People say I'm crazy doing what I'm doing

Once upon a time, somebody, namely some previous owners of this house, painted an exterior wall in our backyard with the worst paint ever. Parts of it are chipping off, and my host dad/boss/whatever offered me a nice little chunk of change to take it off and repaint it. It's finally warm and dry enough to take care of that. So guess what I spent my Labor Day doing! Hard labor! Turns out this horrid paint does a great job sticking to the wall in the places where it wants to.The kids helped out for a while, even though they aren't getting paid for it.
First we attacked it with putty knives, picking off what we could.
After a good hour or two, that got a bit ridiculous. The easy part was done, and the real work began and the kids left for lighter work or play. I sat there  forever, chiseling away at whatever would come off. I still had a good attitude about the work. I have this vision of visiting Switzerland with some friends later on this summer, and this wall is going to send me there. Then Jared came out and gave me some Turpentine stuff, which smells... fantastic. A couple of layers of that somewhat helped in the effort. There wasn't much in the can, and I had to resort to the other can of paint brush cleaner. Dr. Jared said that's the same stuff. As the daughter of a man who has done his share of hard work, I couldn't help but think "nuh-uh! read the freakin label." And it really didn't work as well. Not that the turpentine worked especially well, but at least it helped. I mean, the stuff is for thinning wet paint. Still-in-the-bucket paint. Whatever. We also had a drill bit that looked like a bit of scraggly metal things that was supposed to help blast the paint off. It worked better with the turpentine. Jared went at the wall with the drill and complained almost incessantly about how horrible it was. It's all in the attitude. Seriously. I was grateful for the miserable task because it's funding a trip that I really want to go on, but have been concerned about how to pay for. Jared offered to hire some pros anyways, since it is such nasty work, but I really just want to see Switzerland, so I'm sticking to it.
Since we ran out of turpentine, I was rode my bike to the store today to get that and some other things for the project. Praktiker is basically a small Home Depot in blue and yellow. And it was there that I met my first rude German. Perhaps I was not the first person to ask a relatively dumb question today. They were having a sale and the store was packed. My German isn't perfect, especially when it comes to home improvement terms. I just wanted to make sure the paint stripper was ok for concrete, since some wording on the container made me doubt for a minute. I asked, and the employee wasn't exactly nice in her response. All I needed was a simple yes or no. People like that make it hard for foreigners to have the courage to ask questions, especially when it's hard in the first place. At least the old man next to me offered his advice: wear gloves; that stuff eats hands. Looking forward to tomorrow when the work recommences. Wait, let me rephrase that. I'm looking forward to being paid when all's said and done.