Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer?

It's been said that Germans build such great products because they don't want to go around being nice while they fix them. Making jokes about Germans is allowed now: Germans are the new Poles ever since the Poles got IT and hard currency. If they won a tennis tournament, they would be considered Europeans.

Anyway, I have some close German friends so I guess I am allowed to tell stories about Germans. I always enjoy trips to visit them, since the four hours and 26 minutes we plan ahead of time to spend together for the visit is great. Last time I was in Bremen, we had just left a biergarten and were waiting to cross the street. It was the middle of the night, there was no traffic in either direction, but the crosswalk signal had not changed. I stepped out to cross against the light, and my friend hissed "Nein! In Germany, we do not cross against the signal!" Chastened, I stepped back onto the sidewalk. However, my friend went on to cross the street adding "But, in Germany... we finish what we started."

I came back to Germany for this particular friend's wedding, and the best part was the salute by the his- and hers- football teams. It was like some kind of European fantasy: as they exited the marriage hall, his team stood in full uniform on the right and hers on the left and the bride and groom ran down the row, yelling football cheers.

We went back to her parents' house for refreshments and she advised me to get a drink from the beer refrigerator. Her family home had a separate appliance- simply for chilling beer. Now that's a piece of furnishing I can get behind. 

The low point of the wedding for me was trying to find the hotel I was staying at after the reception. Austere to the point of invisible, my dormitory-like accommodations were impossible to identify from the front of the building. I had made a point of writing down the address, only to find that 523 "Einbahnstraße" actually meant "one way street." 

The title of this post, by the way, is the opening to Monty Python's funniest joke in the world. It is rendered 60,000 times more potent in German, which is why I cannot finish it here.

2011 Moira G Gallaga ©