DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Here is the most incongruous thing about Germany: there’s always a radio with American pop music playing in the background. So although I don’t understand more than every 6th word of the conversation, I can sing along with Beat It.

This may not be a universally German experience, I admit, insofar as it doesn’t regard soccer or automobiles or fizzy water or fatty breakfast spreads or beer or tile floors or fried sausages (or fried anything) or stores closed on Sunday or “coffee and cake” or eating Ricola in the car or gluten-free whole-grain conglomerations that have more in common with construction materials than bread or hiking or smoking (before, during, and after meals; in restaurants, in cars, and in desperation), or soup served by the “plate,” or warm Coke, or the national and pervasive disinterest in ice, or old-town downtown plazas with families of shoppers trodding under overcast skies across cobblestone courtyards among stores that are as likely as not to have English signage, or be selling shoes, and playing American pop music, which sort of brings us full circle.

Restaurants here confuse me. The service is free, in the sense that you don’t have to pay extra for it, but the water is not, in the sense that you do.