We heard today on CNBC that Walmart is pulling out of Germany. Apparently it can't compete with Aldi on groceries and has lost about a billion dollars there. Yikes. There was no Walmart in our region of Germany, so I never went. Actually, we passed one once and were excited, but then we realized it was Sunday and thus it was closed. I should've taken a picture; have you ever seen a closed Walmart?

I also got a kick out of this description of why Walmart didn't work in Germany:

To American eyes, the new ethics manual is standard stuff. But when Wal-Mart Stores Inc. distributed the newly translated code to German employees a few weeks ago, it caused a furor. They read a caution against supervisor-employee relationships as a puritanical ban on interoffice romance, while a call to report improper behavior was taken as an invitation to rat on co-workers.
...
Rivals continue to chuckle about the customer reaction when, initially, Wal-Mart offered services such as grocery bagging. It turned out that Germans didn't want strangers handling their groceries. And when clerks followed orders to smile at shoppers, male customers took it as a come-on.

I still can't put Walmart and Germany in the same sentence without remembering that German haircutter who complained to my husband that she couldn't walk around in an American Walmart in just a bra. Hilarious. Some stuff just doesn't cross cultural lines; I guess Walmart and Germany simply weren't made to mix...

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We watched the World Cup game. France played better and deserved to win, but soccer is a game where nothing happens for 60 minutes and then a penalty kick means you're the best in the world, so whatever. But what on earth was Zidane thinking? What a bonehead...

Oh yeah, and I opened the "toys" box: it was scarves and hats and one lone coat hanger. Fun for the whole family!

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We've been having a blast trying to decipher the English on the outside of our boxes. I just found my cutting boards in a box marked "wooden plates," and last night we giggled to find that all our DVDs and CDs were marked "cassette taps"; we've decided that we're calling movies "taps" from now on. And I know I saw a box in our old house that was marked "toys," but I've yet to find it here in this house. I'm dying to know what we own that the Germans consider "toys"!

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