Nice photo!

Many years ago, when I used to routinely travel to Germany, I loved finding these things.

...like a big banner across the road leaving Worms that read, "Haben Sie einen guten Fahrt!" (have a good trip!)

The other very funny thing, especially for Yiddish-speakers (or anyone from NYC) is that some perfectly good, serious German words have morphed into much spicier meanings in Yiddish.

"Schmuck" is the first one to come to mind - it literally means "jewel" in German, where it's a perfectly innocent word. But I had to guffaw at signs reading, "Feiner Schmuckerie", and "Han Schmidt, Schmuckmeister."

"Zaftig" is another wonderful Yiddish word that is totally innocent in German. In Yiddish, of course, "zaftig" is an adjective used to describe a plump and/or well-endowed lady, e.g., "I gotta go on a diet, I'm getting so zaftig I can't fit into my pedal-pushers" or "Jayne Mansfield, now she was realy zaftig!" In German, "zaft" simply means "juice", hence zaftig=juicy, but not in the Jayne Mansfield sense. When you order a steak, rare, in Germany, you ask for it to be "zaftig."

Frank,
Read your profile at Pajamas.
I love Big Pharaoh as well and recently through his links to other Egyptian and Arab blogs read 2 great entries there that are must reads. You can read them re-posted here.
http://dailyscorecard.blogspot.com/2005/09/back-with-great-fall-post.html

Good luck to you.
Mike

> Ice on the other hand, is still in short supply and must be rationed between the Americans who still insist on using it in their drinks much to the dismay of most of the Europeans in our little group.

It is thoroughgly amusing to think that Europe, which fancies itself the seat of culture, fails to take advantage of one of the finest subtle byproducts of our technological culture -- ice on demand.