holidays

Many of you like to point out the proliferation of holidays in Europe. It's not that there are so many of them, it's just that they are all squashed together on the calendar. For example, where I work in Germany, these are the holidays this year:

Jan 1 - New Year's
Apr 14 and 17 - Easter
May 1 - May day
May 25, June 5, June 15 - Ascension, Whit Monday, Corpus Christi
Oct 3 - Re-unification of Germany
Nov 1 - All Saint's day
Dec 25 and 26 - Christmas
Dec 31 - New Year's Eve

So as you can see, it's an absolute holiday drought after this week, Thursday.

However, World Cup is currently going on in Germany, so the entire country is in play mode from June 9 to July 9. There are people from all over the world visiting Germany wearing their country gear, in particular flags worn around the shoulders or the waist.

Wearing my US flag I was walking home on Sunday and over the bridge when an old man on a bicycle, at least 80 years old, slowed down, pointed at me and yelled something. In the office the next day my colleagues said that he is still angry about losing the war. I am not sure they were joking, actually.