Busy, Busy, Busy the last week!

A quick update - we had a great trip to Dublin last weekend and one of us will be making a post in the near future on our excursion to Ireland.

We also do have some big news to announce - Dawn and I are now engaged and are looking at having a wedding here in Germany in early September! More details to be posted soon!

Observations in Germany - Part II

The Miraculous German Grocery Store Que

This is definitely not unique to Germany, but it is something I notice happening a lot more here than in other places. Let me explain. Say you're standing in line with 7 other people at the grocery store and are in the only checkout lane open. You're standing, waiting, perusing the tiny bottles of liquor at the checkout stand as more and more people pile up behind you. You've been waiting for approximately 10 minutes and still are buried deep in the line. Suddenly, the checkout next to you opens up. What happens? The last person in line, the person who has only been waiting for 15 seconds, runs - and I literally mean runs - over to the newly opened checkout while the person that was in front of them waiting for, oh, I don't know, maybe 40 seconds, fills in behind them. As you stand there, pissed that these people have essentially 'taken cuts', you watch them merrily pay for their goods and leave the store while you are still standing and waiting, while four others are still in front of you. The miraculous part about this is that nobody ever gets upset when this occurs, as if it's a part of life in Germany that one must accept to get by. "Hey, today maybe wasn't my day, but by golly, tomorrow it could possibly be ME that gets to cut in front of everyone else! Oh Joy!"

Yes, this is a big pet peeve of mine and always has been. In America, I would speak up when I saw something like this happen, usually being my smart-ass self to make the point. Most people usually got the hint and would shuffle to the back of the line where they belonged. However, I'm not quite so vocal here in Germany as I am a visitor and most people in my tiny town know it. No use in being the a-hole Ami, so I just accept it as another cultural quirk and move on. After three years here, it doesn't quite grate on me like it used to, but I still find it a valid issue to highlight about living here. It does catch most newcomers by surprise!

I was going to make an animation displaying exactly what I'm talking about, but instead, I made the animation below which was much more fun to create. It really has no point, but I was bored and tired and it gave me something to do. The video is a bit small, so click HERE for a larger version.

Observations in Germany - Part I

I'm sure that some of you who have never been to Germany before may be wondering what day to day life is like over here. You may be asking yourself questions such as "Do Germans really wear leather pants and cute little hats with feathers in them?" Or, "Do German kids really start drinking beer at the age of 9?" Maybe you've always wanted to know what it feels like to drive a car down the Autobahn at 140 m.p.h. or if the McDonald's in Germany serve schnitzel burgers with a side of pretzel fries and a 12oz glass of peach schnapps to wash it all down. Well, thankfully you have us to answer these questions for you and to even bring you some insight in to the German culture and just how different it can be for a foreigner living here.

From time to time we will be bringing you our 'Observations from Germany.' Usually these will be things that even make us, two Americans with a few years under our belts in Deutschland, pause and ponder over the little cultural differences we encounter every now and then. These are meant to be light-hearted and fun, but in most instances, are true from our perspective. I'm sure most foreigners visiting the US could point out just as many curiosities pertaining to American culture and make just as much fun of us. But, if it weren't for these differences, what would be the fun of traveling and experiencing new places? With that in mind, let me bring you Part I in this series:

Navigating German Sidewalks

In most of the places I've lived or visited, negotiating a sidewalk is a fairly easy task and something that almost anyone can figure out no matter where you are. Most people around the world tend to like their personal space and will give a generous berth as they approach one another. This allows everyone to maintain a steady pace while also staying within the confines of the relatively safe sidewalk. This can be more difficult when walking in groups, but still, most people tend to have this figured out from about the age of 10 or so. When two groups are on a collision course, each group will respectively file behind others in their group so that everyone can pass each other comfortably without impeding the progress of the others. The only place that I've seen this break down is in Tokyo, Japan, but that place is crazy-busy and sometimes the rules just can't be adhered to there. Just in case my writing isn't clear on this subject, I've created a short animation that shows how two groups of two approaching each other would normally behave in order to make it a pleasant experience for all. Please click the 'Play' button below.

Pretty simple, right? Everyone continues on with their day happy and content without a care in the world when this type of sidewalk behavior is followed. However, upon moving to my new town in Germany (Weiden id Opf at the time), I tended to get out and explore on foot as much as I could. The more I did this, the more I began to notice something quite curious about the typical sidewalk etiquette in my little town. People simply did not move out of the way, especially while walking in groups. The worst happened when I would be walking alone on a two person-wide sidewalk, approaching two people walking side by side coming at me. In almost every instance, I would be forced to step in to the street or to hug a wall while they passed me, often with a bump to the shoulder, and giving no acknowledgement that I even existed. I just didn't understand it. It got really interesting when I would be walking with someone else and encountered this scenario. It was akin to playing chicken or red rover as a child. Even though I was super, super, super good at those games as I kid, I found myself on the losing end of these events in Germany more often than not (like, always). I just couldn't crack these people and always ended up jumping off of the sidewalk or in to a doorway in order to preserve my two foot, no-touching, personal bubble. I've illustrated a worst-case example in the animation below. Viewers be advised.....

