yet more thoughts

yet more:

• Upon arriving in Germany I saw a great many little cars in the size category in which there are very few in the US, and many, many makes and models not sold here. I spent weeks being driven around tiny narrow streets and parking in tiny weird places. The typical American SUV would have just gotten stuck! My last day lisande drove me to the airport in her A-class (not sold in the US) and parked in a tiny space in the parking garage. Some hours later, I got off a plane in Milwaukee, and the first thing I saw in the parking garage here were a bunch of cars big even by American standards: A crew-cab pickup, a big SUV, and a bunch of vans. I’ve always thought there were a lot of ridiculously big vehicles around here, but it was quite a shock to see afresh.
  
  The other observation is, if 1.8 liters and 75 horsepower is enough for 175 km/h, what on Earth do we in the land of the 105 km/h speed limit need such huge engines for? Also interesting to see little cars towing trailers. Here we think you need a truck to tow anything.



• Speaking pretty much no German, it was always a thrill to understand anything. There were some times I could figure out the subject under discussion. I was always happy when someone would ask another for an English word they didn’t know and I knew what they wanted from their question in German. The mining museum was actually especially fun. Like any museum the exhibit provides clear context for the signs, and in the mining museum especially much of the technical jargon was pretty guessable and some chemistry terminology I already knew in German (being a chemist), so I really had a great illusion of competence. Leave the museum and head out into the real world and I don’t have a clue, but it was fun.



• I cannot get over all the tile roofs. A tile roof is an exotic thing in the USA. There, brick. Here, vinyl. I looked out the window and said, “Looks like Europe.” Asked what I meant, I noted that the buildings were not made of plastic. No asphalt shingles. It’s a very different look.

scattering more thoughts

• Who came up with Düsseldorf International Airport’s logo? It’s “Düsseldorf International” with the bottom part of Düsseldof cut off, as if printed by a partly-clogged ink-jet. Bet they paid a lot of money to some design expert for that!



• With all the effort to translate things and search for the proper English terms for things, it was always a source of amusement when something really was simple. “Do you have a term for these kind of candles in English?” “Tea lights.” “Ha! The German is Teelicht.” Or: “I’m going to go to the...um...er... [in hopeful voice] Bäckerei?” “The bakery! It is that easy to remember....” Or in the mining museum: "Nickel, that one is easy." "What is it in English?" "Nickel."
  



• I am allergic to cats, but for some reason I wasn’t bothered by any of the cats I lived with in Germany. No idea why. Maybe even the cats are better in Germany.



• lisande and her husband are just the cutest couple imaginable. It was pretty much worth going to Germany just to see the two of them together.



• lisande got the most of my “is this common over here?” questions, since she was the first to see me. Those roll-up shutters over the windows? “Are those common here?” “Yes... Um, the way you ask, it sounds like maybe they are not common in the US?” “Never seen them before.” Not to mention the ubiquitous tilt-in or swing-wide-open windows. Not only have I not seen such cleaver windows before, it was a surprise to me to see them essentially everywhere, all of them the same. There are many varieties of operable windows in the US.
  
  Some things we know are different, yet still somehow seem surprising to actually see. Of course the electrical power plugs are different, but one gets so very used to the local variety, and ceases to even notice them, that a foreign variety jumps out visually. See this photo for a very foreign-looking (to an American) power strip.