In Actual Fact…

…and at first you really love it and want to try out everything. If, as I somewhat foolishly did, you come to the country with no real knowledge of the culture, or ability to speak the language at all, you’ll irritate the hell out of people by pointing at, for example, a table and saying “So it’s die Tisch, right?” and you’ll be told, no “Tisch is masculine”. “But in French it’s feminine - la table”, you’ll state. The resulting conversation will usually end with the sentence “well if you learnt French for 10 years, why didn’t you go there?” Eventually, you’ll pick up German and speak it (with a heavy English accent) a lot of the time. At some point you may visit France, the Alsace to be precise, for a weekend break. As the “appointed French-speaker” you will stride confidently towards the check-in desk of the hotel. At this point you will learn if you are either “good with languages” or have a two-language brain (English and “foreign”) and the German has replaced all the French from your mind. If (as I do), you have a two-language brain you will stand at the desk saying “Nous….wollen. Nein! Ich meine Non! Fuck! erm, erm, nous… nous..erm…voudrions…..erm, une erm…” until the lady behind the desk asks “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” (this is the Alsace remember) and you will hang your head in shame and speak German and English for the rest of the weekend. When you get back to Germany, the person you took will look at the certificates you have that state your command of the French language and she will mock you ceaselessly. You will spend the rest of the week saying “Je suis désolé“. This will not help your case one little bit.
…and you’ll try out all the different kinds of local food. If you go to Swabia, you’ll learn that spätzle is not just the name of a gene that encodes a ligand, which activates a signal transduction pathway responsible for embryonal dorso-ventral patterning, but also (and this is less well-known) a foodstuff. And it tastes goooood. Especially as käsespätzle. You’ll probably also like maultaschen, you’ll notice that wheat beer tastes much better draught than from the bottle. You’ll gain 20 pounds in your first 6 months. You won’t even realise that there are certain food items which are not available, however on your next visit to Britain you will find that in the course of a week you eat 12 Cornish pasties, 18 miniature pork pies, 27 samosas, and about 5lbs of onion bhajis. When you fly back to Stuttgart you’ll be chosen for a spot check at customs. This is entirely random and will have nothing to do with the fact that you are a young man with long hair and a guitar case who just landed on a flight from Amsterdam. The Zollbeamter/sinister guy will want to know why your suitcase contains 1,600 PG Tips tea bags. Whilst sinister guy is summoning the sniffer dogs, his female colleague will point out to him, that you’re English and they’ll both roll their eyes skywards and wish you a pleasant stay as they let you pass on by.
By now, you will be aware of food items that you just can’t get here (yes, you can get tea here, but it is, how shall I put it, not the same). You’ll learn about a sinister underworld network called “The English Shop” which can, for a price, acquire “things” but that, boys and girls, is a story for another day… or later when I’ve done some work.

Song playing as this was published: Boomtown Rats - “Banana Republic”