phones and marriage

Yesterday, we made our very first endeavors into the German shopping experience. We retraced our steps from last night and went back to the shopping district in the north to look for cell phones. This turned out to be a very interesting experience. Our little group of four Americans would walk into a store, look around for prepaid phones, and then huddle in a circle and talk amongst ourselves, all with no one from the store saying one word to "encourage us to purchase their services." We walked from store to store, visiting 5 or 6 in all, never once speaking to the store associates. This itself was a big culture shock not having service reps all over you to buy their product. Finally, we went back to some stores and asked some questions in German and figured out the place with the best plan, Tchibo. Then we were able to purchase the phone and figure out how to activate it, all in German (with a few stupid mistakes). After that, we decided we needed to get out and do something so that we could go back to sleep that night. So we decided to try to find "die Kneipe" (the bars). One of the kids we had been with the other day told us they were southeast of our hostel so we set out to find them. We walked a good mile and a half before we found the little square of bars, but when we got there we realized that they were less than a block away from our hostel... We stayed out for a little while and I ended up talking for a long time with this German girl who came in with a veil on her head and a box full of chocolates and other little items. It turned out that she was selling them to "raise money" for the party that would follow her wedding that week. The whole thing was actually a sort of bachelorrette party for the girl to go from bar to bar with all of her girl friends as a last harrah before she tied the knot. I talked to her other friend about more German marriage traditions like the friends of the people getting married coming to their house to smash all of their dishes on the walls outside. It doesn't sound like a very good idea to me but hey, they're German...