Evening of Day 1 Friday, June 22nd
When Harry got back from work at Vilseck, we went to Amburg for dinner, with a stop on the way to get a part we needed to repair my clock at home. Amburg's history goes back to medevail timea and the old town still has parts of its originall defensive wall an moat.
We enjoyed walking around the old town streets and pedestrian only shopping area in the old town. As we observed everywhere we went in Germany, the streets were spotless, virtually no litter anywhere. This was brought home when a young boy on a bicycle zoomed in front of us, stopping as his bike wheel ran into the wall of the nearby building. He held a piece of candy over the little metal mesh wastebasket fastened to the wall, unwrapping it and dropping the wrapper into the wastebasket. I realized it was completely ingrained in him to find a trash can if he had trash. He would never have thought of dropping his wrapper on the street. That was impressive. Later I noticed most metropoitan areas had big multi compartmented containers to separate recyclable trash from the garbage. There are deposits on drink bottles, and the plastic ones are heavy and can be bottled into over and over again. We saw at one gas station a machine that would read the bar code on bottles and dispense back the deposit automatically when one was deposited as a return. Sometimes I saw cigarette butts or bottle caps, but usually no other trash anywhere, even on the roadside. At Mittenwald's pedestrian free shopping zone I searched several blocks to find a trash can and only found one small one at the beginning of the street, that was about a third full. Yet in two blocks I only saw one candy wrapper out of place, from a hard candy. Otherwise, nothing, not a napkin, tissue, drink cup or bottle, bag, wrapper, nothing. It was very impressive. It would be wonderful if we had the same culture and ethic here.
We had dinner at an Italian place that Harry had been to before. (It was awhile before I got my first German dinner or lunch) Although there was english on the menu, none of the wait staff spoke any english at all, so I got my first try at communicating with my tiny little bit of German. We had a nice dinner, I had carbonara, and when Harry got impatient for the check after the plates were cleared and the check never came, I remembered reading that you have to ask for the check in Europe. Restauants will nevery hurry diners by bringing the check unasked. So I got someone's eye and mimed writing on my palm, and the check soon arrived. Just like Rick Steve's advised...
A nice first day. The next day was Harry's one day of the week off, so we planned a trip to Prague. I took melatonin and went to bed hoping to make a good transition into the local schedule.
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