Non-Bavarians and other foreigners tend to believe that the raucous festival amounts to nothing more than a collective drinking binge, a massive party with rollercoaster rides and erotic displays of tight dirndls and deerskin trousers set to the oompah-pah of brass bands. But there is something more refined going on beneath all the noise and clinking of beer mugs. Oktoberfest is actually a 35-hectare (86-acre) stage where performances of great importance play out simultaneously.
They are about the odd, prosperous southern German state of Bavaria, which at its heart has remained a small, proud nation. They are about the state party, the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), which, in the frenzy of costumes and successful election campaigns, portrays itself as the legitimate successor to the abdicated monarchy. They are about a society’s touching devotion to tradition and local celebrities. And they are about a city where six global corporations listed on Germany’s blue chip stock exchange, the DAX, compete for power and influence — and thus as many seats as possible in Oktoberfest beer tents…
Ah yes… the odd prosperous southern German state of Bavaria. It is not the Bavaria you see in Epcot Germany. Something I learned: You can take the boy out of Bavaria, but not Bavaria out of the boy. He might flee to Disney’s Bavaria, which as you would expect is a happier, small world after all kinda place. But that is the Disney version, in a place where dreams come true, and all the ever afters are happy, and the Bavaria in the boy will always remind him that it isn’t real, dreams are merely dreams, life is short and bitter, but at least there is beer.
I read the English language version of Der Spiegel and get the German news magazine’s posts regularly in my Facebook stream in both English and German. The native German version usually contains a bunch more than the English translated one, and this morning the following appeared in my news page:
Im neuen DER SPIEGEL geht es besonders um die Steuerpläne der Union, mit denen der SPD eine Koalition schmackhaft gemacht werden soll. Ein weiteres Thema ist die Steueroase Deutschland: Weil in den Finanzämtern Fahnder und Prüfer fehlen, entgehen dem Staat Milliarden.
Außerdem: Schlechtere Schulnoten bei übergewichtigen Kindern, “Ermüdungserscheinungen” bei Bundespräsident Gauck, BND belauschte im Kalten Krieg führende Ost-Politker.
Facebook helpfully provides a translation link, powered by Bing which seems to be using the same translation engine that Google does. That last paragraph is translated as…
Also: Lower school grades in obese children, “Fatigue” President Gauck, BND overheard in the cold war leading East leaders.
What catches my eye is how “Ermüdungserscheinungen” is translated simply as “Fatigue”. The concept of a President of Fatigue is delightful somehow, but I know from looking at it this is one of those massive German words made up of other German words all strung together, so I decide to try and decode it to see if I can figure out what they’re trying to say about the President of Germany.
Google also translates “Ermüdungserscheinungen” as simply “Fatigue”. Beolingus doesn’t know what the hell that word means and it usually gets German words Google and Babelfish doesn’t (Babelfish doesn’t seem to be with us anymore). But enter “fatigue” into Google Translate and you get a bunch of possible German words back for it. Ah…of course…
Think of how it is that Eskimos have so many words for snow. It’s not that Germans are always tired, they are an existentially weary people and I guess weight of their lives gives them a need to keep cobbling together new German words every so often to describe how existence is a never ending drain upon the human soul. My Baptist grandmother was like this, but unlike Germans who just accept their lot in life, she hated everything which made her unpleasant company.
The root word in this string is “Ermüdung”, which means “Fatigue” Pulling apart the rest of it in Google Translate I get something about “these phenomena”. I think the word is trying to describe fatigue that is the consequence of localized phenomena, and the sentence is trying to tell me that poor President Gauck creates an atmosphere of fatigue everywhere he goes, or that he’s President of Germany because Germans are tired of everything.
The English Had London, The French Had Paris, And The Germans Had…Er…Lots of Castles…
Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of Germans and their History
by Simon Winder
I have this in my iPad book library and the biggest thing it’s taught me so far is how absolutely pathetic my grade school history lessons were. The history of Europe in the middle ages I was taught, was exclusively that of England, and not really very much of that. We didn’t get to the rest of Europe until the Renaissance and even that didn’t cover much of Europe. I knew nothing of this thing called The Holy Roman Empire (which actually bore very little relationship to the Roman Empire of the Cesars) until I started reading this book.
I’m finding that individuals engaged in a personal exploration of their world tell a Much more satisfying tale of history then academics, although their accounts need to be paid attention to as well. That “street level view” of history often provides you with so many little telling details the high level view does not. Case in point being Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler, which just completely floored me as to how little I really knew about that period of time, despite having World War II history drummed into me throughout my childhood in school and on TV, in comic books and the movies.
In this case, Winder, an Englishman who became fascinated by Germany for somewhat different reasons then I did (I, after I reconnected with my first high school crush who is German, Winder after his father took his family to the Continent one vacation and he had his eyes opened to a whole ‘nother world), tells us about the history he meticulously, even obsessively uncovered for himself. And we sense that history in his retelling of it as one interesting or puzzling or amazing discovery after another after another after another. Text books so often, and tragically, kill that sense of learning something new as an adventure.
