A Trip to Globus

“Are we going out, Pappa?” Robert, the ever-precocious 8 year old, looked up at us and smiled.

“Yes, we’re going to visit Globus. Do you want to come? You can be our human GPS.”

“Yeah, Pappa, of course!”

We said good-byes to the rest of the family and headed out to the car.

“Isn’t Globus like a Super Wal-Mart?” I asked.

“The German equivalent of one,” Bob said as we drove up the hill. The street looked icy and snowy. Suddenly, our car was sliding backward instead of forwards!

“Looks like this isn’t going to work!”

Bob began to back up the car and turned downhill instead.

“Slippery out here today,” he mumbled.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I realized we wouldn’t hit a wall or a gate.

“Well, Bobby, show us where to go.” Bob said as he glanced in the rearview mirror.

“Turn left.”

“No, that’s the wrong way! We should turn right here.”

“But we should go to the Globus that has the Saturn in it!”

“What?” I thought. “The one with a car in it?”

“No,” Bob repeated firmly. “That one is too far away. We are going to the one just before Kaiserslautern.”

Next thing we knew, we had made several wrong turns thanks to Robert. We soon had whizzed past Globus, after going through a military base and had to make a U-turn. A light flashed in our faces.

“We just got our pictures taken!”

“What?” I asked.

“We’ll be getting a ticket in the mail! I’m going too fast for the speed limit. Even if you’re one or two kilometers above you’ll get one. But we won’t pay it and neither will Bobby. We’re not the owner of the car.”

We were silent the rest of the way trying not to lose it with our little guide in the back seat.

Finally we arrived at our destination and we were awed by a humongous store that had at least three restaurants, hair and nail salons, an eye glass place, a large cheese bar and a giant bakery. The rest of the place was filled with all kinds of consumer goods of every type and description. They even had an American aisle with a red, white and blue banner on it that had all our favorite foods: boxed mac and cheese, ketchup, mayonnaise, peanut butter, taco kits etc. We bought a few groceries as we walked down the aisles.

Bob grabbed a bratwurst on brochen which is their equivalent to a hot dog for one euro and I took a sample bite. He then bought a hot pretzel for 50 cents euro for Robert.

Then we left to go home.

“Did you have fun?” I asked Robert.

“Yes, but I’ll pay you 12 dollars to take me to Saturn right now!”

“What is Saturn?” I finally asked.

Bob sounded irritated. “It’s an electronics store. No, son, and you can’t bribe us! Your dad can take you there.”

He kept pleading with us and we both had a good laugh saying no.

We enjoyed our trip but were glad to get back home again.

Who ever said Europe only had sidewalk cafes and small storefronts?

And there’s one in France, too. It’s only a 45 minute drive. We’ll have to go there next time…