Shopping and German TV

The town we live in is Liederbach, which means "song creek" and is named for the creek that runs along the path near our house. It is about 15 minutes from Frankfurt and 15 minutes from school. David is looking forward to a 15 or 20 minute commute to the airport as opposed to 1 to 1-1/2 hours each way in Atlanta.

Today our neighbor Frau Müller presented us with the traditional housewarming gift of salt and bread. The bread is a very large, very delicious round loaf of dark country bread.

We went to our local mall, which is an open air one, to do some shopping and were surprised to see dogs all over the place. Can you imagine seeing a woman at the cosmetics counter at Macy's picking out lipstick with her labrador retriever sitting calmly by her side?

I kept an eye out for the fashion trends. Women with very, very, very low-cut jeans with huge shiny belt buckles to draw your eye and lots of men in capris. It was warm, in the mid-80s, but I'm glad that I remembered that Europeans tend not to wear shorts in public. I wore my jeans and counted only two women in shorts. Otherwise, they were all in long pants, capris or skirts. Later on, a German woman would tell me that she doesn't even own a pair of shorts.

Our mall does have McDonald's, Häagen-Dazs, Starbucks and a Game Stop. There is also a movie theater and this week, every single movie playing is American or British, but dubbed in German. And I never knew that our cell phone provider, T-Mobile, is a German company.

When we got home, David walked into one of the glass doors.

After dinner, we gave the kids an assignment. They were to go to the park and say, "Hello" (Germans do say, "Hallo") to one person. They returned, very proud of themselves. They said hello to two children who turned out to be very friendly, but, alas, they were only visiting the area for the day. I think it did give our kids a bit of confidence, though.

The TV satellite fellow stopped by and hooked up our TV. We had fun flipping though the channels to see what we would recognize. We do have the option of paying extra and receiving some American English-speaking channels, but we'll see how we do with regular German channels for now. In any event, we still saw Spongebob, Caillou, Jimmy Neutron, etc. albeit in German. Spongebob is Spongebob Schwammkopf (Spongebob Spongehead), Patrick is Patrick, and Squidward is Thaddeus (???).