It's about 22:00, a German man in a suit stares at me strangely as I roll into a gas station. I maintain eye contact with him as I pull in. I stop, and while looking at each other, I reach for the petrol pump and slowly start to bring it towards me, as if I were about to fuel my bike. My hand stops, I put the nozzle back in it's holster and smile at him. Ah, it was a joke, he thinks and then laughs a lot, a lot more than the joke's level of hilarity should've prompted. I'd say this is definitely something I've found with German people; nothing that I think is particularly funny makes them laugh, then every now and then I say or do something where I'm hardly even aware of it's meaning and suddenly I've got 5 Germans crying laughing around me, while I just chuckle awkwardly in an effort to fit in.
The man comes over and chats to me. He is fluent in English, which I enjoy very much since I haven't properly spoken in English for some time. He gets a couple of most excellent German beers and we sit. He tells me I am a funny guy, though a bit crazy. I say everybody here says I'm crazy. He says that's probably because I'm crazy, and I find it difficult to argue with his logic. It's the old expression where It's either me who's crazy, or everyone else, though In Germany I think the latter option is a little more feasible than usual. When he gets up to leave, he puts twenty Euros in my hand. I try to refuse it, though my fake attempts to try and refuse people's generosity are seeming to show less and less resistance these days. He says to take it for making him laugh, and I think of all the no money at all that I have made from stand up so far, wondering if it may be more lucrative to perform outside German gas stations.
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