So, the big question then is, what happens when two groups of Germans approach each other? After over three years of living here, I still am not positive how this is done and I don't think I will ever know without a diligent and time-consuming study of this phenomenon. I kind of think of it like one of those atomic colliders where atoms are shot towards each other at the speed of light, smashing together creating a fiery mass of destruction and chaos. I'm positive this is going to happen as I just can't see either group giving way to the other. Sometimes when I do see groups of locals walking towards each other down a confined walkway, I duck for cover behind the nearest dumpster or light pole or even a small child, just waiting for the world to be sucked in to a black hole. Each time, however, I open my eyes after a few minutes of agonizing end-of-the-world anticipation, only to realize that the sun is still shining, people are still milling about eating their ice cream and that I still can't stand Barry Manilow music. By some miracle, the groups have eased by each other without incidence, acting as if they hadn't almost inadvertently destroyed the planet. I just don't get how they do it.............. Special schooling? Telepathic communication? They all have those little roller skate shoes that allow them to quickly maneuver around one another at the last instant? I have no idea and I don't think I ever will.

The Weekend - a short summary of events

Yes, I do realize that most people really could care less about the mundane and boring details of our lives. So, if you are one of these people, please stop reading now because this post isn't going to be all that exciting. I just thought I'd put something new up while Dawn is in the kitchen doing her cooking thing. It's not like I have much of anything to do anyway, so without further ado, here's what we did this weekend. Yippee!

Friday evening: Dawn and I drove up to our friend Judy's house about an hour north of us for a wine tasting party. I had reservations about this since I really don't drink nor enjoy wine, but, I was pleasantly surprised and actually had a great time. It isn't often that we get to hang out with our ski buddies outside of the ski season and it was great seeing everyone again. The party was actually a lot more organized than I originally thought it would be. Judy actually had a guy come over with a number of different wines and everyone got to sample each one. The guy was a German and he was kind of an arrogant douchebag but we had a good time messing with him, taking advantage of his lack of full understanding of the English language. We did get to sample some tasty wines, however, and even ended up buying a couple of cases. We bought one crate of your basic every day table wine and then a case of red ice wine which is extremely rare and can cost upwards of 1000 dollars a bottle in the US. So, after spending 300 Euros on wine, eating some wonderful food and hanging out with some good friends, we headed home, happy we made the trip up.

Saturday: We didn't do much this day. We did drive to Regensburg to explore the Donau Shopping Mall which was a good waste of time. The weather wasn't particularly nice so it was a day best spent indoors. I bought a new camera bag at the Saturn Store and Dawn bought three bottles of wine at some little snobby coffee/wine/sweets shop. We drank one of the bottles that evening and it turned out to be pretty decent. I think I even liked it more than Dawn. On the way in to Regensburg, we noticed that a festival was going on. We stopped and took a short walk along the river where I snapped the picture on the right. The picture on the left was taken from the upper level of the parking garage at the mall. The fuzziness of the picture is from the metal barrier put up to prevent people from jumping from the garage - I'm sure something that happens often due to the crap weather Germany has 97% of the time.

Sunday: We woke up fairly early on Sunday morning and were pleasantly surprised to find that the weather had cleared leaving a deep blue, cloudless sky. A nice change from the dreariness of the previous day. I usually try to get up early on Sunday's anyway. The only TV show that I really make an effort to watch is on at 8am; Anthony Bourdaine's "No Reservations". Basically, it's a cooking and travel show and I can't get enough of it. After watching this, Dawn left to do some grocery shopping on post while I lounged around and did......nothing. It was nice. Dawn got home around noon and had a particularly strong desire to eat some ice cream. Hey, it was gorgeous out so why not take a walk and get some ice cream, even if the morning had only ended 10 minutes earlier? It turned out that a lot of others had the same idea and the new ice cream parlor in downtown Parsberg was quite hopping. After Dawn got her ice cream, we continued on and found ourselves down at the train station (left). I then asked Dawn if she wanted to walk down to the Hammermuhle Valley where a picturesque creek can be found, something that would make Osu very happy. I'd actually never been down to the area before but Dawn and Osu had run through there on a few occasions. I was pleasantly surprised at what I found and definitely plan on returning very soon, probably by bike. So, our short walk to the ice cream parlor ended up turning in to a 2.5 hour walk and hike which was very enjoyable. I needed something like this to get my walking legs back as it had been some time since I'd done anything strenuous due to the broken jaw. A nice warm up for some hikes we plan on doing very soon in the Bavarian Alps. (For some reason, the blog software won't put the darn space in here. Must keep reminding myself, it's free, it's free, it's free.....)

