At a supermarket in Cologne, a slightly humiliating moment at the cashier: after a few days in Germany, during which I’m starting to feel at home again in the German language, I’m buying a handful of items, and as the cashier is ringing them up he stops at the last two; he holds them up and asks something which I don’t get. I’m completely at a loss. It’s a situation, I realize, that could happen to me just as easily at an American supermarket, where the pressures of engaging in a fast-paced transaction with highly specific protocols are often unnerving. When I don’t immediately reply to the clerk, he turns to the man behind me in line: I realize he’s inquiring whether the items in question are also mine, or belong to this man. I start to reply in German, but it’s too late: he has me marked as an American tourist. He starts speaking to me in bad English, reading out the price, and before I can pay he’s already fishing for change in my hand. He has apparently decided that not only do I not speak the language, but I’ve got no idea how to count out Euros. I let him have his way, there’s no point in resisting or denying him his moment of petty condescension. It’s a stinging reminder that, no matter how accomplished one might feel, even the most insignificant public interactions can be fraught for the foreigner.