Five hundred miles

Well, we were close to 500 miles on our way to San Antonio and back. Just a little tour to visit the – as we were told – most beautiful city in Texas and a little taste of the roadtrip we have to expect when transferring ourselves to Minnesota. However, heading straight west, we were driving into the sunset …

While Alex was driving all the way to San Antonio because I am used to be a little dizzy after torturing my adult pupils with German articles and plural forms, I was allowed to be the one behind the wheel on the quite empty highway I-10 on our way back. We allowed me to do so despite the lack of insurance with me driving (a German DL and twelve years of driving means nothing for our insurance company) – now heading east through the middle of nowhere and some German sounding towns and villages along the highway. We mostly passed trucks and surprisingly, the splendid speed limit was 75 mph = 120km/h, my favourite pace even on German highways.

In spite of being eight years old, our car has a feature called cruise control – which even works! But not being used to it, it was really an odd feeling when the car itself takes over controlling the speed, especially when accelerating. But I got used to it quite fast and would not want to miss it again – above all on our way to Minnesota! Well, you always have to be prepared for hitting the brakes, but being able to move or even cross your legs while driving is definitely a huge plus!

My first highway experience showed a lot of similarities to Germany. Some truck drivers being in a hurry and passing every other vehicle on the road. Or what we call “Elefantenrennen” (literally: elephants’ race) when two trucks are kind of dueling while one overtakes the other and you get stuck behind them for miles … Refreshingly, there was the big difference that no(!) car overtakes at high speed on the left lane. Really: no one! Nothing like in Germany as Tom Hanks reported his experience in an interview: “No matter how fast you go on the Autobahn, someone is always faster – and passing as a lightning!” On I-10 everybody seems content with chugging along at 70 to 75 mph – or is afraid of the fines …

However, the biggest and most confusing difference was that only orange signs of Road Work Ahead and „left lane closing“ were the only thing announcing – well: road work. In Germany, the speed limit would step by step have been put down to around 40 mph ahead of the lane closure – but nothing like that happened here. Nothing. Nada. I spend half an hour(!) after passing the roadwork making jokes about coming to terms with the – in my opinion – missing regulation of the speed limit. Well, the road work was about renewing the blacktop; one could see that easily for three reasons:

1. Our lane had already been beveled and driving was quite noisy;
2. The left lane was currently being fixed by mills and coned off – with single cones standing dangerously close or in our lane;
3. The shoulder on our right had already been renewed causing a two inch high edge on the lane.

I was driving through this continuously talking to myself how surreal the lack of a speed limit was in this situation. Imagine someone driving through this at the speed of 75 mph … But somehow in this case the US relies on common sense to drive carefully.

This leads me to the question if we Germans lack common sense …

I can see Germans!

My best male (and gay) friend told me more than once that I have a good sensor or radar for gay people. Today I noticed that I – living overseas – developed one for German tourists as well. Waiting for the MetroRail at Main Street Square in downtown Houston, I noticed three white people asking an elderly (white) woman for advice where to go to. Groups of white people going by MetroRail must be tourists when they are older than students. And they were. And using public transport made them European because – frankly spoken – every American would use his car to discover foreign cities.

Two middle-aged women and one man, foreigners, speaking as little as necessary caught my attention. I assumed they were German not because of the man wearing white socks in sandals what he did not do. I watched them answering with gestures when somebody excused for passing by too close. That felt kind of familiar to me because I did not know how to react with words when I first came here. And then I saw the man’s mustache, trimmed like most men from the German World Cup Team in 1990 and was sure about their origin: “Es gibt nur einen Rudi Voeller!” - "There is only one Rudi Voeller!", a German fan song for him:

Finally, I was sure they were German when they talked to each other on the train – I sat too far away to start a conversation with them. When they left the MetroRail at Museum District (I foresaw that, too), I thought about wishing them a nice time in Houston (in German, of course) just to see their surprised faces – but did not want to be “the woman yelling at the MetroRail in a foreign language no one understands”. Plus, the people behind me were talking too loud anyway.

To my surprise, I was again mistaken for being British today by the Vietnamese hairdresser I went to. Obviously, the lack of a mustache makes being German less obvious …

At the post office ...

Okay, let us not start with the old stuff, but with what happened to me today and was too weird not to post.

I went to the post office in order to pick up a package for Alex. While some post agencies in Germany are opened from 8:00am till 8:00pm, the ordinary post office over here stucks on opening hours from 9:00am till 5:00pm. And that is really great for those who have regular working hours … But Alex could send me as his agent – lucky guy, he is. After the temperatures have risen compared to yesterday, I changed my long-sleeved to a t-shirt, this one:

As a result, the guy after whom I lined up, greeted me by pointing at me saying “Matroshka!!!” – and I was too startled to answer anything else but “Yeah!” While the guy was already served, another woman lined up behind me, staring at the only application on my back and finally asking: “What kind of application is that?” – “Those are Russian dolls, so called Matroshkas.“ I replied. „Oh, they are pretty!“ the woman continued enthusingly and I explained the nested system of those dolls: “like an onion, you know”. And while it was my turn to be served know, the woman kept a look on her face like she now had something to seriously think about ...

However, I kept on talking with the mailwoman behind the counter because I bought two sheets of each 10ct and 5ct-stamps. Together with two “forever”-stamps it equals the postage for overseas – and a lot of different stamps on the envelope to look at. "But we have 105ct-stamps as well" the mailwoman nearly screamed - "but they start being boring while there is a wide variety of forever-stamps" I replied. "I had no idea our stamps are so much fun to look at" the mailwoman resigned.

Conclusion of today: Someone labeled me “talkative” unseen. And I dressed far too foreign or European – I might go back to what Steph has called “You look really Texan!” recently …

Introduction

Dear future followers,

I started blogging only in order to give our friends and family a slight view inside our experiences when discovering the "American Way of Life" - and therefore wrote in German.

According to our friends here, my writing skills and what I have to tell REQUIRE a translation to English "because it is so funny even by (or because of?) using the google translator". And so I was talked into bilingual blogging. I beg your pardon for not being native in English and all the mistakes that will occur dued to that. For example, I still struggle hard with prepositions.

ashouston.blogspot.com is where I will always post first and then translate as best I can do to English. Maybe some born US-citizens are interested in the paperwork legal aliens have to pass or how the USA are seen through German eyes as well. I have already heard more than once that illegal aliens may have an easier start.

Thank you, Steph and Matt, for talking me into this!

Sandra
(first "real" posts coming up soon)

(No, we are neither "Englishmen" nor "in New York", but "legal aliens".)