....and why are you here??

I've enjoyed being the foreigner again, rather than "just another american", or, as it is more likely consciously put, "just like everyone else". Here I am "the" american, and if a qualifier is necessary, I am "the" american who speaks Germans well. I'm quite confident it is the sole reason they invite me to parties and dinner and such--there has to be SOME reason why people put up with me. Not to make fun of my Germany, but to rather be surprised by the random words I happen to know. It becomes a kind of game, to see if they can throw some word at me and I can come up with the english equivalent. Or a battle of aphorisms, to see who can come up with the most proverbs in a row, in a singular non sequiteur:

Me: "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"
Them: "oh yeah? well, the early bird gets the worm"
Me: "yes, but a penny saved is a penny earned"
Them: "absence makes the heart grow fonder"
Me: "all bark and no bite"
Them: "as much use as a handbrake on a canoe"
Me: ARRRGH

I usually lose. I don't have a quarter century's experience in collecting curiously coined phrases pertaining to time-honored wise-cracks. Usually I come up with something utterly bizarre which, while technically an expression in the German language, is so obscure and outdated that one might, perhaps, a very long time ago under barely memorable circumstances, have heard it from one's grandmother. Which makes it therefore hilarous coming from a 20-something American.

Then there are my "legendary" language mix-ups. I once tried to execute (as in, death penalty) a bit of mobile shelving (I wasn't even angry; the word I was looking for was to "erect" the shelving, which is unfortunately closely related). I told someone that there were condoms in my marmalade (preservatives are things used in jams and jellies, but Preservativen are condoms in German; Konsivierungsstoffe are used in German jam. Oops. There are probably dodgy jokes that may be made of this.

Anyways, I am flying to Spain tomorrow and coming back to good ol Germany by way of Belgium and Holland, where I've never been but where it rains a lot and I hear they have smashing chocolate. Oh, and it rains. The bikes are nice, too. And sometimes it rains. So in order to make myself familiar with the netherlands, I youtubed around and ended up with....this:

To those of you familiar with Dutch camping vans on the Autobahn:


And I wanted to write more, but instead I ended up watching youtube videos about Fernando Torres, whom I swear I am going to marry if I can ever meet. ANYways... saluto et goodnight.