trip to germany

So I had to go Wolfsburg Germany for a little over a week. Kind of funny how your body reacts when you go to a western country after being in China for a few months. The first thing you do is look for the sun, which of course I never saw in my 9 days. Rainy and 35 every day. Come on Germany, you can do better.
Then there's the breakfast. Oh sweet love. Fresh bread. Real cheese made from cow's milk. Coffee. cereal. Meats. Coffee. I was late for work every day as I thought it would be in my best interest to have just one more roll with nutella before I left.
Then there was the dinners. Meat and potatoes. And beer. And sour cream, which also came from a real cow. Had to attach the baked potato on my first night. It was like a shrine to the sour cream gods. I was eating the sour cream plain for the first 5 or 6 bites and thought I might need to slow down. I couldn't finish all the sour cream and it made me a little sad knowing what my wife would have done for just a spoonful of the yummy creamy stuff.

As a side note, I went out for dinner with my chinese customer one night. I asked them how they liked Germany. They said they hated it. I asked them why, besides the obvious answer that Germans live there. They had two complaints. 1) Everything is closed on Sunday. They work all day every day and then take off Sunday. The one day they don't work is the one day they can't do anything in town so they have to just sit in their rooms or walk around their little town. OK. I'll give em that one. 2) The food. 'really?' I say. 'for sure' they say. 'So when you go back home, what is the first food you have to have when you get off the plane?' I ask. Chinese guy #1: 'Noodles'. Huh. Chinese guy #2: 'Tofu'. OK, I'm not a cultural imperialist, but tofu? It seems to me that maybe the west has something more to offer than tofu.

I also thought while I was walking around downtown wolfsburg that I've been poking at the chinese for a couple months now. But there I was in the heart of cultured Europe in the alt stadt where they were getting ready for the Weinachtsmarkt and there it was. The 'al bundy shuh outlet'. Including the picture of the bundy family in case you didn't get the allusion to the really bad TV program from the 90's. I got to hand it to them for knowing their obscure TV trivia as Al bundy was a shoe salesman on the show, but do you really build a business franchise on that tidbit. Maybe all of our cultures are just a bit crazier than we like to admit and we just choose to overlook the nutty things that happen right under our noses every day. So here's to the Al Bundy Shuh outlet in Germany for opening my eyes and teaching me a lesson.

There was also the strange little russian theme park just north of town. It had these big russian architecture buildings right on the side of the road. Then there were windmills. Everywhere. It was a strange little town, but we were only a few miles from the old DDR border. I just assumed there was some cultural exchanges that took place after the wall came down. I know that doesn't make any sense, but I couldn't come with any kind of explanation and I can't read german well enough to know any better.

So here's to praying for a peaceful resolution on the korean peninsula. This has become a bit more important to us as a family as our present location is just slightly further than a nine iron from the border. Our school also has a lot of kids from korea so its quite the point of conversation with them. Strange world.