Can't be Avoided

There's red tape everywhere! The passport arm of the American Embassy here in Duesseldorf is closing at the end of the month and Americans in this area will have to go to Frankfurt (2 1/2 hours away) for passport services. Because Skip is traveling so much, he needs to get some pages added to his. He called today and they said that services were available until noon. So he rushed down there only to find out that because of the huge number of Americans that have come in for passport services, they have run out of pages. "You should have called," they told him. When he said that he had, they told him he could come in again the morning of June 28 (the one full day we'll have here between France and the US) and try again.

In the meantime, I took Maddie and her friend Meg to their last recorder lesson of the year and afterwards, Meg's dad and I took them both to lunch. After 10 months here and 50 hours of German lessons, I'm still ordering the wrong food. I ended up with a large piece of brown bread slathered in butter with four huge slices of cheese on top. mmmmm. Then cigar-smoking guy sat down next to me and it took forever to get the bill.

It's time for a break in the land of English menus, free water, smoke-free restaurants and waiters who are anxious to turn a table.