Meeting the Neighbors

Getting to know people here seems to be a slow moving process, but after 8 months I finally met my neighbors.

I was walking home from the train and I saw an old man waving at me. I said hi, and he asked me if I lived next door (pointing). I said I did, and he told me he had been wondering about me. He knew that I moved in but had not seen me for 8 months. We kept talking (in broken English) and he told me that he had been in an American prisoner of war camp near Marseille from 1945 - 1947. That is where he learned English. It was quite impressive to see how much he remembered with basically no practice over the years. I filled in words from him now and then, but he had the basics.

His wife came out to say hi also. And we had a funny conversation. She asked me my name, I said Sarah. Then she said, no no, your last name. I replied, and she didn´t understand, so we agreed that they would just call me Sarah. Older Germans call each other by last name unless they are close friends. My downstairs neighbor calls me Frau blah blah and it always seems so strange to me.

The couple said that I had a wonderful husband and that I am lucky. (which is true) and invited us over for cake in the garden in spring.

I´m looking forward to it.