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 …