Gedankbar Tag/Schwarzer Freitag

We've had our noses to the grindstone lately with work and language classes, so no fun adventures to blog post about. Yesterday was Thanksgiving, but it was just like a normal day here, except we threw a surprise breakfast for my advisor, Andreas. It was sort of like Thanksgiving in that it was celebratory and I got up early to make food. I fried potatoes and bacon to represent the best of America, and I even got a little American flag to present with my food and ketchup at the breakfast.

Thanksgiving doesn't really exist here, so I just made up the German names for our holidays in the blog title. I can do that now since I'm soooo good at German. I can even understand like 20% of the "Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten" (literally "slowly spoken news") from the Deutsche Welle. Black Friday doesn't exist here either, so it was disappointing that when we went to purchase a frozen turkey today for our upcoming Thanksgiving celebration on Saturday, it wasn't on sale! Frozen turkey should definitely go on sale the day after Thanksgiving. Well, at least we didn't get pepper-sprayed while purchasing our turkey. Pepper spray would be more useful here as a way to spice up the food rather than offensively shop.

In lieu of not having any exciting stories to tell you, I will give you a list of random stuff about Germany:

-You need a Euro piece to release a shopping cart or use a locker at the gym. When you bring the cart back or finish using the locker, you get the money back. Joe thinks this is why there aren't shopping cars littered throughout parking lots. Actually there aren't very many parking lots.

-Signs that say "Frei" (free) with a picture of a bike indicate that bikes can ride there and not, as we erroneously though, that bikes can't ride there.

-People speak to children and dogs in German, like we are actually in Germany or something.

-People don't pick up after their dogs, so that it is entirely possibly that you are innocently walking down the street when your heel smooshes into fresh dog-doo. Not from personal experience or anything...

-Most milk is whole milk (3.8% fat) and the yogurt has about that much fat as well. I love this. Joe hates this.

-People put used household items to the sidewalk for pickup, but usually other Germans just take it. I got this really nice spicerack on while out on a run one morning, and Joe got a fancy office chair from our neighbor.

-There are no dryers for laundry. Sad face.

-Couples go for a walk together on Sundays.

-There are special escalators for shopping carts in multi-level stores. The shopping cart wheels have a special locking device so they don't slide down.

-Most glass and plastic beverage containers are refilled, so you pay a deposit when you buy them, and you get it back when you bring the bottles back to the store. Then you have store credit. Beverages, including beer are actually quite cheap.

-When it is foggy and there is an accident on the Autobahn, it involves hundreds of cars.

-The bikes have generators built into the wheels to power the lights.

(Most of these random facts were generated by Joe, so I have to give him some Blog-credit)