Today I’m just grumpy.  Nothing big. Nothing major.  Just grumpy.  All the little things are irritating me.  I usually love the road rules here in Germany.  There are a lot of them, true, but once you learn them they make great sense and things flow smoothly.  The best part is the absolute dearth of stop signs.  We have one. One (1).  In our town.  And that’s only coming off the expressway.  None truly in town.  Heaven.

But it does come with some compromises, traffic circles being one.  However, since they are super common, everyone navigates them beautifully (except for Fahrschule, aka driving school, I hate Fahrschule).  With the narrow roads, and people parking willy-nilly, and I mean that, if there is no sign to say you cannot park there, people park there.  Even if that means inconveniencing every other driver on the road.  Today there were a lot of inconveniently parked cars.

When those inconveniently parked cars are on your side of the road that means you must park behind them, wait for the other lane to clear, then proceed.  Great in theory.  Not so great when every 100 yards there is an inconveniently parked car.  The only good thing is that everyone is incredibly polite, and even though it is my job to wait, I still get friendly “thank you” waves from every car passing by that sees me waiting patiently.  If only they knew, today, I was silently saying bad words in my head.

Luckily I always have at least one ray of sunshine in my days.  Today it was Dane.  I picked him up a little early, we had lots of errands (driving!) this afternoon.  Today he was in the turnhalle (ie gym) of his Kindy.  He loves the turnhalle.  His favorite thing to do is dangle from the ceiling and swing round&round like an airplane.  His smile makes me smile.