Au revoir France!

Due to a "suspicious package" on our train at the platform, my ten-hour trek from Saint-Brieuc, France to Wuppertal, Germany was lengthened to ten hours and forty minutes. My trip started out looking out over wheat fields, interrupted by off-white-washed houses with slate roofs; it ended with mist-obscured views of forested valleys containing fachwerk (the traditional German style with dark-brown exposed beams in patterns) houses with clay-tile roofs. The roofs were the first Franco-German difference I noticed . . . that, and plastic grocery bags. To be sure, they exist in both countries, but in France they are as abundant and free as in America. In Germany, only the customer who forgets to bring his own sturdy cloth grocery bag is forced to shell out 25 euro cents to buy a plastic one. But this represents one of the stark differences in the mentalities of the neighboring nations.
Germans would rather spend ten minutes separating garbage into neat piles of organic waste (Biomüll), plastics and packaging materials (Verpackungsmittel), glass, and Restmüll. Restmüll is, as the name suggests, the rest, the garbage which absolutely cannot be sorted into the other categories. As an unwritten rule, this last lump of waste should be the smallest. If not, the sorting process went awry at some point.
The French would rather live life it seems. I actually stood by a green waste container for ten minutes in Paris, waiting to see what people threw in it. Not out of curiousity, but out of fear of throwing my German-qualified Restmüll into a container reserved for recyclables. I thought, what else can a green bag mean other than recycling. But the Parisians proved me wrong. The bag was for everything; how German tourists manage it in the city is beyond me. They must join Catholics in confession, asking for forgiveness from Mother Earth.
On another note, I must offer kudos to all those who have been a tourist in a country without knowing the local language. While I had more French knowledge than most American tourists, it fell embarassingly short of my expectations. Being a non-tourist has always been a tourist for me, and only visiting German-speaking countries and staying with host families has made my wish a reality fairly simply. But France caused me to stray from my comfort zone, and it made for some great experiences.
This weekend promises trips to Köln (Cologne, and not my father's hometown in Carver County), Düsseldorf and Wuppertal, home of Bayer aspirin. Then off to Lübeck, Berlin, Regensburg and then finally Munich.
There is a German word which suits my feeling about my remaining time in Europe: knapp. It can mean "short" but it is much better used to describe the five-minute gap when changing trains ten tracks apart. The hint of sufficiency ("If I run, I can make it" mentality) and the reality of missing something important (Muttering "Oh Scheisse" while the train pulls away).