Standoff
Hermann called me over to the front window the other morning, laughing his Hintern off. I didn’t believe him at first, but it was really true. Two male natives, one in a Jaguar and the other in a Golf, were facing it off in the street in front of our apartment house. These streets can be awfully narrow sometimes (parking on both sides etc.) and it often comes to “incidents” like these. It’s similar to when two cars are trying to cross a one-lane bridge at the same time: Somebody has to give in and wait or back up and let the other guy through. Neither of these guys were even thinking about budging here, though. They had turned off their engines and had been facing each other off, bumper to bumper, for a good ten minutes already. At least that’s what Hermann claimed. I went back into the kitchen to grab my Kaffee and came back to watch a bit. Other cars would drive in behind them every few minutes, honk like crazy for awhile and then back up and leave. I counted seven or eight of them. These guys didn’t seem to be in any hurry, though, and the cops never showed up. Then I got bored and went back to my newspaper in the kitchen. Hermann later told me that the guy in the Jaguar finally knuckled under and backed out. Noblesse oblige or something, I guess. These natives always get crazy like this, wenn sie Recht haben (when they are right, or believe themselves to be right - in the legal sense). It doesn’t really matter that they may be wrong in the moral or decent (human?) sense. They are often blind to this. Blind is the right word, too, like color blind. Being right legally - you know, like having the right of way - that’s all that matters here sometimes.
