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A Brief Flashback to Life in Germany
While living in Germany, my wife and I took a day trip to her old college town one day. It was there that we witnessed a respectable-looking man with long dirty blonde hair — probably in his late 20s, early 30s, and adorning a red pullover — smash a full ice cream cone on the ground for no apparent reason.
Then he just walked away. It was the most animalistic thing we had seen.
Strolling the small shopping strip, we would later see him on two more occasions throughout the afternoon. “There he is again!” we whispered, like we’d just seen a ghost. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that man and what he did.
Having spent time on and off in Germany from 2005 to 2007, lived there from 2007–2010, and visited occasionally between 2010 and 2014, the one great thing I learned is that come Christmastime, there are three songs and three songs only played on the radio there repeatedly.
They are as follows: “Last Christmas,” by Wham!; “All I Want for Christmas is You,” by Mariah Carey; and “Another Day in Paradise,” by Phil Collins.
This, I assume, still holds true today.
Sometimes, I just wanted to yell out the window, “Play a different song,” but that would have neither been acceptable nor appropriate.
