Back to Basics

When I started this blog, it was intended as a public journal consisting of my observations as a foreigner in a foreign land. A lot has happened in my life since October and it has become more of a catch all for anything I wanted to say or observe about anything. So...I decided a post about Germanities was long over due and really what better time than now, as the sun stays out longer and summer makes its way in Germans are showing me a new side of their culture. The major sign it is summer in Germany is the ice cream. This time of year, it is almost impossible to walk down town without seeing a variety of people strolling along eating ice cream, each cone more delicious looking than the previous. It is so hard to not stop at the next Italian eis shop and get a scoopfor myself. Which leads to me eating ice cream just as much as the next German. The most distresing thing I have discovered anout summer here is that A/C is not standard! My first car was a 1993 Mazda Protege (and I loved it!) with manual windows and locks but it had air conditioning. Patrick's 1997 Audi A4 has power locks, power windows but no A/C. It is not that the A/C is broken or needs a recharge, it simply does not exist. This is unheard of in my world where my dad called to ask if my A/C was broken last summer when he borrowed my car and couldn't get the cooling system below 65*F! I've become accoustomed to an sirconditioned life in my parents' home, the office I worked in for years and in cars. Even if I didn't use it, it was always an option. I don't expect my apt. to have air con but the language school I work in doesn't even hav it! To make things even hotter, the doors and windors must be shut during lessons to avoid noise pollution AND Germans are of the belief that if a fan blows on you, you will get sick, then you will have to wear a scarf to heal and who wants that in the summer. Seriously, I had to face the fan towards the closed windows! Nothing porductive came out of that but we had :air circulation" haha welcome to Germany. The thing I find the oddest is that in the middle of companies focusing on being environmentaly friendly, air con is just begining to catch on here, to hell with the environment, Germans are inconsistant anyway!