I think in life we are always oscillating between being aware of our surroundings and being ignorant of them. I love German culture and would even describe myself as idiosyncratically German in a lot of ways. But sometimes the oddity of it all just becomes so clear...
In
the Trainstation, Thursday 18 October 2012.
I’m running down the stairs near
track number two in Braunschweig, trying to make it to track number seven in
the less-than-ample amount of time I have to switch trains, due to a delay. As
I bombard the corridor with my general hyperpaced presence, two men in suits
and ties walk casually in front of me. A third man, assumedly a coworker, joins
them from track five. He firmly shakes everyone’s hand before taking the first
bite of his morning sweet roll. Across the hall from me, two women about my age
parted ways—one to track two, one to track four. Each gripping a starbucks
coffee cup in their right hand, they shook each other’s hand with the left.
With several seconds to spare, I
made it on to my train. I sat there,
panting, and wondering—oddly—why I felt like I was on Walstreet. Realizing that
made me also realize that I had been feeling that way for a long time, I don’t
even know how long. I had no idea what could be causing that odd, NYC business center vibe--it certainly
wasn’t my surroundings, which could be best described as postwar-remake-meets-small-town-meets-farmland-sky
scape. As the train slowly moved from
the station, I settled into a relaxed mentality not unlike sleep, when suddenly a lightbulb interrupted my increasing feeling of relaxation. Those incorrigible hand shakes! They’re
everywhere! With all these handshakes occuring simultaneously, one has the
unshakable sense that groundbreaking business deals are happening all the time.
I’m not on Walstreet at all—I’m just in the middle of Germany, where handshakes
are not only a part of business, they’re a part of LIFE. Everyday. Sometimes,
every hour. If you are ever in Germany, I give you this advice:
- · when in doubt, shake hands with the person next to you.
- · Entering a room? Shake people’s hands in the new room—but don’t forget to shake everyone’s hands in the old room before exiting it to enter the new room. Unless you are just exiting the room to find a toilet, in which case it might be awkward. Speaking of, do not shake other’s hands upon entering a public bathroom—Germans will view this as a direct attack upon their sense of cleanliness. Entering all other rooms, however, will require some form of handshaking.
- · Sitting down for a meeting with the woman at the city government agency, whom you know darn well is going to make the next hour of your life a bureaucratic nightmare, the awful severity of which will only be mitigated by the fact you have undoubtedly forgotten one of the 57 documents you were supposed to instinctively know to bring with you, thereby forcing her to postpone the remainder of the meeting until the soonest available opening to reschedule in two-and-a-half weeks, at which point you will make sure to bring document number 53 so that she can sit down with you for another hour of German bureaucratic torture methods? Shake hands first. And last. And possibly in between, just to be on the safe side, like if she gets up to make a copy of document #21, which just so happens to be the birth certificate of your parapalegic second cousin once removed, at whose home in Tuscany you spent one summer living at, which will go in your city file, just so they can be aware of these things.
- · Is there an awkward silence at a dinner party? Shake hands with the person on your left. At first people may wonder why you are shaking hands, but shaking hands in Germany is like laughter in the US. Once you start, people catch on, and pretty soon everyone is shaking hands. After a while, they don’t know why they’re shaking hands, but at that point nothing much else matters in life. Afterwards, they will all thank you in their hearts because secretly they had been wanting to shake hands all along. In fact, to show their gratitude, it is likely they will shake your hand.
- · Leaving that same party because either there were too many awkward silences or else the hand shaking ended up getting out of control? Shake hands with everyone (yes everyone). If you don’t it will go on some kind of permanent record. As implied by bullet point number three, Germans like record keeping.
- · When you shake hands, one can never be too firm. A dead-fish handshake will only communicate weakness, much like a bleeding baby seal communicates “food” to a shark in an ocean.
- · Going to bed for the night? Shake hands. With yourself or your pillow, if necessary.
- · Feeling sick? Shake hands. You’ll feel better.
- · If there is no one present with whom to shake hands, then go outside and find a stranger, dog, cat, or one of the many historical monuments in this country.
- · At all costs, hands must be shook.
- · Do not hug people. They do not know what this means.
·
Just. Shake. Hands.
That is all. More Deutsch-isms
as events develop.
