clothes as this point as well.  Our sea shipment doesn't get here for 10 more days and these 8-10 outfits we all brought are starting to get very old.  We love German efficiency except when it comes to laundry.  Why does it take over 2 hours to wash a load and another 50 minutes to dry it?  It just doesn't seem right.  I also think the USA could be making millions exporting beds to Germany.  What are they thinking sleeping on these hard beds one foot off the floor.  I can't sleep more than 4 hours without waking up trying to fluff up my brick bed.

Of course living with Greg always has it's laughter.  Last week his navigation system told him to turn right so he did, not realizing that it was a pedestrian walk way.  Fortunately the policeman was very understanding and yes, once again he talked his way out of his first german ticket.  His company car is an Audi A8 which is a very large car for here since all the parking garages and parking spaces are built for SmartCars.  You know the ones, if you can't find a place to put it you just store it in your purse until it's time to leave.  Today we pulled in to a garage and after several attempts to get it in to a parking space he gave up and we drove out of the parking garage to find a spot on the street.

We did have a beautiful walk in the forest today which is what everyone does on Sundays since everything closes on Sundays.  There were streams running everywhere, wild sheep and deer that we ran in to.  I'll post pictures soon so you can see the beauty of it al.