His book engages you. But also, and this is what makes a personal reading of history so worthwhile, you see how digging up the history of another land and its people brings him some insights on the history of his own native land for him. So here in this book I am getting insights into both German and British people and their histories and their relationship past and present to each other. A different teller would tell it a tad differently, but still authentically, and that would give you, the reader, a few more telling details that the high level histories would have overlooked, because that is not where they go.
I’m glad I stumbled on this book. Yes, sometimes Winder tries a little too hard to be humorous and it comes off just flippant. But better that then dry and boring. And he’s completely wrong about German food. At least what makes it across the ocean here is just wonderful. But I suppose that’s true of all local eats. The lousy stuff tends to get left back home.
And…gosh…I can’t believe I went through a pretty decent U.S. public school education and walked out still being so ignorant of so much history.
Banging My Head Against The Wand. Wall. Wand. Ouch. Dammit. (continued)
I’m listening to my German language audio files. I’m dutifully repeating the words and phrases as I am instructed. I am actually getting these first baby steps in the course right most of the time now…
Ask me if I understand English.
Verstehen Sie Englisch?
Ask me if I understand German.
Verstehen Sie Deutsch?
Tell me you understand no German.
Ich verstehe kein Deutsch.
While I am dutifully repeating all this on command, it occurs to me that telling someone you know no German in German is a tad contradictory. It further occurs to me that asking a person who knows no German to say how they would inform someone they know no German, in German, is ridiculous.
Banging My Head Against The Wand. Wall. Wand. Ouch. Dammit.
So I’m trying to learn German. It isn’t logical since, living here in North America, the sensible second language for me to try to pick up is Spanish. But the illogical motivation is way stronger then the logical one and I know when to give in. It’s not just a certain someone I know. I get intensely curious about a thing and then it becomes an obsession. Photography was like that. And computers. Everyone who knows me knows how I get when something grabs my attention.
German is a puzzle. In a way that Spanish just isn’t. I was down in Mexico last year for the first time and while I could barely speak a word of it, I found it wasn’t too terribly hard to intuit the meanings of some words and phrases. In part, living here in North America, I have been exposed to a lot of fractured Spanish. Amigo. Gracious. Por Favor. Dónde está el baño? But I also found I could read things like signs down there pretty well, even for words I would have had no clue about.
For example. It was hot down in Puerto Vallarta and I wore my sandals a lot as I strolled through the town with my camera. They were a new pair…I’d bought them down in Key West just a few months previously. So I was still breaking them in. I noticed one morning I was starting to get a blister on one heel. The last thing I wanted was something to keep me from walking around comfortably, so I started looking around for a place that sold bandages ("patches", as I’m told the English call them…). The local convenience store chain, OXXO, which was everywhere down there, didn’t seem to have any. I wandered around for a bit and then I saw a little store tucked in the middle of a block with a sign above it that read: Farmacia.
Hmmm…sounds like "Pharmacy"… And so it was. I wandered in and saw a shop that differed little from any small in town U.S. drugstore I’d ever seen, other then some of the brands were unfamiliar. Now then…let me go to Google and get a quick translation of pharmacy in German. Ah…Apotheke…
Well…actually I think I’d have figured that one out too. But the point is many common Spanish words sound like English words. I don’t need that. No necesito que. German, not so much. And I’ve spent my entire life with Spanish hovering in the background. Half my family tree is in California. I am no where near conversant in Spanish, but its sounds are familiar to me. Beautiful even. German just sounds…odd. And the rules are confusing.
There are two words for "you". Sie and Du. And you better get the context of using them right or you’ll offend someone. Sie is the more formal. When in doubt with Germans, use the more formal language. So Sie is "you". Except when it isn’t. Like "excuse me"…Entschuldigen Sie. I think that’s you excuse me…but I’m not sure at this point. And…just look at that damn word. Entschuldigen.Try to pronounce it just by looking at it. Go ahead. Then there is this little oddity: Do you understand? Verstehen Sie? I understand. Ich verstehe. Verstehen. Verstehe. It’s the same word. But it isn’t. Or it is but only sometimes. I see that e – en difference in a lot of German words and I think one pronunciation is when it’s about you and the other when it’s about someone else. Why? Just…why?
I’m not complaining. I’m…puzzled. And my head just wants to crack it now. There’s a certain someone down in Florida who I would love to impress by speaking a little German to him next time I see him. But that’s almost beside the point now. How the hell do Germans understand each other? I’m not complaining. It’s bewildering and I won’t have that. At some level the rules must make sense to them. I just don’t get it.
But that’s where you always start from. Not getting it. I have some language lessons on my iPod that I’ve been going over. And over. And over. Two weeks now and I’m still stuck on lesson one. But I made a conceptual breakthrough of sorts the other day. I’m not so much learning a new language at this point, as learning some new words. The language is in the rules…the syntax…the grammer. I’ll learn that when I get enough new words into my head that I can play with it.
