Swabians in San Francisco

10/15/98 English German

Edition # 10
San Francisco, 10-15-98

Social work in the Tenderloin Weekend Getaway in Shelter Cove At the Nail Salon Another earthquake! Swabians in San Francisco Shark Alert at Stinson Beach The Lewinsky Affair

Swabians in San Francisco

Michael Hello there, finally it's my turn with some funny stories! When we recently hailed a taxi in the city late at night to ride home, we got into a conversation with the driver, a "long-haired" individual, who immediately recognized that we were speaking German and then told us that he had been stationed in Germany for a few years with the US Army. Now this is nothing unusual -- you can find a lot of Americans here who have been in the Army at some point, and many of them have been in Germany during their service. There's no mandatory service here like in Germany, so the US Army is made up of professional soldiers, and there is no shortage of recruits. A job in the Army often a lifeline for many unemployed youth -- they'd rather be whipped by the drill sergeant than go begging on the street -- unfortunately, there are no other alternatives due to the lack of a social system.

And it is also socially accepted: I had laughed my head off in the movie theater when Michelle Pfeiffer wrote "I am a US Marine" on the board of an undisciplined class and everyone suddenly became reverently silent. And I can still get a giggle out of "Top Gun", but here people really take this nonsense seriously. Even during the Gulf War, according to reliable sources, every suburban bungalow owner had a US flag in their garden. But I'm digressing! So the taxi driver was telling us his experiences from Germany, yes, he had been stationed in Swabia, in Stuttgart, where the dialect is so terrible, so he had once been at the train station and an announcement was made about a track change: GLAIS OINZ! the train was leaving from GLAIS OINZ!, and he had to ask a conductor -- although he was somewhat proficient in German, but not in the Swabian dialect -- what GLAIS OINZ! meant. The taxi driver kept shouting GLAIS OINZ! and GLAIS OINZ! again and again and we couldn't stop laughing in the back seat. He completely forgot to turn on the meter, only towards the end of the ride did he remember, but instead of the indicated $5.00, I gave him $15.00 out of joy.

By the way, here's a message for you stone age people: I finally did it, I got my own domain on the internet - at http://perlmeister.com there's not only boring computer stuff but also some pages that show where we live, what we do. At the computer supermarket Fry's, I bought a scanner for $59.95, so our photos can get into the computer and onto the page - if you have a computer with an internet connection, just take a look ...

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