Adventures in Deutschland: Day 9

Today was another more "normal" day. Therese seems to like getting up nice and early lately, meaning that we have a lot of quality time together in the mornings. This morning we wandered down to the city center under a perfectly blue sky. As we passed this fountain that kind of marks the halfway point between our place and the CDC, I thought, "Ha - and the weather forecast was for rain. Good thing I didn't bother bringing my raincoat!" Cue dramatic, troubling music. As I thought this, I looked behind me and, of course, I see these huge ominous gray clouds rolling through the sky in our direction. I decided that maybe Therese and I should hang around the Marktplatz until the storm passed in case we needed to duck into a store to avoid the rain. After a while, we ventured down to the lake where Reese insisted on spending 20 minutes watching the ducks waddle around the grass looking for food scraps. She would get excited everytime the ducks would do something she was doing ("Ducks on green grass like Reese" and "Ducks sit like Reese" and "Ducks eat food like Reese," etc.). She got really excited, jumping up and down, saying, "Duck walking on rocks (the rock path we were on) like Reese!" I looked around. She was definitely pointing at a pigeon.

After the ducks, we took a very loooong walk to Mettnau, a nearby town on the lake, to see where my dad and stepmom will be staying when they visit us at the end of next week. Their place, Art Villa, is only a 15 minute walk from the CDC, but Therese slowed us up by stopping every few steps to pick "flowers." Mettnau is a beautiful area with a lot of "beach" (grass dipping straight into the lake). There are benches lining the entire waterfront so you can sit and enjoy the calming water (or the ducks, depending on your taste). Art Villa looked like a nice place, but someone stared out the window at me as I got out my camera so I didn't take a picture. Anyhow, it's back leads to a small field which dips directly into the water. There are walking paths around the shoreline with small pieces of art representing the stations of the cross every once in a while. I'm sure I willl have more to say about Mettnau once my dad and stepmom get here.

After this adventure, Therese and I split a brezel (pretzel) on a bench in the city garden and then ate lunch with Todd and a high school aged girl from California who is studying at the CDC. There was no German being spoken at our lunch table - even the waitress spoke English :-).

I did have two interesting experiences of German culture today. On the way to the Marktplatz, I saw (and heard) what must have been a very agitated teenage girl yelling at her mother. Still yelling, she stomped off and started kicking a garbage can in anger. She kicked this thing about 5 times. Minding my American manners, I looked away and pretended as if nothing was going on, only to find that EVERYONE around me had blatantly turned, mouths agape, to stare at this teen. Then, a few older ladies near her started telling her off for kicking the garbage can and for yelling. In a related incident, on our way out of the city garden (which hosted what must have been many young children's field trips today), a young boy at the end of a class' line wasn't watching where he was going and ran into a young mother who was pushing a stroller. The teacher stopped the boy and asked him if he was going to apologize. The young mother then sternly told the boy to apologize (say "excuse me"). He did and the woman, still stern, said, "Danke" (thank you). It struck me immediately, after having already witnessed the trashcan scene, how the people seemed to help correct the out-of-line children. Interesting.