That’s “punters”, as in the people who are in the punting boats on the Neckar River. The boats are back in action; I noticed them again for the first time last week:
BTW, the word “punters” is also used in British slang for a variety of things, not all of them family friendly as it turns out, according to my survey of Internet slang dictionaries. However, I only associate the slang being used as a mildly derogatory reference to potentially guillble customers, at least that’s the usage I vaguely remember from the old British TV series Lovejoy (thanks to Chris for remembering which show it was). As a result, I hear a British voice in my head saying something about “a punter” whenever I see those boats here in Tübingen.
But I digress.
Now, I like seeing the boats back on the river. But the main problem with the return of the boats is that it signals the beginning of the tourist season here in Tübingen. We’re not really overrun with tourists, mind you, but between them and the students who have come back for the start of the next semester at the university, the sidewalks are a bit more clogged than they had been the past few months. I now even have some competition when taking that standard “postcard” shot from the Neckarbrücke:
During the winter, there were a lot of people doing errands on their own, whereas now there are more couples or small groups of people out and about. This means that I also have more opportunities now to hear the occasional tantalizing conversational snippet. A recent example: A man and a woman were walking down the street, pushing a baby carriage. She was commenting that “when you live on a boring street, it’s easy to forget you live in an interesting town. It’s like living on Everett street in — ” Unfortunately, at that moment she noticed they were walking down an interesting street in the old part of Tübingen, right by the huge Stiftskirche Church that’s visible in my panorama from last week. Walking down this not-boring street distracted her from her pronouncement about life on a boring street, so she never finished her remark.
As a result, we will never know where she was talking about, and whether she lived on a real Everett Street, or if it was some sort of codename for boring streets in general. Since she was speaking in English with a North American accent, I think she was probably originally from the U.S. So, she could have been talking about an Everett Street they lived on there. A quick search on the Internet to find Everett Streets in the U.S. comes up with 9 different ones in 4 states.
But of course, it also occurred to me that perhaps she lived in Germany, and was therefore talking about an Everett Street in a town in Germany. Now in German, Everett Street would be called Everettstraße. While there’s no street by that name in Tübingen, there is one, as it turns out, in the town of Celle up in Northern Germany. That town has a very pretty castle (pictured in the Wikipedia entry for the town), as well as some half-timber houses just like the ones you see in the old city part of Tübingen. There’s quite a long entry about Celle in Wikipedia, actually, so I’d warrant that it has the potential to be an attractive little town.
I should also note that my Internet searching also pulled up photos of houses on some of those Everett Streets in the U.S. But I have found no photos of Everettstraße in Celle. Which is what I would expect if it’s where my mysterious overheard stranger had lived. I mean, why would you take a photo of anything on Everettstraße, since it’s when you live on that street that it’s easy to forget you live in an interesting town.
At least that’s what I hear. 😉
Beautiful pictures and lush green of spring, OH MY!
Maybe she was from Everett and used Everett Streets as a universal term to mean all the streets in that town.
Heck I would have asked her. But then, that’s me. Breaking down the barriers of social decorum.
I hear there are some particularly dodgy tourists headed your way. Be on the lookout!
Thanks, Kathy! I might have asked her had I been able to catch her eye. 😉 Stuart – cute, cute. I’ll tell them you said that. 😉
The willow trees in your first picture look luscious. I didn’t even notice them when we were there. Did you doctor the picture or was that just the color you got when you took it?