Potato One

Went back to the health food store. Now that I’d found it, I really wanted to find out what they have. It’s small, like not even as big as the Lakewood Vitamin Cottage when my mom used to go when I was a kid. Not big enough to shop there regularly (since it is about 40 minutes away), but I’ll be back. They had a tiny section of organic produce, skin care stuff, and snacks, crackers, pastas, etc. No soybean pasta (if I shop there more maybe I’ll recommend it to them), but I got some whole grain lasagna noodles, some tofu noodles and some Amaranth flour crackers that were awesome! I like wholegrain flavors so I don’t know that they’d appeal to everyone, but Wee Laddie & I had to refrain from gorging on them! (One of the upsides of whole grains is that they’re also pretty filling, so we didn’t eat the whole bag.)

Often, on the way to meet Guitarman for lunch, I’ll ask Wee Laddie which mess hall he’d like to eat at. I started trying to differentiate them by “big one” and “little one,” but then he would say, “Baseball one?” ‘cause one has sports memorabilia, so they keep being renamed. Today he told me, “Potato one.” So I’m wracking my brain, trying to figure out which one is the potato one. He tries to better describe it by mentioning mushrooms. Huh? Then it dawns on me: he’s talking about Taco Bell, which is our substitute for Chipotle. (I know, some of you are cringing, but it’s all we’ve got for a Mexican meal “out” so we go.) We go there whenever we go to Würzburg. Oh hell, I’ll admit it… sometimes it’s a good 50% of the reason for going to Würzburg. Yup, we will drive 1.5 hrs for a taco. (Beat that!)

In the afternoon we went to the Möbelhof to look for shelves. I remembered that they had some inexpensive ones that just attach to the wall (those nice ones that don’t have visible brackets or anything). Well, that turned out to be quite the ordeal! Partly due to the language thing, but partly not. One of the shelves was the display and they apparently didn’t have ANY other ones in stock anywhere in that color (white). The other was a lower price for the display one and they had ONE other one in the warehouse. The saleswoman’s English was, of course, way better than my German, but we kind of got stuck on “austellung.” She was searching for the word, but I got it from her description: display. The ones that were in stock were “in lager.” I thought it meant something about the warehouse (though I also see “warenausgabe” for things you have to go pick up at another part of the store) so I had to look it up when I got home.

If nothing else, it’s been very humbling to live in a place where I don’t speak the dominant language. I am very fortunate to speak English, at least, since so many of the people here know it. It must be harder for, say, the Turks who move here, because although there are many of them, I doubt that many Germans speak Turkish. You know, like Americans who speak Spanish. I often wish that I could explain to people that I’ve only been here a few months and didn’t know I was coming much beforehand. Could be a lot worse. I could be one of those people who has lived here 5 years and is just now getting around to taking a German class. (No offense to those people, I just don’t think I could live with the guilt!)