I took a few pictures today and have posted them to my Flickr site if you'd like to check them out. Anyway, the weekend was nice and relaxing, something we all needed. We plan on being away for at least the next three weekends so some time spent at home was welcome. This coming Friday we leave for Dublin and are very excited about that! I'll have a trip report soon after we come back...... Cheers!

Rothenburg ob der Tauber -- Revisited

Nate and I have had some interesting discussions about Germany and places we’ve traveled and would like to see again. Having both been to Germany during our high school years, we have stories and our old pictures, some that are in the same areas.

Nate’s group never went to Rothenburg, but I always remembered that I liked the town. The pictures I looked back were not so good, and really do not do the town any justice. Looking at them almost made me wonder if I remembered the right city. So, as a beautiful day was here, we traveled about an hour and a half to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, “Rothenburg over the Tauber.”

The town is on a plateau overlooking the Tauber River. It was bombed during WWII, but they gave up the town as to not be destroyed. The town was quickly rebuilt and is quite a tourist place now. They also make these schneeballen , snowballs, which are deep-fried dough balls sprinkled with powdered sugar or covered in chocolate.

Packing up the dog, we grabbed our cameras and hit the road. What started out as a lovely day, turned a little cloudy as we drove towards Nurnberg. Great. Neither one of us had jackets, so it would be perfect if it started to rain. Driving in and out of road construction, we made it to Rothenburg, and most of the clouds were gone. Although when we arrived we noticed that they had a race going on through town, which had a few shops open, perfect for buying a couple little things.

We headed through the city wall, not what I remembered, but intriguing. I knew at some point I’d remember more, but the rediscovery was fun. We climbed the stairs to the top of the wall. It seemed as though we could walk all around the town from the top of the wall. Half attempted to start we took a few pictures and climbed back down to walk through town.

Meandering through the people running and a stop a linen store we made it to more of a pedestrian area. We were in awe of the beautiful buildings, the kind you picture in your head when you think Germany. The houses were made of large beams and a plaster in shades of green, yellow and pink. The roads were tiny cobble stone paths, barely wide enough for cars.

Two small tables outside a restaurant called to us, as we were starving from not having lunch yet. Osu sat patiently while we ate, watching the people on the street. After finishing and throwing Osu a few fries, we wandered down the street and found some festivities for the half marathon and headed back in the other direction.

Ah, we’d found the city I remembered. The wide open square with the old Rathaus, that’s where my picture was taken 11 years ago. There was a small stand selling fruits and vegetables, a fountain, and a lot of people. Seems they all came out since the clouds had gone. We wandered down to the church with no scaffolding and then into a shop with sketches and paintings. We bought two more additions for our walls at home, a Europe map from 1572 and a sketch of Rothenburg's famous Plonlein street. The wonderful lady also told us some cool history of the drawings and town.

We headed down the street to a park outside the West Gate for a few

pictures, and then back down to the famous street corner. A violinist was playing and people were eating their ice cream. The building behind the player is in the picture we bought. To determine when the picture was drawn, you look at the beams on the second floor. If they are ‘X’s then it was after the reconstruction in the 1950 or 1960s, but if still bowed, then they are the original beams. It’s funny the things you learn from the towns people, if you happen into the right shops.

After a few more pictures it was getting late in the afternoon. We had much more to see and discover, but it’s not too far from home. Next time we’ll leave earlier in the morning, as it is an all day tour.

*Nate has added his photos from Rothenburg to his Flickr site. You can find them HERE

Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich........Parsberg??

I still remember a certain T-shirt from my youth that I would see from time to time in my home town of Roseburg, Oregon. The shirt was a knock-off of a popular shirt found in most tourist destinations around the world. The T-shirt simply said "Paris", with a picture of the Eiffel Tower, "London", with a picture of the London Bridge, and "Roseburg", with a picture of the world-famous Mt. Nebo weather goats that occasionally wandered off of the hillside to block traffic on Harvard Avenue and Interstate 5 when inclement weather was imminent. With this T-shirt in mind, I would like to introduce you to the town I've lived in for the past year, Parsberg. It's no Munich. Heck, it's not even an Ingolstadt or even a Weiden (not that you would know the latter two - that's my point). It's Parsberg, a small hamlet with 6,000 residents lying smack dab between Regensburg and Nurnberg just off of the A3 Autobahn. As small as it is, it still is the king of the kuhdorfs (cowtowns) for this area and the center of the universe for many people that call this small chunk of the Oberpfalz (a district in Bavaria) home. A lot like Roseburg, actually. But even more redneck (Bavarian-style) and in many cases, more backwards.

