More about Germany

Even after all this time I still am surprised from time to time.

I just realized there are no fire hydrants. I wonder where the fire fighters get water! Underground, sure, but where/how?

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No one  knocks. My door has never been knocked on. People only ring. Why? In America I would only ring if no one answered my knock, because maybe they have a baby sleeping, or, I don't know, it's just what we do. I just remembered door knockers. But for this I think I know the answer - most Germans do not own their own homes, they are in some sort of shared housing, either apartments or 2-family houses.

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Returns. I know not all US stores are great about returns (Target bad, Costco awesome). But omygoodness I understand now, why J would not stand in line with me in Seattle when I wanted to return some dried mangoes that didn't taste good. Safeway just took them, no questions, and handed me the money.

Last week at Aldi I needed to return two sodas because I didn't read the ingredients list carefully. I had the receipt. The clerk acted as if I'd ruined her day. She said she'd have to go talk to her manager. That left a large line of steaming impatient people staring at me. I would have had an anxiety attack but I was so thrown off guard by the experience I had no time to think. Finally the lady came back and shook her head at me. She said she would make an exception this time, but I'd need to fill out a form with my personal information. Good grief! Now I get it.  I commented, "You don't make it easy" and the lady just sat there with a scowl on her face. One employee is so nasty I always avoid him and rush out of his way when he's stocking. J called the manager to complain cuz this guy is unnaturally rude. The manager said, "Yes we get complaints about him a lot, but he's got kids and we don't want to fire him."

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We just discovered a show called Grimm that is set in Portland and it's so fun to see the PNW and hear the cultural references "Keepin' Portland weird!" and "I really could use a double Americano" (my drink of choice). It also has a lot of German in the script and it's fun to see the actors get better at their pronunciation as the show goes on. They even laugh about it on the show, "You're a Fuchsteufelwild, if you pardon my pronunciation!" 

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Update on the riding stable visit - we didn't have a chance to say goodbye because the lady was giving that lesson instead of talking to us, so J texted her and said we had to leave, but we have a few questions for her.

She never returned the text, and when they saw each other at the school where they work, she never said anything to him. I'm amazed that someone can be so thoughtless (does she need the stall filled or not?). But I remember when I first met her at a party, she was inconsiderate to me. I was the only other horse person there and was looking forward to talking about horses, and she simply did not care to speak to me. She showed me a video of her dressage horse on her phone, and then immediately started talking to someone else about school.

Also, what's with the latex gloves? Is her riding arena a crime scene?

I'm waiting to hear back from the barn in Wuppertal where I know the owner.

From looking at the Internet, it seems that it's a good time to be outside of America. Though to be honest I've been asked a few times about what is going on. I voted last week in a process involving taking photographs of my ballot and emailing them to King County. That actually works!



Link to something funny if you've been to Germany.

And this is for Mag, the snortiest horse I've ever met, but his snorting is "Fascinating!" rather than "Holy crap, gotta go!"....





On a walk last week, we found two huge spools of fiber cables, each spool at least 7 feet tall, making me feel like I shrank. Now this was something scary for Mag, it took him a few moments to approach. The cables themselves were at least 2 inches in diameter. I'd heard that they were upgrading the Internet in the country, I guess this is it. Of course Mag had to taste the cables. "Chew on the Internet Mag!"



Now covered in mud from nose to tail through next Summer.