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" There was a roadblock, in a little German town. A black police van was parked across the road, and three polezei stood in front of it, waving me into a little parking lot. I smiled. True, I had an apprehension of disaster\u2014I figured the road was closed because of an accident up ahead. But how bad could it be? How bad could anything be, in this quaint corner of the world that often feels like a respite from the future?  The police gathered around my car, speaking in German. It is a misconception trumpeted confidently by Americans that all Germans now speak English. They don&amp;#039;t. The one female officer was pointing at a black handheld device, which for some reason I believed was a kind of translation machine, produced for my convenience. I got out of the car and looked at the device for a second, before stepping away and gazing down the road, in search of the accident that had interrupted my progress. When I turned back to them, all three were staring at me with great curiosity.  &amp;quot;Do you want me to turn around?&amp;quot; I asked. They looked at each other, but didn&amp;#039;t say anything. &amp;quot;Oh, I get it,&amp;quot; I said. I pointed at my chest, and then pulled my passport from my back pocket. &amp;quot;Amerikanski?&amp;quot; I said. The oldest of the three officers now step-ped forward. He was very German looking, with a long pointy nose, white skin and fleshy lips the color of deli meat. His eyes, small and almost denuded of lashes, blinked furiously from behind rimless eyeglasses. He pointed at the device held by his female colleague. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t understand,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;I only sprechen English.&amp;quot; He jabbed his finger again at the monitor, until I saw that he was indicating the number 67. Registering that I still didn&amp;#039;t get it, the female officer placed her device on the hood of my car. She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket, and ran her finger over a line that connected the number 67 to the figure of 25 euros. And with that, I finally understood what the roadblock was for: me. Against all odds, I had succeeded in getting stopped for speeding in Germany.  I had just gotten off the Autobahn, where I had pushed my rental car to 150 kph (about 100 mph) and still been passed by cars that I never saw coming, and that disappeared as soon as they went by. Germany is a country where people don&amp;#039;t jaywalk, even if there&amp;#039;s no traffic and no one around, but then go out on the autobahn and celebrate the freedoms guaranteed by the native German genius for engineering by driving so fast that their cars seem to undergo some kind of molecular change. But I wasn&amp;#039;t on the autobahn anymore. I was in a small German town, where, by doing 67 kph in a 50-kph zone, I had fallen into a German speed trap. &amp;quot;I owe you 25 euros?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Ja,&amp;quot; she said with a smile. &amp;quot;Twenty-five euros.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Will you take dollars?&amp;quot; She looked helplessly at her boss.  &amp;quot;Dollars?&amp;quot; she said. Her boss had walked away. Now he strode briskly back toward. He spoke an excited sentence that ended in the word Deutschland\u2014or, to be more exact, that ended in an exclamation point. There is no exclamation point in the world like a German exclamation point. He continued in English: &amp;quot;No dollars, no dollars, no dollars!&amp;quot; he shouted. &amp;quot;Euros!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Well,&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;Where is the ATM?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;ATM?&amp;quot; the female officer said. &amp;quot;Five hundred meters.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I will go there then.&amp;quot; And I began walking. It was an amazing feeling, because I was doing something I never would have imagined doing with an American cop. But the female officer stepped in front of me, and said, &amp;quot;No ATM.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Then: another chance,&amp;quot; I said. It was the most American phrase I&amp;#039;d uttered since I&amp;#039;d been stopped, and it was the one they repeated in English among themselves. &amp;quot;Another chance?&amp;quot; the female officer asked the third officer, and when he nodded she turned to her boss. He had walked away again and taken off his hat. He was considering it, when the female officer asked him, &amp;quot;Another chance?&amp;quot; He looked at me, shook his head, and waved his hand in disgust. &amp;quot;Another chance,&amp;quot; he said. What else could he do? I was an American. All I had to do to keep from paying was keep acting like one. Tom Junod was in Germany reporting the final part of his &amp;quot;Most Famous Men in the World&amp;quot; trilogy. The first two profiles were of Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. The third is Matt Damon, out in the August issue.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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