The German Lesson

So this East Friesian goes into a music shop. He looks around for a good long time, and the impatient clerk asks the East Friesian if he needs any help. The East Friesian declares: "I'll take the red trumpet and the white accordion." "I beg your pardon?", responds the confused clerk. Again, the East Friesian declares: "I'll take the red trumpet and the white accordion." The clerk thinks about it for a moment and answers: "You can have the fire extinguisher, but the radiator has to stay."*

*This was the first joke I learned to tell in German. Many Germans tell jokes about East Friesians. The Ostfriesen are part of the Friesian ethnic and linguistic minority who have traditionally lived on the northern coasts and Islands of Germany and the Netherlands. The Friesian language is a pleasure to listen to, and if you speak both German and English, it is to a large part comprehensible. Telling jokes about minorities is not right, but this joke is so sweet, that repeating it cannot be entirely wrong, and there are enough West Friesians in my family tree that I can claim some exemption. And I promise, one day I shall, in fact, write a piece for one red trumpet and one white accordion.