Author's preface: Just to clear my conscious, I had a post ready for the occasion of the New Year... But it got destroyed on my computer and I haven't had the nerve to reytype it all. In the meantime I've found some new things to write about. OK. On with the post...
~*~
Now that I'm back in Germany after a month-long stateside hiatus, I'm a little more than half way through this year-and-a-half research stint. Coming back has made me actively notice a few more oddities about the Germans, and looking back on my time thus far has also made me realized how much I've learned since April. The following anecdotes are taken from real life... (btw I think they are technically vignettes rather than anecdotes, since there is no moral or inspirational purpose behind them. Although, I suppose enlightening the rest of the world on the occasional idiocy of this culture [and I suppose my own culture at times] is in and of itself a valiant enough purpose to warrant the name anecdote.)
~*~
Muenzenkultur, ie Coin Culture. The Germans have a rather interesting relationship to their currency, and by that I don't just mean that they are prudent to the point of inhumanity (in Germany, one pays to use public restrooms for example). They also like all dealings in their currency to be done with exact precision as humanly and wallet-ly possible.
If you have a German debit card, don't bother trying to use it. If you are like me, you will have the pleasure of being yelled at (literally with raised voice) by all matter of vendors who decry the heresy of having to pay credit card companies a nominal fee every time a customer uses such a card. Before Christmas, I was looking high and low for a particular set of cookie cutters. I finally found Wolfenbuettel's only cooking-goods store, were I found the village's only cookie cutters. I could only buy one cookie cutter, as the storefront owner was charging a whopping seven Euro (something like eleven dollars) for each one (the price tags were written by hand). I made sure to ask him beforehand if I could pay by debit card, to which he answered yes. As I went up to pay, he ran the card through, and proceeded to give me a long moral tirade on why I should only use cash to pay in public. His voice continued to crescendo, he became red in the face and other customers glanced up from their perusing of the store. Since I had asked him ahead of time, and he had a "visa" sign on his door, I could only assume that his tirade was less against the fifty Euro cents he would be charged by visa and more about the German fondness for shaming others. I complied patiently and politely with his prolific pontification for about three minutes, at which point my patience grew thin. "Sir," I interrupted him finally. "In all honesty, why don't you simply add the fifty cents to the total cost of the
product? I would be happy to pay it. It doesn't seem like you have a problem over charging your
customers to begin with. Merry Christmas to you, as well."
Another thing to be aware of while spending time in Germany is that it is culturally inacceptable to pay with anything other than correct change. Does your grocery bill come to 5 euro and thirty five cents? Give the cashier any amount of bills, but woe to the man who gives her anything more or less than thirty five cents. It doesn't matter if you hold up the line searching through your wallet. It doesn't matter if you were saving that twenty-cent piece for the vending machine at work. Though I've never attempted this before, it's highly likely that it wouldn't matter if you didn't have enough cash--as long as you give them the correct change after the decimal point (comma), they probably wouldn't notice. If you try going through the line without giving the right change, they will stop you.
"Do you have thirty five cents?" They will ask, staring holes into your face.
"Sorry, I don't have anything smaller than a ten," you will respond.
"Five cents?" They will ask again, and at that point everyone behind you in line looks at you. What kind of unsocialzed half-breed are you that you neglected to bring correct change with you to pay?
Finally, you give up. You search your wallet, your coat pocket, the inner linings of your purse where you once sewed the family diamonds to keep save from Soviet snipers. And, after five minutes of sweating and shaming, you will find thirty five cents. If not, well, I've never ventured to find out but I've seen others who have. Those are the nameless faces that haunt Wolfenbuettel streets after dark, their eyes hollow and their stares vacant. In return for their not giving exact change, the Gemans saw fit to seize their sense of self.
One would naturally assume that this vindictive obession with receiving exact change would contain the reverse-blessing of some kind, namely perhaps a generosity of giving the change one needs. It is, for example, the plight of every library scholar here to compulsively hoard fifty-cent pieces. Not only are they the only coins that will work in our laundry machines, but they are also the rarest species of Euro coins. Not a problem, one would assume. When you pay for something (with correct change) simply ask for one of the euros returned to you to be paid in fifty-cent pieces, right? Wrong. Last Tuesday, I went on a fifty-cent-piece safari. The following excerpts are actual things that were said to me when I asked for fifty cent pieces in return:
"Oh, sorry, I only have a few left and I'd like to keep them." (from the lady at the nearest pharmacy-type store which I frequent about once or twice a week.)
"We don't like to give change to customers." (the grocery store)
"No. Good evening." (from the natural foods store.)
I finally realized (for the umpteenth time in my life) that plain civility and mutual respect is simply too much to ask from the Germans, so I went to the Turks. I always go to the Turks in Germany when I need to feel like a human being again after dealing with the Germans for too long. By that point, though, I literally only had a euro on me, so I couldn't buy anything.
"I'm sorry to bother you, but I've been trying to find change all evening," I asked the cashier, whom I knew from experience could speak very little German. "Could I please have two fifty cent pieces? I really need to do my laundry."
