We went to Kehl, Germany last Thursday with Elizabeth. This time the bus actually made it the whole way. No crazy German protesters in the way. Elizabeth needed a few odds and ends for her Thanksgiving party, and we just went to kill some time (but of course left with loads of goods). Both of us broke down and finally bought a caddy (they are kind of like carpet bags, except everyone uses them to carry groceries…I’ll try to get a picture up shortly). It is amazing how annoying and difficult it is to go shopping when you don’t have a car. Until now we have been bringing our backpacks and I always had to go with Amy. Even then we could only carry a few items and never get everything we needed. This caddy allows us to carry more goods and even heavier things that normally we would not be able to manage. Yea!
Oh, the point of the German story was to tell about our Lidl experience. Lidl is very similar to Aldis if anyone has ever been to one of those. They sell typically generic goods very, very cheap. While standing in line Amy accidentally dropped a spice jar and broke it on the floor. No one seemed to notice or at least care.
We didn’t know how to tell anyone what had happened so we just kind of swept it under the table and went on our merry way. After the clerk had run our items Amy tried to pay with her French bank card. Apparently, they don’t take French cards at this German store, from what we gathered anyway. At first, we thought it was a minimum price problem and tried to get the cashier to ring up Elizabeth’s items. Both Elizabeth and Amy are taking German classes, but are not far enough along to get out more than a few words. So the cashier is talking in fast German while Amy and Elizabeth stumble over their limited vocabulary.
Eventually, we figured out there was an ATM outside and Amy ran to it as I sat in the corner with our goods. Many minutes passed and there was no Amy, so I went looking. The cashier pointed like the ATM was just outside, but I couldn’t see it or Amy. I start wandering around the streets of Germany at night looking for either a cash machine or my wife. I looked for probably ten minutes until panic started overcoming me. Dear God, please let her be ok kind of panicking. Holy crap there is no ATM anywhere, and WHERE IS MY WIFE!
Luckily I peeked back inside and saw the wife standing in line. She had to ask a hotel clerk where the ATM was in broken German. What a mess. A lot of Germans actually do speak English, but apparently not at Lidl.
themidnightcafe.org 
yeah Germany, and Austria for that matter, can be nightmares. Caddys are fun, I like them.