Canadians for sale or rent

Today in Useless Fun Facts About Germany (UFFAG? I'll keep working on it), Germans call canoes Kanadier, or "Canadians". As in, "Hey, you know what we should do today? Rent a Canadian and ride it down the river." Me: "GUYS I'M RIGHT HERE."

I don't know if it's one of those generic trademark situations or just a free association that stuck really well, but it's always fun to pass shops with "End of summer sale: all Canadians, 40% off" signs in the window. Get 'em while they're cheap!

Just trying to help

Today, in "Facts About Germany You Did Not Ask For and Will Never Use": the whole country is obsessed with Kleenex. And not the boxes, but the little pocket-sized packages. It's a statistical fact that at any given time, 88% of Germans have a pack of Kleenex on their person. DO NOT LOOK THAT UP JUST ACCEPT IT.

A brand named Tempo dominates the German market in "facial tissues" (gross, by the way), much like Kleenex in North America. This is probably not a terribly important fact for you, but it is an expository fact for the following anecdote: Once, at an outdoor music festival (where it's loud, yo), the girl in front of me in line for the bathroom asked me if I had a Tempo and then looked at me like some sort of weirdo when I triumphantly pulled a tampon out of my bag. In my defense, if life was a game of Family Feud and the category was "things a woman might ask for in line for the bathroom", my answer would be number one.

Germany's most wanted

To my eternal (so far) embarrassment, I got breathalyzed by the German police on my bike on Friday night. My friend Michi and I had ridden the wrong way up a one-way street (he was on the sidewalk but I was on the street because I am terrified of jumping the curb) when a police car drove by, turned on the flashing lights, backed up 20 metres, turned on the loudspeaker, and said "Bleib stehen" - "Stay where you are." I almost died of embarrassment then and there. The officers got out of the car and came over for a chat. I then got really flustered because I was worried about getting in trouble, started stuttering, and probably sounded completely trashed. Add to that the fact that we were obviously coming back from the Berg (a festival in the vein of Oktoberfest) and I don't blame them for breathalyzing me. But it did lead to this fun conversation.

                        Officer: Please blow into the tube.
                        Me: Okay.
                        Officer: NOT LIKE THAT.
                        Me: Sorry.
                        Officer: Again.
                        Officer: 0.6 promille.
                        Me (in my head): Holy shit isn't the legal limit 0.08?
                        Me (out loud): Is that good or bad?
                        Officer: It's good... for you.

Anyway, apparently the scale (not the limit) is different in Germany because 0.6 promille is (significantly) less than half of the legal limit for cyclists. And once the officers figured out that we were not drunk, they were quite friendly and sent us on our way with directions to the bicycle path. Disaster (and heart attack) averted!

The art of seduction

On Thursday I got a little reminder that my German is not perfect when, instead of yelling "Who wants to hear my pick-up line?", I yelled "Who wants me to turn them on?" Now, it's not my fault that in German, the direct translation of pick-up line is turn-on line. It is, however, my fault that I used the verb instead of the noun. 

Although, come to think of it, "Who wants me to turn them on?" probably counts as a pick-up line. A very, very direct pick-up line.