So where DO you live? - Part II

I'm not really a tourist any more in Germany. Sure, there are lots of places I haven't been (M-V, much of eastern Germany, most of Bavaria and NRW, Bremen, Saarland), and lots of places I have (everywhere else). There are lots of aspects of German culture left to be discovered, I am sure, but I am generally familiar with life in Germany. Now I have a visitor from the US here, with whom I am touring most of my old haunts, and I am remembering what it was like when I first arrived here, what things fascinated or confounded me. I remember loving red tile roofs, being constantly perplexed by the toilet flush mechanism and the window openings, overwhelmed by the cheese selection and floored by the multitude of instructions on everything. Now I get to see all of this out of the eyes of a 'tourist' long after having forgotten them myself. Sometimes I feel I am overbearing in my commentary, over-explaining aspects of culture that are obvious or self-explanatory, and other times I forget to impart crucial information such as basic traffic laws while bike riding. Oops.



We've been doing the tourist thing, which in Germany seems to mean German retirees. We took a cruise on the Rhine river to see the castles and the scenery, we went to Lake Constance (where I had never been) and to France (to Colmar, where I had also never been) and the Baltic (where I definately have been).

Sometimes I forget that German people have a sense of humor. Perhaps it's different in southern germany, but most of the time when someone yells out something to me, I expect it to be some kind of complaint or criticism. Yesterday we were jogging and I was surprised when someone yelled out that it was high time to buy a bicycle. Bicycling itself has been fun, particularly the look of sheer terror on my friend's face when riding in traffic....



There is apparently a kind of tequila ("gold") which is served with orange slices and lemon. And it is possible for seven people to eat two cakes in one day. Yesterday we went riding and rode down to the beach in order to ride the horses in the water. My friend's horse wasn't particularly interested in touching the water, stubborn as she was, so I traded my pony for hers because mine had been happily splashing his way up and down the coast and scaring off the swedish tourists. And indeed, as soon as we switched he continued splashing happily up and down the coast and out of the water, where he executed a sharp turn to the right and left my friend looking like the sandman on the ground. Oops. We tried to go sailing later in the day but there was a tear in the mainsail, so we could only sail with the jib (the sail n the front) and still made 6 and a half knots.

Things to wikipedia:
- physics of sailing
- the Hanseatic League
- Alsace Lorraine
- where cobblestones come from
- how the bells fell down in Lübeck
- jellyfish - do they run in flocks?
- terms in English for english tack and sailing :) oops...