Rain Man

My girlfriend Tammy calls me her rain man, ‘cause I’ve got a freaky memory for numbers. I can still remember the phone numbers of my best friends from kindergarten and 3rd grade, amongst other childhood friends. And back in the days when my girlfriend Milo & I were going to bars/clubs a lot, I could actually remember a guy’s phone number (even after drinking) until I got to the car/home & could write it down.

But for some reason, it took me months to learn our phone number here. (In fact I still never feel quite certain that I’m giving the right number.) I suppose it’s because it’s a different number of digits and in a different pattern than what I’m used to. I still don’t know Guitarman’s cell or work numbers or my own cell number.

The numbers here have city codes first, but those aren’t all the same length. Like Parsberg is 09492 and Regensburg is 0941. And to further confuse matters, the phone numbers themselves don’t have a consistent number of digits. Here’s an example from a couple of restaurants in town:
09492 / 278 (Rudi Rödl)
09492 / 905170 (Gasthof-Restaurant Bärenkeller)

I guess when they run out of numbers they just tack on another digit. Reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where they got the new area code and it was considered uncool to have the new one.