Observations

Happy weekend! After another week of sheer insanity, I slept in and am having a (now cold) cup of coffee while watching Friends. Oh...and Ben is making his super yummy guacamole. Feeling closer to home already.

We've been in Germany for two weeks now and I've noticed some pretty interesting things about Germany:

• Germans are much more comfortable with their bodies and much less concerned with modesty. There are both good and bad aspects to this. Perhaps if Americans stopped hyper-sexualizing the human body we could step away from pursuing the "perfect body" and just be comfortable with how we look. If showing skin is culturally asexual and the norm, is it then also immodest? Perhaps there is an argument that modesty is very closely related to cultural norms. I think that is for another post though!
• Everyone drives a VW, Audi, or BMW. I'm not kidding. In other news, Ben is on cloud nine because he bought a (very used) Audi TT.
• German swimming pools don't have lifeguards. Because it is the parents' responsibility to watch their kids. Huh.
• On that note, there are a lot of really nice swimming pools around. Like this one. Mac and I met some new friends at the Rodenbach swimming pool (the one in the link) on Thursday. It was Mac's first time in a pool and, like a good mother, I did not take any pictures. He loved it though! The swimming pools here usually sport a large grassy park area surrounding the water, several different pools with different depths, a splash park/wading pool area for littles, and awesome slides and diving boards of different heights. It is so cool! 
• German people stare. They just do. It unsettles me and makes me want to disappear. Granted, maybe I'm doing something that is stare-worthy and just don't know it.
• Food at restaurants seems to always be fresh and prepared from scratch, often by the owner of the restaurant.
• I'm not sure why, but Mac attracts much more attention here than in the States, especially from older Germans.
• German toys are super cool. Check out this and this.
• Recycling is a BIG deal. I'm talking four different trashcans, three of which involve recycling of some sort. The trash guys won't pick up your trash if it's overflowing or if you've sorted stuff into the wrong bin. If you buy bottled drinks, you keep the bottles and then deposit them in machines that give you money back. Cool, right?

I'm sure we'll notice more interesting cultural variations. I'll keep you posted! To end the post, I'd like to share the highlight of our week here. We discovered the coolest restaurant around:

Please note the "bam" with an umlaut. 

And the cocktail lounge furniture meets surf scenes meets longhorn skull. Awesome yet confusing. The food was actually really great and we've tucked it away as a new favorite. 

So where did the name of the restaurant come from? Billy the Kid perhaps?! I now have the urge to listen to the Aaron Copland ballet of the same name (one of my all-time favorites, complete with a gunfight-via-percussion). On that note, enjoy the music and have a restful Saturday.