Auf Wiedersehen Germany, Ello London!
As I say good bye to Germany and move on to London, I must reflect on an awkward moment that came about during my stay.
One evening, while enjoying champagne in der Garten at sunset (this was a normal occurance, mind you) my lovely hosts and one of their neighbors who had joined our little party asked me to play the guitar for them. I complied, but the thing is, I haven’t practiced in quite some time. I’ve been a bit preoccupied with readying myself for my journey across the world. So to calm my nerves I downed 1…2…several glasses of champagne. I got through my performance, stood up to go back up to their 5th floor apartment and woo wee…was I drunkity drunk drunk. That elevator ride was a blast, let me tell you. This is not the awkward moment. I am not awkward when I am drunk. I am very cool and endearing—so I’ve been told. The awkward moment was when, the next morning, I woke up, feeling just swell, as you can imagine and made my way into the kitchen for breakfast.
There was sweet old Manfred—pardon me: handsome, svelte Manfred (he would not appreciate me using the word ‘old’)—reading the morning paper and chomping away at Italian cold cuts and bread while two hangers covered in my most colorful stringtangas hung in the doorway. ‘Stringtanga’ friends, is the German word for ‘thongs.’ I thought it was silly.
In my champagne induced fog during the previous night, I had forgotten that I agreed to give Marita some clothing for washing and did not think about where they might end up to dry. Mortified, I snagged my incriminating delicates and hurriedly shoved them into my suitcase.
When I returned to the kitchen, Manfred calmly offered me some Swiss yogurt and fresh fruit. It seemed that he did not notice my embarrassing little episode but let’s just say that I now have a nice little stock pile of laundry that I will do myself once we reach the UK.
A second brief, slightly awkward moment was when my Nana and I paid a visit to the Staats Gallery to find the particular Otto Dix painting that was not included at the Kunts museum (We found it! See below!)
As we approached the desk to purchase our passes, the receptionist, a tall, very good looking man with the most perfect teeth I have ever seen began to speak to us in German about the specific direction we needed to go to find my Otto Dix painting. As I tried to stumble along and come back with some witty remark in German to impress Herr Hottiepants, like “How you doin’ sexual?,” he suddenly switched into English sensing how incompetent I was with German. This is what’s tricky about the Germans, the vast majority seem to know a decent amount of English and its always a surprise when they start speaking to you in the language you understand…so it’s not advisable to say things like “How you doin sexual?” in English or otherwise…
All in all, my visit to Germany was fantastic and despite the language barriers it was a great start to my trip.
I am now in London sleeping with King Henry VIII. More to come on that later…
