Cliff wouldn't like this...

In Germany there are three places to get groceries: Supermarkets, outdoor stands, or lebensmittels, which are small convenient-type stores (literally translated "life shops") that sell selected food stuffs. The best produce is at the outdoor markets, but it can be pricey and you have to really rely on your language skills. The grocery stores are very limited here, and although you have time to stand in the aisle and slowly read the box, something about misused exclamation points and wasted enthusiasm makes me distrust the German big brand "Ja!" a Johnson and Johnson like company from the East/West days that makes everything from toilet paper to yogurt. So when funds are low and energies lower, Erik and I walk downstairs to the Pol-Kost, our neighborhoodd lebensmittle featuring food from, you guessed it, Poland. We like the idea of stopping in most days to buy milk or beer, and saying "hi" to the mother and daughter who run the place. Every item sold is Polish, and thus all the canisters and boxes have odd letters on them and we must rely on a dancing bear eating what looks to be Frosted Flakes to tell us what the contents are. Usually, this method works for us, but yesterday it didn't. I went out in the afternoon to get some apple juice, because I was thinking of how much I loved "The Cosby Show," and then I thought of how Cliff Huxtable always drank apple juice. So, I marched down to the Pol and looked at the rows of juice boxes. I found the one that advertised apples on the cover design, said my niceties to Nadja, and went home. I opened the box, poured a glass, took a sip, and spewed the contents allover the kitchen like a cartoon character. Something was terrible wrong: Either the juice was bad or I purchased some sort of fermented moonshine. I ran to the computer and found a Polish dictionary online to type in the words featured on the juice box. As the web page loaded I had visions of the words "Donkey urine" or "Prussian sweat," but instead the translation popped up as: "Mint and Apple cider." Trust me, you never want to experience this horror.