The first German word I ever learned was Stau -- traffic jam. It's a very important word it seems, for every radio station seems to use it on a regular basis. It's a word usually followed by a passionate Scheisse! Which was my second German word. My first trip on the world famous Autobahn of Germany taught me the order of things here. A traffic jam elicits your morning shit. And then life in Germany happened.

A Lesson in Humility: The sheer bemusement with which one faces daily life here is amazing. The country, it seems to me, lives on its own terms, independent of European laws and lives, of international fads and follies, of trends and waves, that the rest of the world is bombarded with. The Lonely Planet doesn’t even warn you. They should. My first dinner conversation I remember was rather strained. Not knowing much about the one thing that everyone seemed to be talking about -- namely the Steuer (tax) situation in Germany -- I couldn’t sparkle that evening (Steuer being just my third German word).

Refusing to fade away into the dark corners of the beautiful house, I hit upon a theme from which I was sure no self-respecting German would turn away. "The Sound of Music." Perfect! But all I got was blank stares. I forged ahead. "You know, the musical with the improbable family of seven? The touching story of how the von Trapp family courageously fought the Nazis?" The expressions were pained now. Wrong angle maybe. "You know? Raindrops on roses and…" People were beginning to leave the dinner table now. And I thought the Germans liked to converse. Guess not, unless it has to do with Steuer or Stau.

Heaven Is in Germany: My father is a diabetic. During my parents’ visit to Germany, we received a number of invitations from good German friends for Kaffee und Kuchen(my 47th and 48th German words meaning coffee and cake) -- essentially the German version of what the British would call "high tea." Piles of mouthwatering pastries lay in front of us as my father valiantly but unsuccessfully fought a life threatening urge to devour them. It’s a tradition: an all encompassing German hospitality that begins with Kaffee and ends with a mind-boggling array of delicious Kuchen. If you're lucky enough to be invited into one of those village homes deep in the German hinterland, you may even be lucky enough to gorge on endless Dampfknudel with various sweet accompaniments. Heaven is in Germany, if you suffer a sweet tooth.

Hell Is Too: But hell is not far behind. Switch on your TV and you'll see the point. Everything in German television is dubbed from the original language into -- well -- German. Even worse, it seems that the same voice-over artists are used over and over and over again -- meaning that Brad Pitt suddenly sounds like Tom Cruise and most actress voices become a grating, shrill, whiney screech. In big cities in Germany, there exist the odd cinema which plays films in original -- especially in Munich and Berlin. But for those non-German speakers living elsewhere, it's DVD or nothing. My initial reaction was to attribute it to sheer laziness -- people not wanting to have to read while watching a film. But then, go to a showing in the original language and the cinema is almost always full of Germans. Odd. But then, it's an odd country.