My left heel hasn’t been right since I tripped down the steps in the Bahnhof on the way to a beer festival a couple weeks ago, the traditional Bavarian Trachten shoes a half-size too big, making it that much harder… Read More ›
travel
The piper will lead us to reason
At the German school, the kids get dismissed for five minutes between every class to go outside and get some fresh air or have a smoke, some of the younger ones play on the climbing bars and hang upside down… Read More ›
Americans just think they can go anywhere (2)
We met Eberhard and drove to the Landratsamt to get our new/used German car registered, by the police station and other government offices where he worked as a cop for 40 years. We took a number and sat, and the… Read More ›
De do do do, Die, Das, Der, Dem
Six years ago we were leaving Germany about this time following a three month sabbatical, and I was returning to work. It may have been auspicious, I had a blowout on the highway and had to call roadside assistance my first… Read More ›
Who needs Munich when you’ve got the Wasen?
For reasons perhaps too private to get into it’s hard peeing in lederhosen, hard undoing the suspenders through the clasps when you’ve been drinking, hard clearing the edge of the leather because they don’t come with flies or barn doors,… Read More ›
Leaves clawing the cobblestones
When the French arrive, it’s with armsful of things from France: breads wrapped in brown paper bags, coolers full of cheese, boxes of wine, even duvets for their beds. It feels like a hotel and we lose track of how… Read More ›
Hit by a Cadillac
The fourth night with the Boogie Woogie band at the wine festival here in Germany and it doesn’t sound as loud as it did the first three nights, our ears have gotten used to it. And as we resurface now… Read More ›
The Highly Capable Program Nomination Ends Tomorrow
When I was in school, they called it Gifted. After Gifted came Honours, and after that, was everyone else. Heike’s son Sascha speaks perfect English, with a delicate English accent (he’s 11) and explains how it works here in Germany:… Read More ›
Hearts wrapped in cloth
It sounds like a joke, two Turks and a Kurd in our German class replaced by two Croatian construction workers and an Afghan refugee, but it’s no joke really when we go around the class and say where we’re from,… Read More ›
A ribbon of darkness all the way
There are prehistoric smells in my mom’s laundry area where the drain water from the washer sometimes gathers and the floor’s a stark grey stone material, a peat bog of sphagnum moss collapsing in on itself, which makes a fine… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 