Get Dressed!

One rule you need to know living in Germany is, you have to get dressed. You can not, and will not, go to the store in your sweatpants. No matter how little you need. You will, after many years, find it normal to put on an "outfit" everyday.

Visits home will cause family members to constantly say, "Oh, you look nice. Where are you going?" And after about a week it becomes the family joke. "We have to wait for Liz, she is still inside tying her shoes." The last three words are said in a mocking tone because no one in America wears actual shoes. They wear sneakers if it is somewhere they need to look "presentable" like a restaurant. Anywhere else they wear slip- ons. Doesn't matter what kind. The past two years it has been Gaudy colored styro-plastic clogs. Okay, I know they're called Crocs, but most people buy the knock-offs that are made from recycled plastic found near Homer Simpson's nuclear plant and smell carcinogenic.

Remember the year here in Germany when wearing bowling shoes was all the rage? The weren't really bowling shoes, they didn't have a huge number double stitched on the back heel, but still, they looked like bowling shoes. I took them with me to the States. I don't know what I was thinking. I wasn't. I only know I will never live down that little fashion faux pas.

Just a few days ago I went to see my friend Trix. She opened her front door and peeked around from behind it. "Oh good, it's you. Come in, quickly, I'm not dressed." I went in expecting her to be buck-naked, or just in her skivvies. No, she was fully dressed... in sweat pants.

She, too, has been here just a teensy-bit too long.