Germany part 3

Over the past two weeks, I have gotten to know Frank, my across the street neighbor who can speak a good deal of English. He is a really nice old guy who has shown me some cool trails to ride my Specialized Hard Tail mountan bike. Anyways, I was invited to his birthday party on Saturday night along with my host family. There were a good number of people at the party and I managed to make casual conversation with another neighbor, a German teacher, who annoyingly kept making me enunciate my Z’s as Ssssss. Just before she was about to give me a lesson in how to roll my R’s (I am convinced it is a skill of the tonsils), Frank stepped in and “saved” me...introducing me to some of his friends and other neighbors. I suddenly found myself surrounded by Germans…all armed with some sort of question to ask me (ranging from American Indians to Kyoto). One of the party guests then asked me to tell her about the program I am in, which I was happy to do because it was easy enough to translate. I began by telling the group that the name of the program in Germany is “Parliamentarisches Patenschafts Programm,” or PPP. Up until that moment, everything I had said carried absolutely no significance to Sophie (the 4 year old). She ran up to me and said (translated): PP? Eliza, do you have to go PP? Did you know that men have penises? EVERYONE laughed for what seems like a lifetime and I was mortified…but it did quickly end the game of Interrogate the American…thank goodness.

The following night I babysat Sophie and as a result, I have decided never to have children. The night began with playing a gigantic game of memory, which I lost at. Usually, I would tell myself that I am pathetic to lose to a 4 year old at a simple memorization game. Not this time, because the memory game was “Fairy Edition.” A fairy on a pink flower is not the match to fairy on a purple flower. I’m pretty sure that the creators of that game have been condemned to hell by more people than just me. Anyways, we ate German pancakes (as close as I can get to a tortilla) for dinner and Sophie refused to eat the rolled up pancake with a fork and knife- only with her hands. She was showing off her power over me and taking quick bites of the pancake when she suddenly turned bright red and said “oweeee.” She withdrew the freshly bitten finger from her mouth and started to cry, I started to laugh. She got pissed off at me and left the table, running to go outside…and WHACK, she ran smack into the newly washed glass door. She started hysterically crying then and I saw that her nose was bleeding profusely…on the carpet. I picked her up and stuck her in the bathroom where she wouldn’t stain anything else and thought back to my wilderness first aid training days and stuck a tampon up one nostril (with effort) and a tissue up the other. Thankfully, she stopped crying and found the new elongation to her nose comical. I decided that it would be best for her to go straight to bed, so I gave her a quick bath and read her the abridged version of Ashenputtel (Cinderella). The rest of the story goes that I waited until Peter and Rita got home and told them what had happened. They checked on Sophie and made sure that she was still breathing, then thanked me for babysitting. Sunday morning, Sophie had 2 black eyes (but no broken nose) and I am officially the worst babysitter EVER. Oh, also…As decreed by Sophie, I now have to put 50 cents in a jar for every time I laugh at Sophie at the dinner table.

Last week, all of the Americans visited the Furstenberg Brewery and upon arrival, we were told to wait by the gates for our tour guide to come. While doing so, I felt as if I were holding the golden ticket for entry into Wonka’s Chocolate Factory- for adults. The gates were tall and pink, with shiny smoke stacks in the distance etched with FURSTENBERG running down the sides in large blue letters. The gates then magically opened and our tour guide appeared. The Wonka illusion promptly ended when the tour guide opened his mouth, because I couldn’t understand a damn word that was coming out of it. An hour and a half of wheat, hops, and antique machines later, we were given a beer stein, a pretzel, and unlimited supply of freshly brewed beer. It was a light colored wheat beer and absolutely delicious. These Germans definitely know what they are doing when it comes to beer.