Germany and culture shock

Culture Shock! The things that we find interesting these days deal with culture adjustment or culture shock. An adjustment is dealing with kids not being welcomed in most dining establishments, unless they are quieter than the adults that is, which somehow many Hamburg children seem to be. Culture shock is dealing with park etiquette - kids hitting and spitting at Sasha and Jonas or splashing me to the point that my dress is soaked. The mothers in these situations tend to either say nothing or vehemently defend their children. Yup, crazy but true. I had hoped that this part of German culture was a myth that the few other foreigners we had met were making up, but a few months into our adventure we have experienced it for ourselves on several occasions.

Other things that make us smile, smirk or grimace...., the worlds worst ketchup and possibly the worlds best mustard, no ice cubes anywhere (except in a mojito:-), beautiful shoe repair, ice-cream for only 80 cents a scoop, beach clubs with no beach in site, never saying "don't worry about the penny" (17.01 better have that one cent), little samples being given as "gifts" from the store, price of entry into a toilet bares no correlation to its cleanliness, meeting really friendly, smiley peple at sports events when in the "outside world" people never smiling despite you greeting them with a beaming smile, people bumping into you without saying sorry, straight men proudly wearing pastels, pink Lacoste and La Martina shirts indicating your status in the Schickeria, the worst cappuccino foam ever, never breaking traffic rules or rules of any kind, Jakub running every red light on his bike just to make things interesting!

Our apartment is beautiful but it lacks a balcony, an essential feature in this heat. All of the older flats in this building have at least 3 balconies so I have been turning a little green. To counter this Jakub grabbed me and a bottle of wine and took me onto our roof. We hid out there one night, right above the sky light in the boys room.









The boys headed to the zoo today to give me a much needed break. I had a great run in the rain and lazed about reading a chic mag and drinking a latte!