The Blitz

A few random things:

In Germany most people get speeding tickets when a camera catches them (called getting blitzed), not when a cop pulls you over. I know it usually makes me drive slower, just because you never know, right? It's not like flying down 128 knowing the cops start showing up after the Pine St. exit to Manchester-by-the-Sea, or that they're always parked by the graveyard (telling, isn't it?) in Beverly Farms. Rather than go into the moral and spiritual obligations a speed limit should impress upon us, let's just say this: When you get caught by a cop, you feel like you should've been able to avoid it. But when you get caught by a camera, you can't really complain. They're hidden. You shouldn't be speeding. End of story.

Well, Stefan got blitzed. The day the ticket arrived in the mail - complete with a picture of him driving, in our car, with our license plate - we had a good laugh. See how much the ticket is for? Yep, TEN measley Euro! That's it! So why don't people just speed (after all, it's the land of the Autobahn)? Points. You may not rack up a bill with the government, but you will rack up points, and points will tell your car insurance to rack up ITs bill. See? You still lose.


So the day after his ticket arrived in the mail I proceeded to get blitzed myself. Right. Who's laughing now? So then I went out and did it again the next day. No joke. I was so mad! The first time I was 10 over, but the second time I was going right on the limit. We think the second one may have been the car in front of me....?

In other news: We are now members of the church in Erda. Giving my testimony auf Deutsch ended up going swimmingly. The usually stand-offish Germans actually gave us bear hugs after the meeting - I was floored!

So the following Sunday we decided to go to a different church. No, I'm kidding! Sort of. The sister church back in Giessen, where Stefan's mother is a member, was inducting their new associate pastor this past Sunday, so we decided to go. There were 3 good reasons: People from our church in Erda had been invited - we actually saw our elder there, we were curious to see how these church's induct a new guy, and the 'new guy' was actually an old roommate of Stefan's. He and Hans-Otto (yes, that's really his first name) and a few other guys had all lived in a huge apartment together for 5 years during university, so this was a happy occasion.


It was a nice ceremony and we were glad we could attend the service. I was pretty surprised at how integrated it was with the whole worship service. At one point Hans-Otto was 'quizzed' - did he know the names of all the elders, the address of the church, the name of the children's program, etc. etc. (He passed with flying colors) A letter from the mayor was read aloud, a official from the denomination was there to read an address and pray, the elders prayed and read a verse, and at the end of the service he was given a chance to respond and pray. There was also this thing with the umbrella...the church had written postcards of prayers and welcomes and had tied them to the ends of an umbrella. Here you see the senior pastor, Thorsten, in his address, explaining that the church had symbolically created this to create a shower of blessings and prayers around Hans-Otto and his family during their time of service. It was very nicely done and we were glad we'd attended.

I did receive pictures from my dad regarding his visit with us and his own trip to the church, so I'll be posting that next.