The other day I was thinking about what kinds of cloths that are common in America, but not seen here. It dawned on me that since I moved here I have not seen one pair of underwear sticking out over the belts of the boys/men’s pants here. How nice it has been! I never wanted to see people’s underwear in the first place; I saw them whether I wanted to or not, sometimes the same underwear for a few days! (No comment!)  Here, there is no ‘prison fashion”. I think part of that is due to the fact that you really don’t want to end up in prison here or anywhere else outside of the US. It ain’t  just 3 hot’s, a cot and a weight room.  No oversized pants, tee shirts, and no pants down to the knees. I have to admit that I like it.

Another thing I noticed is that I don’t see the daily car chases, cops chasing the bad guys. Back in Ft. Lauderdale it was a daily thing to see on the news, I think is has become a national sport in America. Really, it is a very common occurrence these days on America’s roadways. In fact, I think it ought to have its own channel, Catch Me! TV or something. Here though, there is the Autobahn and the outrageous speeds. People aren’t running away from anything, they are just trying to get from point A to point B, very fast. There is a feeling pride here that they can drive faster here on the freeway than we can in America, but the other side of the coin is the accidents. When I see one on the news (and that is daily), they are horrible. The cars/trucks are unrecognizable, piles of mangled metal, the result of traveling at the speed of light. I don’t see how anyone can make it out alive from one of these accidents.

Other things I haven’t seen here, pimped out cars and trucks, except on tv, there is one show wit this big biker dude hosting it. Sometimes they have low riders bouncing up and down. I think the show is from Munich. I don’t see a lot of spaceship sized RV’s and motor homes. If they are here, someone brought them over on a ship. They don’t exist here, autos and trucks are scaled down here, and there is just not a whole lot of room for really big, gas guzzling vehicles. No big huge plates of food in restaurants and no one (at least from what I have seen and heard), takes a doggie bag home. You eat what you ordered. Period. Though I have heard that the potion sizes have gotten bigger here, Germany is now the biggest as far as weight sizes, in Europe. I read that French people too, are starting to get overweight. Last time I was in Paris, I felt like a cow because everyone around me was thin, they know how to eat sensibly. Or did. McDonalds is there and I read that French people love McDonalds.

And speaking of eating, I gotta eat lunch, the integrations course starts in a little while.

Oh, one more thing I haven’t seen yet. Rick Steves. You know, they guy with the backpack he can live out of for several months. I don’t know what he has in there; it never looks full. I think the bag is a magic bag. New clean cloths appear in it, along with money, a travel guide for wherever he is traveling through and a book of bad jokes. Rick, I know you are out there somewhere! If you’re ever in the Essen area, lets get together and have a cup of coffee. We’ll talk about that backpack of yours!

Later!

They keep telling me it is spring. The calender says so, but is was still cold here until  yesterday. The sun was out all day long and it FINALLY warmed up in the afternoon. Today it will be a whopping 20 degrees Celsius, which is around 70 degrees. I am tempted to dig out my shorts and wear them to my class this afternoon.  I know this won’t last and it will be cold again. YUCK, I really miss Florida weather. It is a lovely 80 degrees there, My integrations course began (again) last Thursday. I like it, the people in my class are friendly and the instructior has a bit of a sense of humor, which is good, she has a hard job teaching adults German. Most of the people are from Turkey, 1 from Morocco, my friend Joel from Portugal and some from Russia, Croatia and Bosnia.  Susanne is back to being my husband because I don’t dare come out to most of the people. In Turkey, I think  they still put people to death for being gay. I don’t want to alienate the people in my class, foreigners here have to stick together and help each other out. I will pick my time tell them. So I am starting at the A2 level of the language, it is a little boring at times, I have learned enough myself and from the teacher I had for a week to be at the B1 level, but I need to speak better. Oh well, I learn something new with every class and I finally get to be with other people learning the language. On break, we have to talk German because everyone speaks a different language, no one else speaks English and I  (at least not yet) don’t speak any Turkish or Arabic or Russian. Communicating is a learning experience, I have to think of how to say something that people can understand because I can’t fall back to English, it sound like gibberish to them.

Easter was okay, lots of chocolate again, like Christmas, we are both over chocolate for a while. 3 days of easter, Friday is a holiday, Sunday and then again on Monday. Lots of holidays here,  it is still amazing to me that anything gets done between all the holidays and all the vacation time people get. I went with Susanne and her nephew to pick up her neice coming in from France. We drove to Holland (an hours drive) to Eindhofen, There is a tiny airport there, only small jets can land and Ryan Air seems to be the airline of choice. It is cheap and serves most of Europe. It was nice to get out of town for a while.

It’s time to stop, I have a quiche in the oven and I gotta get ready for learning German for 3 1/2 hours. The first few hours are okay, but the 45 mins gets to be a bit long, I am ready to run for the door at 5. We get a small amount of homework per night, I do more because I want to learn fast. So off I go!

Auf Weidersehen!