Herzlich willkommen nach Deutschland!

  Lesley and I are currently in Germany.  We are celebrating the marriage of her son, Alex, to Melanie, twice!  In Germany, you have a civil marriage and, if you want, you can have a 'church' wedding or any variation of it, which is what they did.  It has been great fun, meeting people for the first time or again.  After all the festivities, they will get away from it all and go to Bali.
  It is taking me longer to type this because the German keyboard has some subtle differences and I frequently have to stop and make corrections.  This is my second visit to the country and, like last time, I am wishing I could speak the language.  I am planning on rectifying that during the very near future and hopefully will be a little more interactive next time.  Besides, it will be handy to have a working knowledge of the language when Lesley is on the phone talking to family in Germany and I can make sure she isn´t speaking ill of me! :-) The primary reason we are here is to attend Lesley's son's (Alex) wedding.  We left home on the 13th and return on the 23rd.  

  I have to admit Coke tastes a bit better here.  They use sugar like it use to be in the U.S. instead of high fructose corn syrup like they do now.  The McDonald burger's taste the same (yummy) but I can't get them to put ketchup on it instead of mayonnaise!  The roads are very narrow, but ön some roads they have something clever that we should have in the states;  when you approach a traffic light, there is another light that you come to first that will flash yellow a few seconds before the traffic light is about to turn red.  Surprisingly for a country that is so old, there are still a lot of forests, open land, and vegetation and that results in a very green outdoors, more so then home, except, maybe Vermont.  The vegetables are better here, greener lettuce, redder tomatoes, and generally fresher.  In some ways the buildings are built better, in other ways not.  The ceilings are always a minimum of nine feet high.  I am not impressed with their electrical wiring methods.  There roofing is better, they are always tile or slate where in the U.S. you only sometimes see that, but mostly we have asphalt shingles.  The windows are cool, they open inward like a door (easier to clean) and also tilt open at the top using a double hinge system.  I guess I can go on and on about this stuff!

  Air travel on this trip (and most trips these days!) was so-so.  The flight over was ok but our baggage was lost for two days and they didn't hurt themselves resolving the problem.  They did have a TV screen for each seat with a decent collection of things to watch.  I saw The Green Hornet and Tron.    

  I probably drive anyone around me who speaks English crazy (especially Lesley) with my endless questions.  There are so many curious things that I see that are different from home so I turn into a little kid.  Twice I have been spanked for talking too much.

  Auf wiedersehen!