Ah, the finer things in life. Or maybe not. So here’s my rant. A local grocery store is having a special on all things American starting next week.

Sadly, one look at the specials listed on their advertisement the impression is clear: American cuisine equals junk food.

Germany’s image of a typical American’s diet is a hard but overstretched reality: Millions of Americans starting their days off with either donuts, muffins, bagels or pancakes and sometime within the week hot dogs, hamburger buns, popcorn shrimp and platefuls of barbecue spare-ribs will be consumed.

But the hunger doesn’t stop there. We’ll gorge on american pizza and sandwich pickles, guzzle down blueberry and cranberry juice, and we aren’t ashamed to dip our grubby index fingers into an open jar of peanut butter and once our digits are clean we’ll lean back and smack our lips together in sugary nirvana.

But of course, you couldn’t let us forget the American all-time diabetic favorites: jelly beans, marshmallows and brownies.

It really is all too much. Behind every unhealthy and poor, nutritionally valued food substance you smugly decorate it with the American flag as if to say, “This wasn’t our idea.” I’m half embarrassed. Sugary items, refined grains, starchy and sodium polluted snacks: Is this what America really has to offer to the world? Or is this what you really sarcastically think America has to offer?

Okay, so maybe it’s true we eat individually almost 300 tortillas and 23 pounds of pizza per year*. We know these junk foods, those you want to sell so badly here, are bad for us, for you, for everyone. But this food is in the US, we developed it and now it’s an addictions we have to deal with. So I’m baffled. Why, Germany, with the negative stigma these food carry, why would you feed this food to yourselves?

Okay. I’ll give you some credit. I myself am having a hard time thinking up of typical or commonly known American foods that would be consider mildly healthy. How ’bout them tortillas? Or pecans and cashews? It’s not on your list, but how about soybeans?

Yet, I forgive Aldi. Germany may have a weakness for life’s seductions. Who can fault them or us? And anyone who believes scones are American is clearly confused.

Completed my scarf. Now onto the hat.This is my 3rd January in Germany and finally I’ve learned an expression I’ve been dying to know: Das ist nicht meine Angelegenheit meaning, that’s none of my business.

Or better: Kümmere dich um deine eigenen Angelegenheiten! Can you guess? That’s right: Mind your own business!

Do native people use this expression? I’ve never heard it but then again I don’t ask enough questions, which is sort of a New Year’s resolution (or Vorsatz) for me.

It has been pointed out to me that I rely too heavily on assumptions that don’t work in the German culture. When I don’t understand something I need to speak up.

Only it isn’t that I know immediately that I don’t understand something, rather it is mostly the case that I understand it differently. It is recognizing that I am understanding something differently and subsequently wrongly is the point where I could save myself from getting into trouble or not. But regardless I’m destined to repeat my mistakes over and over again if I don’t start getting a clue soon. And this is where I start to miss Florida.

In Florida and I image in other states in the U.S., the people and perhaps the ‘lack-of-culture’ culture is often times more forgiving than it is here. Mind you I’d never want to experience the nightmare of being a foreigner trying to get a green card or just to pass customs for a few days vacation in the U.S. It is certainly comparatively easier in my shoes.

But once you are in the US, you aren’t told in so many words that your thinking is backwards or you lack proper communication skills. Am I wrong? Americans just take you for who you are. They are open to jesters and speaking slowly, imitating sounds and relying on facial expressions if need be.

Try using these primitive measures in Germany and you’ll get a blank ape stare from your confused, native speaker. Asking politely of a native German speaker to speak slowly is like slowing down the merry-go-round for 2 seconds. Then it gets boring or unnatural for the German and the merry-go-round accelerates again. The struggling foreigner has to weigh whether to ask to slow it down again or hang on and hope he’ll recognize something after all that spinning. (When in doubt and even if it feels rude, ASK!)

To a certain point, the way Germans speak is infectious. Now that my German is pretty good (once I get going) I don’t like to switch back to English. In fact I prefer to speak in German; I don’t have to worry about my hands or facial muscles. It’s all just brain and mouth. In an unfair way, one could say speaking in German is robotic, like Data. yeah.

Now it feels completely out of place to speak English in public places and when I do, I can feel that inside my cranium is war to arrive with the most appropriate words. It’s when my thoughts land in a mushy spot on my brain and the German words get mixed up with the English. Then nothing comes out and then I revert to the old assumptions and the old way of telling a story, which is to use body language, but opps! how?!

I know that it is just a bad, bad, bad thing to just give up on a train of mindless, American thought just to save the conversation. But sometimes that is the only thing that feels comfortable. Better to skip to a clean part of the record than to relive hearing the skinny lady tumble out nonsense repetitively.