Saturday, August 21, 2010

Germany: second impressions

Germans eat french fries with a fork. They are about evenly split over whether the appropriate condiment is mayonnaise or ketchup. At the lunch counter, there was a woman whose job it was to ask "ketchup, mayo?" and hand out the appropriate packet. Having lived in Utah, when it was my turn I repeated back "Ketchup, mayo." The lady laughed and said something I didn't understand. I assumed she was asking if I meant both, so I nodded. (It worked.)

My hotel bed is sized for an eight year old. I didn't know there was a smaller size than Twin. "Single," I guess. Or "German."

Contrary to stereotype, I was not enormously impressed with the sausage I tried. I have no report to make on the beer.

FrOSCon is weird because 2/3 of the talks are in English (some by Americans, some by non-German speakers from the rest of Europe) but almost all the audience is German. So someone will sit down next to me and start a conversation in German and I have to wait until she pauses to take a breath to tell her she lost me at Hallo.

There is a kids area at the conference, which I've never seen before. I think it's a cool idea, although only really useful at conferences that have a high proportion of locals attending.

It is hot today. Everyone's face is shiny with a faint patina of sweat. Fortunately, I wore a Cassandra t-shirt to present instead of "dressing up" in a long-sleeved shirt the way I usually do. Germans don't believe in air conditioning.

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