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When I flew to Luxembourg on April 18, 1988 and took a bus to Stuttgart where Manfred, my husband to be promised to meet me, I couldn’t speak a word of German, nor did I even have zwanzig pfennig in my purse for a telephone call in case he wouldn’t show up. Luck have it, he showed up. We drove to Herrenberg, the town that would be my new home, with its onion-domed Foundation church greeting me high above the city. I knew about as much about German lifestyle and culture as I had seen in the movies or read in books. The American stereotype images of beer-drinking Bavarians in lederhosen eating bratwurst and shouting “Prost” was my image of a typical German. Boy did I have a lot to learn!
I went from drinking Coca-Cola to trying German wines, from eating my Mom’s macaroni and cheese to eating Schwaebisch Spatezele and from shopping trips to the mall in the car to shopping sprees on foot to the marketplace with a basket on my arm.
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