Germaniac, Part 7

(I am buying a bottle of a well-known brand of carbonated water, among other things. The cashier is probably in her 40s or 50s.)

Cashier: *as she’s ringing me up* “How is this different from regular water?”

Me: “It’s just carbonated water.”

Cashier: “Oh, okay. What flavor?”

Me: “No flavor, just water.”

Cashier: “So, it’s just water?”

Me: “Carbonated water. It was served a lot when I lived in Germany, and I really liked it.”

Cashier: “You lived in Germany? Wasn’t that hard?”

Me: “It was pretty fun, actually.”

Cashier: “But they didn’t speak English, did they?”

Me: “A lot of them did, but I also learned a lot of German over there.”

Cashier: “Oh, that sounds so hard. Whenever I hear those languages on TV, it just sounds like noise. I don’t know how anyone understands it.”

Me: *taking my receipt and slowly trying to detach myself from the conversation* “Well, the Germans manage.”

448