Last Friday I had to go to the government insurance office and set up my policy. Even though I get the coverage through my office, I apparently have to set it up myself. I was armed with my passport, a copy of my signed work contract and the word that meant new policy “mitgleidschaft” but I was really hoping that someone spoke English because setting up an insurance policy in Germany could be tricky.

I walked in and said “Sprechen sie Englisch?” and the lady immediately shook her head and said “nein”, a response becoming very familiar to me. She asked other people in the office and no one spoke English. She printed out a bunch of paperwork for me to fill out but then realized that there was no way I was going to be able to fill out a bunch of insurance papers that were all in German. Luckily I was the only one there and she seemed quite ok to help me. She filled them out for me, mostly with information she found on my passport and my contract. She did have to ask me some questions and we had to find ways to talk without using too many words because while I’d been learning German for a few weeks at the point, I only knew pretty simple stuff at that point and full on sentences were still beyond me. Like when she wanted to ask if I was married she pointed to her ring finger and I showed her my wedding band because I didn’t know the word for “married” at that time.

I ended up walking out with some sort of paper that my office then told me meant that I had signed up for a policy and they would be mailing me a card soon. It’s amazing how well you can actually communicate with someone without using words. Well, I guess I’ll see what kind of insurance I signed up for before I determine if that was actually successful or not ;-)

On Sunday, January 20th, we went with Wolfgang and Annette to Heiligenberg to witness the craziest parade I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I waited to post anything about it because we’ve been experiencing camera trouble and lost all of our photos but I had hope that somehow, some way we would recover them and thanks to Marshall, we were in fact able to bring them back. Marshall even braved the freezing cold to get video of most of the parade while I took several photos. I will post some snippets of video in a later post, after I’ve gone through it and pulled out some of the best moments. The entire parade itself last for a few hours.

Basically, this is the time of year when the typical non-wild Germans go totally crazy. Some places in the world it is known as Carnival, or Mardi Gras, and here it is a huge series of events called Karneval but in our region it is known as Fasnacht.

We got to the small town in the hills, just 15 minutes up in the foothills (with a very fast-driving German) from Überlingen, a little bit after noon. It seemed like the sun was still rising and there was a gold glow over all of the hills and it was just an amazingly beautiful day. Although it was also bitterly cold. We wandered around the grounds and saw the beautiful castle, although it was all closed up and unavailable for touring since it was non-tourist season.

But of course, being early in the day certainly didn’t stop people from crowding into the music-blarring bar areas to drink some pints. I suppose they are Germans after all – you can never start drinking too early and there are never enough pubs. Even with as many tents stuffed full of people singing and sloshing beer around (no joke, I seriously felt as though I was in a movie walking through the buildings and tents) there was even a makeshift one set up in the back near the castle with a handwritten sign. Although the funny thing is, in German the word “bar” is also the word they use for “cash”. On our way past some food carts, we grabbed some sort of pastry that was similar to an elephant ear that you might get at an american festival except this one was a little more donut-like.

As it got closer to the parade time, those not in the parade began to gather along the main street. I can’t even begin to tell you everything that Wolfgang told us but basically the parade was those dressed up in the costume of each town within 50 km of this area. There were 53 towns represented here. And each went down the street in their costumes yelling some sort of word or phrase like “Narri!” and the people standing and watching had to yell back whatever they were supposed to yell in response like “Narro!”

Luckily we had a paper to direct us to such a phrase although none of them made any sense and some were really long. But oh man, if you didn’t keep up on what town was going by and what to say someone in the parade would do something to you like throw paper at you, mess up your hair, put leaves down your shirt or in my case, take the hair band right out of my ponytail and then run down the street with it laughin. It wasn’t easy either, I thought he was going to rip half my hair out. And yes, it was caught on video. We also had paper thrown at us and our hair messed up. Someone even tried to throw me in this crazy spinning thing that went whizzing down the street.

But if you said the correct phrase when someone went by with candy, they would throw candy at you. But aside from that, they were just generally doing silly things as they went down the street and it was hilarious. They had strange contraptions that they would grab people and throw them in, they had these large tong-like things that Wolfgang called “people grabbers” and just all sorts of creative things. And no one was safe. If you weren’t paying attention, they’d get ya and if you thought you were out of the line of fire, somehow, they’d get ya. One lady was watching from her balcony thinking that she was safe and then a group of people in the parade ran up with a ladder and climbed up to her balcony! There is no such thing as a safe place to watch.

But all the silliness aside, the costumes were nothing short of amazing with hand painted clothing and hand carved wooden masks, each special to the individual town and their story. Many of them were colorful, made various noises and have amazing creativity in their design and construction. There were men, women, teens and children…even some babies in decorated strollers. Many towns also has a band of some sort and witches that followed with brooms and were the most mischevious of any of the characters. One even lit a fire in the street while many of them made a silly show of trying to put it out by putting paper on it! Here are but a few pictures….

Last week we were determined to find the “mysterious” El Fuego restaurant, a Mexican restuarant said to be somewhere in downtown Überlingen. We looked and looked and went up and down every street with no success. We finally gave up and ate at a very small Italian restaurant, Al Lago.

Al Lago was a little hole-in-the-wall Italian place that we decided to check out for lunch last Friday. It was a beautiful little place with table clothes and candles. And a menu of Italian food written in German. We decided to play it safe and order the Pizza Salami, which by the way is a Pepperoni Pizza here and Pepperoni is actually peppers. But we were pretty proud of ourselves for ordering the pizza, a salad to start and even ordering our drinks and specifying the large size. We were feeling pretty good about our ordering abilities until the waitress plopped down a full, large sized pizza in front of each of us. I’m sure the looks on our faces were quite amusing. We wondered why she didn’t warn us of the size but then realized we probably wouldn’t have understood her anyway.

We each managed to eat half of our pizza and then we had to overcome the next obstacle…how to ask for a box. We pulled out the handy dandy pocket diciontary and found a word for box and asked if she could bring us one. She left and came back with a box and we felt pretty accomplished. Next obstacle, paying the check. In Europe you will not be brought the check until you specifically ask. That means you could sit there for awhile if you don’t flag someone down. We finally got her attention, got the check but then she stood right there as Marshall pulled out his money and counted it out. This is a standard thing as well, we are told, and you must pay on the spot, including the tip. If you give her more money and expect change, you need to tell her how much change you want back. We are told never to leave money on the table, it is not done that way. So after all that, we made it out of there full and with a whole pizza for dinner.

By the way, take a look at the restaurant next to Al Lago…

image (c) Lisa Town