just john

Was briefly hesitant about recording this here but, hey, it's the record of my time here in Germany. I can't believe the sheer volume of drivel I've already produced with about 75% of my time here left to go.

Funny, but it's also been brought up to me that one of my ex's is reading this, probably hunched forward into her computer, twisting her bony little fingers and biting her lower lip in anticipation of finding out what? On to better things...

(I seem to have left out the premise for the following paragraphs on the first writing so I came back and filled it in. Would also have preferred square brackets for this particular notation but I couldn't find them on my German keyboard.) At any rate, I went out with a couple of guys from work this last Friday.

We started out by heading to the center of Stuttgart for the Stadtfest (city festival) which is another excellent excuse to go out and drink beer. It is not to be confused with the spring fest, summer fest, music fest, fall fest, Weinachtsfest (Xmas), or any of the others. This particular weekend's excuse for drinking was the Stadtfest. I believe German planning really showcases itself with all of the obligatory drinking holidays built into the calendar. It was crowded so we decided, after a couple of beers, to make a round of the clubs, finally ending up at a split level club with rock upstairs and electronic downstairs. DJs up and down were both phenomenal and were live mixing vinyl - no cover charge. One of the joys of big city life perhaps.

As much of the coversation as possible was in German but I tend to break down after a few hours or when I need some fine details. Still, it was good practice away from work. The club ended up crowded as well with a lot of pushing to get through. That is something that still grates on me. I'm sure it's part large city and part cultural difference. Of course, it led to an akward moment. We had two women with us. They were getting a lot of battering from the crowd. One guy was a little too insistent with his direction through the girls.

I was raised in the South.

THE SOUTH, not south beach, South America, or even southern California. The old, backward, redneck, southern United States where women still have doors opened for them and people say "sir" and "mam" to their elders. I never picked up the accent and mixing me with rednecks is akin to dumping anti-matter into a room but I still retain a lot of the more chivalrous (for lack of a better term) values. So, I'm embarrassed to say there was some shoving back and a few uncomfortable moments of hard staring while the little guy (most people would say "average") considered his options. Fortunately, the best choice turned out to be continuing on his way and we got back to our conversation. Talking outside the bar later, it turns out I wasn't out of line for the situation and small town Germans (sometimes) are raised the same way I was. A brief but memorable non-incident that gave me a chance to learn something from another culture.

We packed it in around 3:00am and I had to take the night bus, full of drunk people, back home at 3:33am.

One other interesting thing from last night was the start of a new smoking law in Germany on August 1. They are not allowed to do it here in restaurants any longer but the clubs seem to have either decided to follow the law as well or there is some ambiguity about where it applies. The net result was clean air in the bars. Very cool.