Ich bin der Polizei

At least that's what the guy told me. Now, in general, I tend to be a skeptical person. Or, at least I try to be. However, at this particular time, I was a little more vulnerable to being a little naive. You see, the night didn't start off with a guy telling me he was a police officer. It started off with a search for a small carton of chocolate milk.

To make a long story short, the search for chocolate milk was unsuccessful after looking into two stores. However, in the second store, I managed to set off the alarm on the way in and on the way out. Both times, I went to a store clerk and I think they told me that it was ok. As I beeped on the way out, they seemed a little sketched out and really just wanted me to leave. I think that may have had to do with my big laptop bag on my back. Anyway, I just walked out, and well, beeped again of course. This time I just kept going.

And this is where the fun began. I headed towards the tram stop and some guy stopped me. This isn't unusual since people stop me all the time asking for a light or the time of day. So, I stopped and told him I couldn't speak German very well. I think that may have been my first mistake. He the proceeded to ask if I had a "Handy" which is a cellphone over here. I didn't have one, and I honestly told him so. Mistake number two. Of course, I probably would have said I didn't have one, even if I did. It was at this point the guy said to me, or so I translated it, "I am the police, you have to come with me." I didn't mention this before, but the guy was no more than 18 and I definitely had 20 lbs on him, so normally I would have said no and walked away. But after the alarm incident at the store just minutes before, I thought it might actually be possible. I'm not dumb though and asked for some ID. He produced what appeared to me to be a travel visa of sorts. Maybe that's what German police badges look like, I don't know.

So, I walked with him for a minute asking him in broken German where his police car was and if there were any other officers around that actually looked like officers. He just kept babbling on about something I didn't understand. Then he stopped and said "Come down here." It was a frigging dark alley. Like hell I was walking down a dark alley with a young punk claiming he was the police. So, I said "Nein!" and then told him that if he was really a police officer, we would go to a store and speak to a bilingual person and get them to translate. He didn't like that idea and started to accuse me of having cocaine and marijuana. Then he even said if I didn't come he would have to shoot me, as he made his fingers into a gun and even made the Pow Pow! sound. I had enough at this point, so I told him either he come with me to talk to someone or I was leaving. So, he gave up and said "Haha, I'm only joking man," patted me on the shoulder and walked away as if we were buddies now or something.

And that was that. I probably should have called the police, but I didn't have a handy, and to be honest, I didn't even know their number. I guess I could have gone somewhere and asked, but I had had enough of listening to broken English and speaking broken German. So, I just went home, bought a chocolate milk and also a beer at the store a few minutes from my house, and made it to the last football game (where I played in goal and got a shutout).

**I later heard over the news that it is becoming common for people over here to impersonate police officers in attempts to rob people, particularly tourists. Go figure.

Rough, Tough & Dough

Since I'm going to be in Germany for five months and doing courses in German, it's obviously quite necessary for me to improve my German comprehension. Learning a new language is certainly not an easy thing, but, fortunately for German learners, once you learn how to pronounce a particular letter or group of letters, it will pretty much sound the same for every single word. For example 'ch' found in 'ich', 'mich', 'nicht' and any other word that 'ch' is found in, will always sound the same (it's a sound not found in English, but I'd put it somewhere between a 'k' sound and a 'sh' sound). A 'v' always kind of sounds kind of like an 'f' and a 'z' always sounds more like a 'tz'. Anyway, that's kind of weird to explain, but I hope you get my point.

English on the other hand, isn't so easy. I've always known this, but since it's my mother toungue, I've never really realized how difficult this can be for non-English speakers. That is until last Saturday. A bunch of us were sitting in the kitchen. Two native English speakers and a bunch of non-English speakers. At the time some of the non-English speakers were baking pies. So they were talking about what they were doing and from what I gathered, there was a load of 'duff' going into the pies. Now, I don't know much about baking pies, especially pies in foreign countries, so I didn't question what this 'duff' was going into their pies. Quite frankly, as long as it tasted good, I didn't care. So, this went on for a few minutes, until one of them asked MB what they should do with the leftover 'duff'. That's when it became evident that we had no idea what in the hell 'duff' was. I'm sure by now you've figured it out. It's funny how languages work.

(Does the word 'English' need to be capitalized all the time?)

I'm a "Yes Man"

As I was standing in line at the Thalia bookstore here in Mannheim, there was a lady a few people ahead of me who decided she wanted her book wrapped up. Now, I wasn't in a rush or anything, but I did think to myself as I was waiting there that there must be a more efficient way to get a book wrapped instead of holding up an entire line at the bookstore. I just thought that maybe it was somewhat of an inconvenience to others in the line. Of course it only took a minute or two, so it really wasn't that big of a deal, but I'm not much of a fan of waiting anymore than I have to.

Anyway, the line eventually started moving again and before too long it was my turn at the checkout. So, went up to the checkout lady and said, "Hallo", to which she respond "Hallo" along with some other words that I really could not catch. However, being the 'intelligent' person that I am (aka: not wanting to sound dumb for not speaking German) I simply assumed (and reasonably so in my opinion) that she asked if I found everything I wanted or something along those lines. Either way, I assumed it was a question to which "Ja" was an appropriate answer. Well, it turns out "Ja" wasn't the appropriate answer... unless of course I was planning on giving someone a paperback copy of The Bourne Supremacy as a birthday gift.