Okay, I was never really close to “giving up” on Germany, but I was depressed. Then today I took Charlie for a walk and left my middle to upper middle class neighborhood and entered the nearby Plattenbau area. Rainer tells me this area is government housing for the unemployed and there are a lot of social problems among the residents there, like alcoholism. Maybe this is true, I don’t know, but as I passed a group of guys, much like an income-challenged version of the group I encountered the other day, they called out “Guten Abend,” then ASKED me to come join them and let Charlie play a little. They then invited me to go on a walk through the woods with them so the dogs could get some exercise. While this made me a bit nervous, I know that on a Saturday at 5pm in Germany the woods are full of people walking, and at this time of year it’s also full of people out collecting mushrooms. I’m pretty strong and still remember the “10 Ways to Kill/Incapacitate a Man” lessons my dad gave me when I went off to college (sliding the outer edge of your foot hard down the length of your attackers shin bone is more effective and less expected than a kick to the balls), so I agreed.
We went for an hour and a half walk through the woods, during which I kept a wary eye on them, just in case. But we encountered many people who greeted them and noticed that they had added a new person and dog to their group, so that eased my suspicion.
There was Toothless Guy (okay, he had a couple teeth), Talkative Guy (talked the whole walk), and Doctor guy (had some authoritative aura about him much like a doctor). I don’t actually know any of these guys names or professions. After the walk, they invited me to join their group. They meet every day at 4:30 in the same spot. They’re part of a group of up to 17 people who meet up every day to socialize and exercise their dogs together. And they were very nice, friendly, amusing guys. In dog news, Charlie’s in love with a cute golden retriever named Laura, but she don’t like him sniffin’ around her parts, so we’ll just have to see what develops there.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
good to know that there are still some decent and friendly people about.
There are actually quite a few friendly Germans about. I just unfortunately forget that when I encounter some of the bad seeds.
and many bad seeds there are. I’ve been doing pretty well lately, since my last blowup.
I think my recovery time from bad seed encounters has shortened considerably. I used to stay mad/depressed for at least a week and now I can usually shrug a bad encounter off within a day or two.