One way to give a tour of a place via the internet is through pictures. This blog does limit what I can show you, but I will do my best to introduce you to the sights and highlights of Parsberg in a digital format. You can click on the pictures for a larger view of what I see every day. To begin, I must inform you that Dawn, Osu and I did go for a walk this morning and I had this blog entry in mind when I took my camera. I didn't get all of the pictures I wanted, but enough to give you an idea of the hell we live in (just kidding!). On the left is Dawn and Osu in front of our house ready to embark on our one hour journey. As you can see, they carried none of the supplies. That was left to me - the man. Typical. Osu has gotten so lazy in his old age. Dawn - well, she has no excuse. Except she did have to manage Osu. On most days, that can be enough.

The sign pictured to the left is just up the street from our house. In German, "Stadtmitte" simply means 'city center'. I guess it must also mean town or village center because it’s quite a stretch to call Parsberg a city (see picture to the right – that is downtown). Lupburg is an even smaller town approximately two kilometers to the east of Parsberg. It’s a quaint little dorf (village) but nothing to really write home about. It does have a castle ruin which makes for a good destination on a bike ride, a grocery store and lots of old people. That’s about it. Dietfurt is a town that is actually larger than Parsberg about 20 minutes south in the Altmuhl Valley. This town, although larger, doesn’t really offer much either. It is set in a nice location but there just really is no reason to ever go there. In fact, the town is so boring and bland that there is actually a bypass built around it which is quite rare in Germany. In most instances, driving through any small town here can be a chore. Thankfully, even the German road engineers recognized the pain caused by driving through Dietfurt. Kudos, German road dudes!

Parsberg actually is a very nice place to live and has most of the amenities to meet your basic needs. The town proper contains four grocery stores, four or five pharmacies, three eye glass places, a smattering of decent restaurants and a few stores that are worth poking your head in to every now and then. The main hospital and the main schools for the area are also located here along with a small train station which is conveniently on the main line between Nurnberg and Regensburg. It also contains a lot of very, very old people. This would explain the abundance of pharmacies and eye glass shops. If you were to combine mine and Dawn’s ages, we would still be 30 years younger than most people in town. I’m talking these people are OLD. The funny thing is, they probably walk more each day going through their normal routine than the average American walks in a week. But, that is one of the great things about this town – you literally can walk anywhere within the city limits in 15 minutes or less and really don’t need a car at all. This is truly one of the things I love about living here.

The crowning jewel of Parsberg has to be the Parsberg Castle. Really, there is nothing else in town that can compete with it. It sits on the highest and most prominent spot in town and is visible from virtually anywhere you might find yourself in Parsberg. To call the thing a castle, however, is overstating matters a bit. I like to refer to it as the ‘big pretentious poorly-designed non-castle looking residence perched on the hill’. For some reason, every time we go for a walk up to the castle grounds, I get all worked up thinking about the people who used to live in the place, sanctimoniously peering down on the paupers living and working at their feet, casting a leering eye at the merchants and farmers whose back-breaking work made their lifestyle possible. But then, as if on cue, Osu takes a wee on the castle wall and all is right with the world again.

Okay, so maybe I went a little overboard when describing the denizens of the town and their ages. Parsberg does have a lot of very old residents, but there are also some younger ones - enough in fact that there are actually two small bars/clubs in the town. Dawn and I have yet to visit either establishment other than to order a couple of very crappy pizzas during a lazy afternoon last summer. We once did try to go up to watch a soccer game one evening, but both places were so packed full of fans cheering on Germany that we just went home and watched ‘Old School’ for the 50th time. Besides, we’d know the outcome of the game easily enough. If after the game we heard screaming and yelling, car horns honking and fans singing their favorite football songs, we’d know that Germany had won and had moved on in the EuroCup. I think on this night they did win and the noise kept us up quite late. But, since it does seem most Germans in this town don’t work, it didn’t matter that it was a Sunday night and the start of the workweek was only hours away. Football uber alles, I guess…….

There isn’t a lot more I have to say about Parsberg. Well, actually, there is but I don’t want to bore anyone to death. Parsberg, although a very nice and enjoyable place to live, definitely is not a place anyone plans to visit for an extended vacation. I do see the occasional tour bus rolling through town, but usually it is on its way to somewhere a bit more vibrant and exciting. I kind of like it that way, though. I can do calm. I can do quiet. This is the type of place Norman Rockwell would have painted. You know, if he were German. Not a bad place at all.

If you’d like to see some more pictures from Parsberg, be sure to visit my Flickr site. The link is up there on your right…….