Three surprises

Something I did *not* anticipate about Germany was the possibility of being cold in summer.

Illinois straight up *bakes* in July. In Japan and Korea, July is marked by the monsoons -- it's either raining or so humid that you wish it would. And Hawaii is, well, Hawaii.

But Germany is weird. July *can* be hot, but it's not guaranteed. Having packed only short-sleeve shirts, I'm actually going to have to buy a long-sleeve shirt in summer.

Two other surprises here are: 1.) Red currants, and 2.) Wasps. The red currants aren't a problem -- one can easily ignore them. But the wasps are not so blithely dismised.

The wasp problem is even worse in hot weather because relatively few restaurants are air-conditioned, and so there's a lot of outside seating.

Outside tables in Wiesbaden's Stadtmitte sound fabulous, and pictures are definitely the stuff of postcards, but -- somehow -- those postcards manage to leave out the wasps.