I accidentally ordered chicken feet at a Chinese restaurant. Ugh. For now I'll continue to ask for an English menu.

Where are my beans??

Germany does not have black beans. I mostly cook vegetarian meals for myself, and black beans with vegetables and rice can make the easiest bulk meal with days of leftovers. When I've asked people if they've seen black beans, only Americans seem to feel my pain (we all seem to miss good Mexican food the …

Bagels

Okay, I didn't expect Germans to eat bagels on a regular basis. I didn't even expect there to be bagels in grocery stores. I was surprised to find a sorry excuse for a bagel at Aldi (yes I bought them and enjoyed them anyway). But why do grocery stores have Philadelphia cream cheese? The first time …

Green

While I stood on the crowded train on the way to work this morning, the lights went out and the power was turned off. I wasn't surprised - of course the train driver would turn it off in order to save 10 whole seconds of power. Whenever there's a red light, vehicles are turned off. …

I was jealous of a bilingual child on the train today. I sat across from him and his mom, and he excitedly asked me, "Wie heißen Sie?!" (What is your name?). I smiled and his mom tried calming him down. "Wie heißen Sie? Wie heißen Sie?!!!" I answered him, saying "Ich heiße Mallory" and he seemed …

Baby steps

I really am trying to learn German. According to Duolingo I am apparently 20% fluent (HA). But when I hear people talking in German, I can't even recognize enough words to know what they're talking about. I'm considering taking a German class but I need to think about the time commitment outside of planning lessons …

Frohes neues Jahr!

When the clock struck midnight, I was in the train. Yeah, we were late to the new year. It was probably a good thing though, considering everyone on the streets were unsafely shooting off fireworks. The train was above ground so we got a good view of random fireworks at midnight while not having to …