We will soon  bid a fond farewell to Alabama  and begin  waking up to glorious German mornings.   So before we begin the tales of our travels in Germany, it’s time to collect a few thoughts on what we’ll miss, and what we will not miss, about Bama:

I will NOT miss the Black Widow spiders.  Horrible!  And everywhere!  Terrifying little beasts.  (Can you tell I have spider issues?)  They overtook our patio furniture and moved into our mailbox last year when we left for 3 weeks of summer vacation.  After that,  I took to wearing big, yellow dishwashing gloves each time I’d go to retrieve the mail.  I’m sure the neighbors talked–but I don’t care.  I was doing my best to keep up the eccentric Southerner  image and warding off Black Widow bites at the same time.  Seemed like a win-win situation to me.  All the same, I can happily live without Black Widows.

I can also live without the summers that continue into the holiday season.  No living nativity should include Baby Jesus in a sunhat and swim diapers.  Not that Bethlehem is known for its blizzards… but…let’s save that digression for another day.  I’m just saying,   September really ought to be the outer wall of summer, after which Mother Nature should change out the seasonal scenery for you.  Any less than four seasons, and the climate is veering off toward abhorrent.  (Any more than four seasons, and it gets pretty weird too.)

And, no, I won’t miss all the giant trucks that never sound like they have mufflers.  Which is funny, because they do have mufflers. (Thanks to their monster tires, you can actually  look up and see the mufflers looming overhead when they pass.   Maybe they are just decorative mufflers.  Or maybe they are really extra sound pipes, like a church organ.  Clever… but I still don’t get it.)

I WILL miss the BBQ from Dreamland Barbecue.  And the banana pudding.  Yum!  Some of the best BBQ ever–right up there with Stamey’s BBQ and Chandler’s Beef BBQ in North Carolina.

I will definitely miss the neighbors–some native Alabamians, some not.  All friendly.  All funny.  All standing rabidly on one side or the other of the Alabama/Auburn rivalry.

I’ll also  miss the way store clerks strike up long conversations with you like they’ve known you all their lives.    I’ve a feeling that won’t happen much in Germany. . .and, anyway, it will be a while before my vocabulary isn’t exhausted in a three minute conversation.

Back to things I’m not fond of–I’m not usually a big fan of lists like this:  what I love/what I hate about _____.  There’s a lot to love about any place.  And I’ve never met a place that, no matter how great, didn’t have it’s low points.  But, as Melville said, “There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast…Nothing exists in itself.”   Life is a study in contrasts, so bring them on!  A little sour in the sweet provides the necessary punch.

And punch line.  Let’s be honest, it’s those “what I don’t like” lists that provide the laughs.   Where  would we be without the horrors, the gaffes, the Stinking Bishop amongst the cheeses?   But that, my friends, is a tale  for the morrow.  See you then!