| December 5, 2003 - Back from Germany |
| Dear Friends, I got back Wednesday night from my fantabulous trip to Germany and I'm so pooped, I'm going to work just to get some rest! Oh the places I've been and the things I've done! First of all, my friend A. and I landed at Frankfurt Airport bright and early Thanksgiving morning and then took a train to Mainz where Gertrude was to meet us. We stood around a bit at the Mainz train station wondering where in the world she was, so I finally called her on her cell phone and she said she was just then arriving. She had had a flat tire on the autobahn and had to call the German version of AAA for assistance. Oh before I forget, in Frankfurt I ordered train tickets for us and when the woman responded back, I thought she said they would be 46 Euros. So I insisted that she put it on my debit card. Well, all of you are well aware that I'm terrible at math as this story will prove. She looked at me and asked, "Don't you have any cash on you?" And I answered, "Yes, but I just took it out of the bank machine for this trip." So she shrugged her shoulders and put 6 Euros and 40 cents on my debit card! Oy veh! Am I a goofball or what? So anyway, even though we were dog tired, we spent several hours in Mainz looking around at the Christmas market there. A. had never had Gluehwein before, so I bought us both a cup of it, but she didn't care for it much. Then we ate lunch in a restaurant there that we had eaten in a few years ago. The food was bootilicious, particularly the humongous beer I ordered. After we got to our hotel in Kaiserslautern, where Mannfred and Gertrude live, we rested for an hour. Then I had to run out and buy a gift for the children of Mannfred's brother since we were invited to his house in Worms that night for dinner. But before dinner, we had to stop off at Mannfred's parents' house, who stuffed us full of beer, sausages, and Christmas cookies. Then we went off to eat pizza at the brother's house. Friday A. and I tooled around a bit and looked in shops. Then that afternoon, Gertrude, Mannfred, A., and I headed off for Bad Wimpfen. As we drove along, every time I saw a sign for Bad Wimpfen, I whispered in a very ethereal voice, "Baaaaad Wiiimpfeeen." And then in a louder voice I added, "Root of all Evil." We all just laaaafed every time I did that. Bad Wimpfen was beautiful. It runs up the side of a hill and has nice, slippery cobble stone streets that I thought I would fall down because it was raining and sleeting a bit. We went back to Kaiserslautern that night, but headed off for Freiburg bright and early the next morning. We stayed in a great hotel just 9 kilometers outside of the city. But it looked like it was a honeymoon hotel, because it had all these amenities that normal German hotels don't have; like a gym. Anyhoo, we tooled around the Christmas market there and had lots of Gluehwein and Feuerzangenbowle (which is a lot like Gluehwein). Then after we were good and frozen, we ate at this great restaurant (again, one I had eaten at before). Right above our table was this incredibly annoying cuckoo clock. Every 30 minutes it played the theme from "Dr. Zhivago" and all these figures waltzed in and out of a little door. This went on for about 5 minutes and finally the cuckoo did its thing. However, the cuckoo never really appeared; its little door just flew open and shut while it cuckooed inside. I think it was stuck or something. The next morning we headed off for Stuttgart where we were to meet Gertrude's father and brother; I'll call them Fritz and Paul. Anyway, we went around the Christmas market there, but I really didn't see much of it because Paul wanted to practice English with me. He had just got back from a 4-week stint as an exchange student in some rinky-dink town in Washington; where, by the way, he was forced to work on a farm for an agriculture class. Anyway, he kind of payed me a back-handed compliment. He said, "In Washington the highschool German teacher's German was much worse than yours." I explained to him that this was kind of an insult in English and he quickly corrected himself. It's so easy now to see how wars get started over linguistic misunderstandings, whereas before I thought they all started over greed or abject poverty. Go to page 2 of Back from Germany Next entry Previous entry Go to diary entries Go back home |