The bunny, the bunny, I love the bunny

yes. We did it. Today we welcomed Rosie the zwerge kaninchen (dwarf bunny) into our lives. Here in Germany, a bunny if a fairly common pet. Over a million people have them--as pets. Others raise larger rabbits for food.

Maddie spent most of the day either watching Rosie in her house or petting her. Since bunnies are prey animals, you can imagine they're a little nervous, so we'll be holding her a lot over the next week or so to let her get used to us. Even the person who was least enthusiastic about acquiring a pet (that would be me) has to admit, she's pretty cute.

In other German experiences, I was able to Uberweissen for the first time all by myself yesterday. No, it's not something illegal. It's paying a bill--German style. They don't use checks here at all. Most payments are set up by automatice draft, but if you have random payments--say a membership fee in the American Women's Club--then you go to the bank and use this machine next to the ATM. You put in the name of the oraganization you want to pay, their bank and two different series of numbers. Skip was so busy last week that he didn't have time and the fee was due. It was either figure out how to use the machine when all was in German, or go to the people in the bank and ask them to speak English. I avoid the latter if at all possible. It seems rude to ask people in THEIR country to speak YOUR language. Basic stuff I can muddle through, but banking language is not part of my vocab. I was able to fake my way through the machine because I had an English teacher mom who taught me that if you understan the root of the word, you can generally figure out what the word means. It works in Germany, too.

One more tidbit: tonight we ate at the Road Stop Cafe in Essen. It's "American style" food--including burgers, which are hard to come by here. The couple sitting behind us at theirs with a knife and fork. We looked like complete Philistines!