Disciplinary Omas

Once again another average day waking up in our little apartment in Dusseldorf, the sun was shinning and we sat and ate our breakfast while watching some Grey's Anatomy. One of the job offers for the Au Pair was to be in Duisburg, a neighboring city of Dusseldorf an approximate commute of 20 minutes. To Germans that seems like a lot but to us Canada folk seems like no time at all especially if you have to go into town for work. On our way out of the house we grabbed our garbage to drop off in the bin and our bottles for return. Elise and I have been feeling quite confident with ourselves about living a German life... well I guess we haven't been following the way of German exactly. As soon as I started putting the garbage in the can, a little old German lady who had just stopped and got off her bike started yelling at us in German... we were terrified.... the only thing that I could say was  "English... English". The woman in awkward bad English and hand gestures started showing us that we weren't recycling properly. She actually seemed mortally offended by our garbage. We of course apologized and told her it would not happen again. She smiled and then ended the conversation by stating that Garbage is heavy for the men... what ever that is supposed to mean :P. As Elise and I turned our backs away from her we debated the idea of her contacting our land lord to tell him of the incident but then we decided that would just be childish and ridiculous for her to do that. It didn't take us very long to drop off the bottles and I needed to stop at home before we took our little trip down to Duisburg. When we were leaving again, we caught that little childish ridiculous woman red handed, telling on us to the land lord! We decided to show her up one and walk over to show her how courageous we are. The land lord wasn't angry but we apologized anyways. He also brought up the fact that we hang blankets in the windows. He then told us blinds are on the out side of the window and we can close those instead of hanging blankets... we were pretty embarrassed.
At the train station to Dusseldorf Elise received a call from another family interested in her, they wanted to set up a meeting with her that evening. So our trip to Duisburg was much shorter than expected, basically we hopped on the train rode it there and then literally got right back on the next one back home. On the train ride home I decided it was a good idea to rest my feet on the seat across from me. Because the train was pretty bare I did not see any harm in it since I wasn't hogging a seat from somebody. Once again an unacceptable thing in the German culture... a little old lady walked by and decided to discipline me with by speaking German and pointing at my feet, she was smiling but I could tell she was secretly frowning. From what I am understanding, Germans like to get mad and smile at you at the same time. Elise had a wonderful meeting with the family, the daughter is such a doll and they told Elise they would get back to her by Wednesday... so fingers crossed! We made it home pretty late since the meeting was quite long so we only managed to watch half a episode of Grey's Anatomy before heading off to bed. All together it was a good day despite our minor incidents; eventually we will get the hang of everything. :D