We don't need an invitation

An update from Sallstrasse 18 (that's our building):

Our first floor neighbors had a party in the backyard over the weekend. They did not invite Brian and me. Don't go feeling sorry for us, though. We didn't actually want to go.

I learned about the party from our third floor neighbor when I ran into him in the stairwell on Friday afternoon. When he asked if we were going to the party on Saturday, the blank look on my face was evidence that he probably shouldn't have said anything (is there an expression in German that's equivalent to putting your foot in your mouth?).

Were we not invited because the neighbors don't like us? Because it's just easier not to include us? Because we are strange foreigners? Because we drop things on the people below us? Or because Brian once told the hosts of the party that we don't need to be included, and that we don't like playing the token foreigners and disrupting the normal conversation to make people speak to us in English?

Either way, there were big picnic tables outside, a grill smoking, music playing, and neighbors inevitably gossiping about us as we stayed upstairs.

We couldn't hide out the whole evening, though, because we had to go to the opera. Our friend Ed is a singer in the Hannover opera company. He had gotten us free tickets to see the opera version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. While all dressed up and heading down the stairs (a lot happens on the way up and down the stairs when you live on the 5th floor), we ran into a second floor neighbor. I am sure she went out back and gave the neighbors at the party a full report.

Around this same time, I had a discussion with Brian about whether we have enough real German friends. How can I confidently write a blog about funny things that German people say and do if I don't know lots of them? Am I missing out on key elements of German culture by hanging out with ex-pats? Not that I don't know any Germans - there are the spouses of several of our friends, several German friends of friends, some staff at the school and, of course, the neighbors. But most of the people I like best here are other foreigners - they are more outgoing, seem to make friends more easily, and as foreigners, we all have something in common.

Brian thinks this is a ridiculous thing to worry about. He's probably right. I was talking to my Colombian friend Olga's Serbian mother-in-law recently. She told me that in 40 years of living in Germany, while speaking flawless German and being gainfully employed, she has mostly befriended people from Russia or Poland or some other country. The Germans she knows are only friendly with her, not friends of hers.

I did make an effort to meet the people who just moved in next door. They appear to be real Germans. I don't know whether they were invited to the backyard party or not. Maybe they didn't want to go either.