Two Things

1) When living in a foreign country it is just as important to pay attention to their holidays as it is to pay attention to American ones. Case in point: I still need a pair of brown slacks for my conference next week, and since yesterday was my only free day before leaving for the conference and I was meeting some friends for dinner in Saarbrucken, I decided to take the train down there early so I could go shopping there. Fun fact: May 1st is German Labor Day. All of the stores in Germany are closed on national holidays. That was a fun surprise. Thankfully, Starbucks was open so I set there for two hours just drinking my tea and enjoying the free wifi. Since the closest Starbucks to us is about 30-45 minutes away, now going to a Starbucks is a special treat for us instead of a regular occurrence the way it was in NYC for me. It felt so nice and luxurious to be able to just actually sit in a Starbucks and enjoy it. Also, I made an important discovery that day- the German Starbucks have their own rewards card- you get a stamp for every drink, and your 10th drink is free. (A lot more generous than the American gold card rewards, but then again, drinks over here cost A LOT more than they do in America.) I excitedly emailed this factoid to my husband, who replied stating that spending 21,50€ on a train ticket from our house to Saarbrucken, plus an extra 25€ on drinks does not really constitute a savings to get the free one. I don't get his logic, do you?


2) I absolutely loved last night's Glee. Longtime readers know that I am absolutely obsessed with Phantom of the Opera (my husband proposed to me right after a Phantom performance on the West End) so I had to control my shrieks when I heard Kurt singing Music of the Night. While I love Glee, I hate how most of their song selections lately have been from pop culture. It was so great to see them doing Broadway songs again- especially some of my favorites. I really hope they continue to do more of those in the future.