As I looked up and realized that I was sitting in an atrium behind the Panera Bread in Washington DC’s China Town, I was reminded of another atrium that I sat in many years ago. That atrium was in Bamberg Germany. Bamberg is famous for its Rauchbier (smoked beer) and the group I was with was getting a talk on the history of unusual brew.

The brew master gave his talk in German, which was fine because most of our group was German. I traveled to Germany a good bit and could understand some German, but was really not following this talk. After the presentation had been going for a good twenty minutes, one of the Germans that I was sitting with leaned across the table and asked, “Do you understand what he is saying?” I replied, “Not Really.” To which my colleague responded, “Don’t worry, we cannot understand him either.” It seems that local dialects can be tough to follow just about anywhere you go.