The reader of The JT might recall that I speculated on these ,er, pages a few weeks back why a perfectly nice German couple might want to move to Scotland. The post looked a bit like this.Anyway, you'll no doubt recall that I burbled on a bit about context, a theme which which was subsequently taken up by another reader of The JT (Two readers! Two!) who wrote in from That Germany to explain why someone from Frankfurt might want to move to Scotland.
I'm very carefully avoiding identifying this individual for reasons that are about to become all too apparent. Suffice to say I think I can confidently confirm that its unlikely this person works for the local tourist board.
Can I also stress that this is not my opinion, I'm just reporting it. I trust all is clear...
"Dear Jaggy,
I was most amused by your article about the visiting Germans the other day. As you say, it's all about context. The "OF" on the car's numberplate means that they come from Offenbach rather than Frankfurt per se. Offenbach is a city of around 120,000 souls to the east of Frankfurt & is seen by Frankfurt rather as "Apache Country", with high levels of unemployment and crime.
In fact your first impression of them being Govanites is not too far off the mark. Offenbach used to be an industrial powerhouse before we bombed the crap out of it in the war. Nowadays there's only a couple of chemical factories and a lot of kebab shops left. As a native born Glaswegian, even I drive through there wi' the windaes up."
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