I ventured out to dinner alone this evening, to a Greek restaurant across the street from my apartment. I don’t think anyone there spoke English, and I don’t speak German or Greek, but they seemed to recognize I needed and English menu. They had great food and I ate a bunch of gyro meat (which seemed to be real meat on a skewer, not the sliced stuff on sandwiches in B’more), some lamb which was tasty, french fries (of course), and something related to Spanish rice (red, had peas in it, didn’t eat it). The meal came with salad and I was expected Greek salad, or something similar. However, restaurants in Germany seem to have a great love for Thousand Island dressing. Hello, 1970’s USA. I had Thousand Island on the airplane, it’s the only salad dressing in the hospital cafeteria, and they served it at the Greek restaurant. At the end of the meal, the waiter brought a shot glass of something clear and glittering to the table for me. I have bad memories from college of clear drinks that appear to have glitter floating in them; so I took a miniscule sip, confirmed that it was indeed alcohol and tasted like licorice, and put it aside. Does anyone know what it was? Is it ouzo?

Boy am I developing a taste for sparkling water. This had started a little before I came to Germany, as I have eliminated wine, beer, and diet coke from my diet. But here, instead of a big watercooler of Deer Park at the hospital, or jugs of water, the small bottles of aquafina and deer park that are everywhere in the US, or just drinking out of the sink, they have bottles of sparkling water. Sparkling water is served in restaurants unless you request flat water. I even have a few bottles in the apartment.

There is no trash anywhere. No litter, no discarded aluminum cans or cigarette butts (and smoking is common here, so this is a surprise). There’s so little trash that I’m not sure what to do with the trash in the can in my apartment. It seems that there should be a dumpster or outside cans somewhere, but so far, no luck. Maybe I can sneak it into work and throw it away there?

Recycling is very popular here and seems that everyone does it. Tomorrow must be recycling day, because every home I walk by has clear bags out front (that say something in German) and seem to be filled with recyclables.

They also don’t use aluminum cans here anymore. Everyone buys their drinks in 1 L bottles and then returns them to the store for money. It’s significant money that gets refunded, which must encourage recycling. Yesterday, I was at a grocery store with one of my hosts (kind of like a superwalmart, more on this later) and 24 or so empty liter bottles netted about 10 euro.

Unlike US hospitals, there are no Styrofoam/plastic/paper cups used here. They drink water and coffee out of, get this, water glasses (yes, glass) and coffee cups. They magically get washed in the dishwasher in the endo unit and get reused. As a result, they seem to generate a lot less trash.