Sundays in Germany

On Sundays in Germany, if it's raining, absolutely nothing happens. Everything is closed and there is nothing to do. I wanted to hunt socks, but couldn't.

I went to the Media Arts Museum instead. Perhaps it has a slightly different name, but I've forgotten what it is. I saw three, or was it four? exhibitions, and was supposed to be greatly impressed because this is the largest and most famous Media Arts museum in the world. I was impressed, but didn't enjoy it as much as I should have because I discovered that being around great numbers of monitors all switched on gives me back the headache I thought I'd got rid of. After the head injury I couldn't watch TV for a few years, because it brought on dizziness and pain. Now I can watch TV, but apparently several hundred monitors in one building are a bit too much for me.

I hunted socks yesterday, but not as successfully as I would have liked. I wanted to get socks for The Man, who has freakishly large feet. Men in Germany ALL have freakishly large feet. However, I could not find very much to choose from, at first, until I realized that they are found in department stores next to the luggage section. Who would have thought it? I had been looking in the underwear section. Once I found they were not in the underwear section I felt a little silly to have spent so much time wandering around the underwear section of department stores, feeling puzzled and annoyed.

This made me think about the various ways department stores in different countries are laid out. They are often different in subtle ways that might seem perfectly logical to the people who live there but are weirdly wrong to visitors. Usually there is nothing wrong with the different way of doing things. It is just different.

(I will never understand, however, the way pet food is sold in electrical stores in Japan. That's not just illogical, it's silly. Who in their right mind would think of going to an electrical store to buy pet food?)

I did get some socks, but not as many as I'd wanted to. The Man has exacting requirements, and the ones I found were mostly just not good enough for him.

Tomorrow: FRANCE

(And yes, Cheryl, I know I'm doing all this the wrong way around. I'll explain why sometime, if I can remember myself. There was a good reason, that went beyond geographic incompetence.) (At least I think there was.)