This Week in Germany

One of the things that has been hard to get used to here in Germany is that people on the street or on the trains don't smile or say hello to people they don't know. And if you smile at them, they kind of look at you like you're probably a little simple--or they ignore you.

So this week I got on the train to go to German class, sit down and the woman across from me says, "Morgan (morning)". I was stunned and kind of excited to have been greeted on the train by a stranger who was German. "Must be the nice weather," I thought. So then, she asked me something in German and I explained that I spoke only a little German and could she please repeat. She was asking me about the book I was holding and I simply told her it was good--which is about as far as my Deutsch will take me. Pleased with my friendly little encounter, I turned to my book and the woman kept talking. She wasn't talking to me. She was talking to herself. And she kept talking to herself. It didn't take long to realize that the woman who had greeted me so kindly was mentally ill. Which goes along with what my friend Sheree's German teacher told her--that the only people who will talk to strangers on the street are crazy people. MY German teacher --who knows about my ongoing battle to get Germans to smile at me--thought my encounter was the funniest thing he'd heard about all week.

On another note, it's getting warm here and no one has air conditioning. That includes businesses. It's really odd to walk through an un-air conditioned store--though nice not to have to take a sweater with you because they've got the temperature down to near-artic temperatures. It's not uncomfortable (yet), but it's a little stuffy. I wonder if income for retail takes a downturn here in the summer.

It's Spargel (asparagus) season in Germany and every restaurant has their Spargel menu and every vegetable stand boasts frische Spargel. It comes in standard green or big fat stalks of white Spargel. It's only here through May, so for about six weeks, everyone eats it until they don't want to see another stalk of asparagus until next April!