General Discussion

We have a decent sized circle of friends in our immediate neighborhood, and it’s rare that someone ringing the doorbell isn’t one of them, or else FedEx with my weekly mail from Dallas.

However……

If it’s someone from some religious cult (and to us, that’s all of them), I get instant selective amnesia and can speak only Catalan or Swedish. Russian is dicey, due to the large number of recent Russian immigrants. Swedes and Catalans do not come to Düsseldorf in great numbers.

Then there was the time some traveling “Irish” roofers wanted to redo our roof and attic. The guy DID speak good English, but if he was Irish, then I’m Idi Amin’s grandson. I said I couldn’t let anyone into the attic, because I had built booby traps similar to ones I had heard about installed by a break-in victim in Iowa. They were modified hunting traps with power blades that cut off an intruder’s feet at the ankle. Horrified, the guy reminded me that anything like that was illegal (well versed in German law for an itinerant “Irishman,” but Ok). I answered, yeah, I know, but if someone breaks into our house through the roof, and has to be carried out minus his/their feet, it will only cost me money, whereas it will cost him/them their mobility for the rest of their lives. He decided that there must be houses in the neighborhood far more in need of “roofing” than ours.