What a beauty! Thanks for sharing, Mark!

I don't know what exactly it is that makes people detect the foreigner in a person. I make this experience on a regular basis still, although I've been liveing as a German in the Netherlands for more than a decade now. And waiters of course are experts in detecting the slightest signals - it's part of their job...

My uncle and a youth friend of his used to participate in the Kieler Woche as well, back in the 1970s / early 1980s... before their wives reformed them to tennis... [a change for the worse, in my eyes...]

...and, well: to German ears, the 'Lieutenant of the US Navy' may sound less specific than the 'Korvettenkapitän' - but certainly also less German-bureaucratic...

Used to be that DMZ cafes like this one were the centers of the community.  The DMZ Bar & Grill on the old US Politics board could easily have over a 1,000 posts within two or three months.

What happened to change that?

This place hasn't had any business in eight months.  Why?  It's a nice cafe.  The coffee's good and the chairs are comfy.

 Is it because people are too busy trying to make the other guy look like an *$$#*%@ to sit down for a friendly chat? 

Too bad.  It IS a nice cafe...

wow they don't even have one of these over @ us news and politics and it's a little bit more hopping board that this ghost town too bad!!

Tonight my socialist party political report mentioned the elections in Germany, France and Greece. Yet in this forum, I haven't read of them!