She smiled and nodded, as though she understood the situation personally. In several minutes, I left the store with the two aforementioned coins in pocket--as well as a small bundle of hand made Turkish delicacies that the woman threw in a bag "as a gift."
Every story has a happy ending.
~*~
I have a new roommate, Emilie. She is a delightful French doctoral candidate with whom I've bummed around a few times and learned a few things.
Last weekend, her friend and colleague came to visit her. He took a long train ride from Paris, which involves switching from the French rail system to the German rail system. We picked him up at the trainstation with Emilie's car, after his train was delayed for four hours.
"The conductor wanted to charge me forty euro b/c he claimed I had the wrong ticket when I got onboard in Germany!" He nearly yelled as soon as he was off the train. "I told him maybe if his train hadn't been four-hours delayed, I wouldn't have had to be on the wrong train! What a German! They'll try to swindle everyone!" He was yelling this loudly in thick French accent, and I wondered whether anyone could hear.
After this, we walked around Braunschweig for a little bit. We came to an intersection where a mass of Germans waited on both sides of the empty, non-traffic bearing street (waiting for the cross walk sign is a beloved religion for most Germans). Emilie and her friend paraded across.
"We don't abide by German rules," she turned back at me, laughing. "Especially the pointless ones."
The next intersection we came to, I followed Emilie across the street.
"Hey, follow the rules!" An old man yelled out of nowhere, raising his cane at us from the curb. "This isn't France, you know!" Emilie and Louis burst out laughing--there was no way he could have known how apt his comments were.
I soon found out that there is a wide cleft separating French people from Germans. And that's the way both sides like it.
"Why did he say that thing about French people?" I asked Emilie, later.
"Because," she explained calmly. "We hate each other. It's a historical fact. Life just makes sense that way."
And it does, sort of. The Germans and the French--they hate each other, but they need each other too. The Germans are too uptight, and they need to loose Frenchies as their cultural foes in order to legitimize and exacerbate their need to be uptight. The French, on the other hand, need their German nemeses to remind them why being laid back is such a joy.
~*~
Bureaucratic culture.
I have probably already made some harangue or other about German bureaucracy on this blog. If you have forgotten, though, I suggest catching yourself up by watching any number of feature films that have been set during the period of the Holocaust.
I remember the first experience I had with the bureaucracy in Wolfenbuettel, it was a mess. I needed to open a bank account, so I showed up with my passport and some cash to deposit.
"We need three proofs of your address," they told me. I returned later that day to realize that they closed at 1PM. The following Monday I returned.
"But where is your residency documentation?" They asked. I showed them my three proofs of my address. No, residency documents are something different that, unbeknownst to me, entailed three trips to the city hall, another two trips to the bureau of immigration, paying for updated passport photos, and a myriad of other trivialities. Six moths or so later, I finally had all my ducks in a row to get a bank account, only to have to return again after I had fetched a proof of employment plus a few other things I dont' remember anymore.
I had gone through this whole process before, when I lived in Fulda during 2006, but that time, my boss had simply collected all my documents from her file on me and walked me to the bank, city hall and everywhere else herself. She did all the talking, meanwhile I think I looked at toys in the waiting room like all the other adult children or something. All that time, I thought we were just there to see the doctor or something. Little did I know she had been going to bat for me in the world's most bureaurcratically obscene society.
My experience with the bank this time around taught me a lesson. Germans are serious when it comes to documents and there is no way I'm ever going to change that. Watching a German office worker with documents is sort of like watching a child in a candy store-they just love papers with semi-useless bits of identifiable information on it! First, they lay all the papers out in organized stacks. Then they shuffle the papers. Sometimes, if they are really lucky, they get to put staples into some of the papers.
After the bank, I quickly bought a mini file box--the kind some people store coupons with. In went every document I have ever been given since the time I came to Germany--INCLUDING the promotional materials that the German rail company sends me every three months. You never know when a German will ask for this all-important document.
Today was the crowning glory of my interactions thus far with German bureaucracy: the internet company. I need to get ethernet cable internet b/c the wifi I currently have is to slow for Skype. So, after lunch I grabbed my mini-file and my passport and headed to Kabel Deutschland.
After some consultation, I finally settled on a contract, whence commenced what--six months ago--would have ended in total catastrophe.
"Passport?" He asked. I opened my file. BAM. I smacked it onto the counter.
"Pay stub addressed to your address?" BAM.
"Residency documents?" BAM.
"Bank account num--" BAM. I smacked my bank account id card onto the table before he had even asked for it. The cashier stared up at me curiously. What's that, homeboy? Or, should I say, Hausboy? Speechless? Yeah that's right. You've never been beat by an American at your culture's favorite pastime, have you? Well, you've never dealt with THIS American before, have you?
"Blood type?" He asked. I was stunned. I had no idea what my blood type was. My heart raced. I needed that internet subscription. If he asked for one more document, so help me God...
"Just kidding," he chuckled, handing me the contract copy. It was the first time I'd ever witnessed a joke in Germany that was, for all intents and purposes... LOL.
