So, I've been in Deutschland for four days now, and I love it here. Some things are a little bit strange, though—you know how sometimes you see weird foreigners whose speech is slow, grammatically dubious, heavily accented, and generally tortured? Well, here, that's me. Which has made me realize that when I see these other people walking down the street, jabbering in what seems like a random collection of consonants with a smattering of vowels, they're not just pretending to understand each other—they really are communicating.

 Whoa.

 A few other observations:

• Mohawks, mohawks, everywhere. I've seen at least a half dozen of these, on individuals from age 10 to 30. Those west of the Atlantic, consider yourselves warned.
  
• Just because you can find your way there, that doesn't mean you can find your way back.
  
• Under no circumstances should you ever challenge a kamikaze bicyclist. Under no circumstances should you try to dodge one, either, because regardless of the way you frantically dart, the bicyclist will swerve in that same direction, leaving you in the path of a bicycle and rider now even closer than before. Just close your eyes and stand perfectly still, like when you're avoiding a tyrannosaurus rex.
  
• Germany has a seemingly endless supply of Unspeakably Tacky Postcard Day™ possibilities. (FEAR ME.)
  
• There actually is a place on earth where my allergies are even worse than in Massachusetts and Arkansas.
• Though German has a phrase that means "escape pod from the mother ship"(I needed a way to describe Smart Cars), it has no word for "jailbait."