One of my German work colleagues was recently telling me about his visit to Vegas, and how he went with a few of his 20-something aged German friends, and how the desk person said, "oh no, the Krauts are here" recognizing their Germanness even before they opened their mouths.
I tried to explain to him that it probably wasn't meant as an insult, but rather as American friendliness of making jokes. He said that he knew that, and he likes Americans and their friendly casual humor, and they enjoyed their trip to the US. He then said, "America is not like some other countries that absolutely do not like Germans at all." I wanted to hear more, but didn't want to push a topic that probably wouldn't be so nice for him to discuss, so I didn't. Besides, I've heard quite a bit from my other European colleagues on the topic of 'the Germans' so I already had an idea that they aren't liked a lot in certain countries.
On Sunday, D and I drove to Maastricht for reasons that belong in their own post. I parked in a public parking lot in town, one where you must buy a ticket from the little machine and leave it on your dashboard, but as it was Sunday, a ticket was not needed. We came back eight hours later and I went to the trunk to get out the map.
I noticed that while we were gone, someone had carefully placed a KFC bucket with all of their food trash in it directly behind the back wheel, so logically I would not see it, and then back up over it. In addition, there were chicken bones immediately in front of the same tire, I guess in the event that I happened to pull forward (which would not be necessarily expected, as I would need to go out on an angle that would put me going 'out' a row that was one way in the other direction.) In addition, the remaining chicken bones were scattered under the car, like someone made a serious effort to wing (intended pun) them there. Looking around we noticed no other German cars in the lot, and only one other in town.
My only guess on this one is that they saw the German license plate on the car and decided on a low level prank. Maastricht gets plenty of Germans as it's not so far from the border, and only around one hour, 15 min from Koeln. This situation was ironic on multiple levels to me, namely:
-I never eat at KFC as they don't have so many vegetarian options. I have no veg info in the car so they would not know the car belongs to a vegetarian. The use of chicken bones would be moderately offensive if the person would have known I am a vegetarian.
-While the car is registered and lives in Germany, I am not German. It's actually quite funny, knowing my lack of enthusiasm for Germany life that they wasted their energy trying to send an unfriendly message to a German and instead chose the German car not carrying Germans.
Next up: more details as to why we were there.
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