We are in Frankfurt. In Bockenheim. In a pub. A slacker place. Lebenskuenstlers, as they say. "Leisure artists." I have studied up on their slang before this trip. Well, not studied up per se, but found a goofy book at a corporate bookstore in my neighborhood, reportedly full of local slang terms that will make you seem more like you fit in. But see, their country used to be two different ones, with two different histories and two different cultures; they didn't get hooked together for the first time until the mid-1800s, which means that in cultural terms it's still two distinctly different places. What works down there doesn't necessarily work up here, or is even necessarily understood.

We are sitting, having an Altbier. She is lovely. Of course. THEY ALL ARE. Early thirties, sick of it all, cynical and sexy in the way only her people can be. I keep trying to impress her with my slang, and she keeps shaking her head in confusion and shrugging, her way of trying to be humble and apologetic, a hard attitude for her people to understand and even harder pose for them to take, which is why it always looks so fake when coming from one of them. I sigh, smile, drop my hands in my lap heavily. I am wasted, but don't want to tell her. I forget that many brands of beer at the pubs here have twice the alcohol, like malt liquor back home, and that mein Freunden here just looove buying the stupid drunk Americans those brands, watching them get mehr betrunkenen und mehr betrunkenen und mehr betrunkenen. And then pining for eine Schnelle Nummer. By the way, don't ever say "eine Schnelle Nummer" to a female stranger there.

I decide to give the slang one last shot, since I need to go to the bathroom and the last slang term I know has to do with excusing oneself in a funny way to go use the bathroom. It's "Entschuldegung -- ich gehe fuer eine Bengeltiger." Literally, "Excuse me -- I'm going for a Bengel tiger." Metaphorically, a weird old-fashioned term for having to take a tinkle, like Americans saying, "Excuse me, but I gotta go see a guy about a horse."

I stand up, sigh again. "Entschuldegung," I say, pointing to the far side of the room. "Ich gehe fuer eine Bengeltiger."

She bursts into laughter. "HA HA HA HA HA!" she cries. "Yes! That is it, you have finally done it. How did you know that? How does any American know that? Ha ha ha!" There is love in her people, and there is laughter in her people, and there is a finely-tuned sense of humor in her people, despite all the stereotypes. You just need to know how to read them. You just need to know how to understand them.

When I get back from die Toilette, she has sunken back in again to her more melancholy state, the one I'm more used to. "My English is not so good," she says. "It's been so many years since my visit there."

I lean in just a little more; her people are like startled deer, not a good thing to move in on too quickly. "We could figure out a way, maybe," I say in a quiet voice, "to communicate perhaps a little more directly." Her people love metaphors. Her people love big words. Fuck, her people invented the term "schadenfreude."

She looks at me sideways in a sly way, smiling and saying nothing. She takes a drink, puts down her glass. "You are smooth as butter," she says, running her hand through the air in a horizontal line. "See? I know slang too."

She throws down some play money, some blue paper and then some pink paper. We grab our helmets, go outside, unlock our bikes, hop on and make our way down the brick lane. And we are on our way.

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