Geöffnet, or Why I'm an Idiot

As we’ve been walking and driving around Germany, I had been noticing shops with signs that read “Geöffnet”. I didn’t think much of it at first, but I kept seeing them everywhere. They were in downtown Korbach, then I saw them in Kassel, on the roads between towns, and even in Berlin. Some of the signs were small and some were huge, as though they were advertising something very desirable.

I started trying to figure out what it might mean. Perhaps there was someone in Germany named Geöff that had started a business providing some sort of wi-fi service. Or maybe it was like a diners club, advertising that some network of people approved of the shop or that they took some sort of credit card as payment. But no matter how closely I examined the signs or tried to find some similarity between the shops that displayed them, I couldn’t determine what Geöffnet was.

Yesterday I decided to ask one of Mira’s English speaking children what this mysterious word meant. I said, “hey Jenny, what’s Geöffnet?” (pronouncing it “Jeff-net”)

“I don’t know. Where do you see it?”

I explained that I’d seen it on signs all over Germany and I couldn’t figure out what it meant. She asked me to spell it out on paper, so I did and I showed it to her. She started laughing like mad and took the paper over to her brother who began laughing at me also.

“What is it?”

“Well, it’s not pronounced “Jeff-net”. It’s pronounced “ge-UFF-net”

“What does it mean?”

“It means ‘Open’”

So yes, in case you were wondering, I am an idiot.