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Showing posts from June, 2010

Service: desert or dessert? Wie bitte?

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Germans are reliable, is one of the myths that we foreigners have. And on a hot early summer Saturday in June, they have once more shown themselves more reliable than I actually wished them to be. In my book on Germany I have lamented the fact that service as we know it in the Anglo-Saxon world is not a word understood in the same context or intent by people here.  To make things worse we live in a border area where the locals have unfortunately adopted the worst of the German idea of no service and the absolute top of the French concept of bad service:  a toxic combination. So on this hot summer’s long-weekend Saturday, my husband and I decide to take the scenic route through the hills and woods of the Hunsrueck area to fetch our daughter  in Idar Oberstein from the Youth Camp 2010 of the Evangelical Church in Rhineland. Idar Oberstein is famous for its precious stones and a mere 80 kilometres from our home. So we set the GPS system to take the minor roads, dreaming that we