It’s like music isn’t the notes…it’s the melodies and harmonies. It’s the song. I already had two ways to say "excuse me" in English. Excuse me. Pardon me. Same thing, mostly. Yes, there are shades of difference. But there it is. Two ways of saying "excuse me" Now I have a third way. Entschuldigen Sie. Three ways to say it. Two of them are English, and one is German. But it’s the same thing. The point is, you don’t learn the words by linking them to other words (what’s German for ‘excuse me’…?). You have to link them in your brain to meanings. Imagine yourself in a situation where you mean to say something…(excuse me)…and then say the new word until it digs into that meaning along with the other words that you know, that express that thing…(Entschuldigen Sie). Then you’ve got it. The word that is.
Language comes later. Language is how the words make sentances…how they link together to tell you a story. A language is a way to tell a story. Entschuldigen Sie. Verstehen Sie English? Please…because I only know a few crumbs of German…
You’d think he’s never seen Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari. There’s nought so queer as folk Andrew. We Americans have our own strange little ways too. Take a trip into Sid and Marty Kroft land sometime.
You want strange Andrew…? Try a little…Walt Disney? Oh yes. This clip is from Alice in Wonderland, and some of the best animation ever produced. The animator who did the character of Alice was a master…simply a master. But the entire film is a masterpiece of animation. The eye candy is everywhere and it all moves and flows perfectly. This clip from the film starts off being your usual Disney cartoon slapstick but the strange comes in at about 2:15 into it. Remember, Disney did Fantasia too…
I’ll bet if I poked around British movies and TV I could find myself some grade ‘A’ strange in there too. We humans are a funny lot. Strange makes the world go ’round Andrew…
Okay…from all the books on German culture I’ve been reading lately, is this is something like saying Pope Still Catholic, or Bears Found To Prefer Woods To Port-A-Johns. Germans and angst are like southerners and barbecue.
Radical Leftists: Still Cheerfully Working For Their Corporate Masters After All These Years
German culture, or so I’m told from all the books I’ve been reading about it lately, teaches its own that life is mostly a zero sum game. This, so I’m told, follows from the fact of Germany being a small nation that is very tightly packed with people. The attitude is that if you have more of something it means someone else has less. This is in contrast to American culture which teaches us (or tries to) that life is what you make of it and wealth is something you create, not something you merely acquire. On the plus side, their attitude gives Germans a strong sense of social responsibility and mutual obligation to one another. Not as much as some Asian cultures maybe, but compared to my own native land it’s very striking. German corporations, so I am told, will bend over backwards not to fire anyone, compared to here in the U.S. where employers treat staff like paperclips to be used and disposed of at will. On the minus side…well hello there Karl Marx…Baader-Meinhof… Oh…and the paper hanger…
German culture, so I’m told, tends to frown on ostentatious displays of wealth, which isn’t so very odd when you consider the circumstances of Germany, but then again it is when you consider who manufactures BMWs, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz…and…oh yes…the Maybach. The books I’m reading about German culture make the point over and over that Germans don’t like it when wealth is waved around in everyone’s face. Yet…the Maybach. Okay…there’s Volkswagon. But…the Maybach. You imagine them exporting Maybachs shamefacedly in the dead of night in containers labeled Glühwein.If only we didn’t have to make this half million dollar V12 luxury sedan with reclining massage seats and a wine cooler in armrest for all those other decadent nations we could be a proud people once more…
But no… Germans like their cars very much, and that is why there are both Volkswagons and Maybachs. People here in America used to point their fingers and laugh at the old Volkswagon Beetle, but that stopped when gas prices started going up and our big three tried to make decent gas efficient sub-compact cars and couldn’t. And they still can’t. If we loved cars here in America as much as we claim to, maybe GM wouldn’t be needing a bailout now to keep tens of thousands of its employees and that third of the American workforce that depends on the car industry gainfully employed. No…what we love here in America is showing off. Here in America it’s not about the car, its about the owner. In Europe, it’s about the car, and Germans love the automobile. But a good car is expensive because it just costs more to go the extra distance in terms of engineering and quality, and Germans don’t like ostentatious displays of wealth either. So like many passionate love affairs, German fondness for the automobile is just a little bit schizophrenic.
I’m thinking about all this while reading This Article in The Local about a recent rash of attacks on luxury cars in Berlin. And since I am the owner of what is ostensibly a luxury car, reading it makes me more then a tad apprehensive. I’ve known ever since I bought Traveler, that I’m likely one of these days to come out and find that someone walking past laid eyes on a Mercedes-Benz and decided then and there to let me know how much they hate rich people, and never mind that its owner isn’t rich. But that I could forgive. When you see the gods of finance throwing parties with bailout money it’s not hard to have a really bad attitude toward the fabulously well off. What I couldn’t forgive is someone who damages my car because they hate the sight of human excellence.
Several luxury cars have been set alight in the capital in the past week in what is beginning to look like a concerted attack on conspicuous wealth. Seven expensive cars were found burning in the city on Tuesday night, while another 15 were damaged by the flames. Early Friday morning a car was found burning in Christinenstrasse in the Prenzlauer Berg district.
Another six cars were consumed in a large fire early on Sunday morning in Michendorf near Potsdam. Nearby houses were also seriously damaged.
Of course the car in the accompanying photo is a Mercedes…
Ow! That hurts just to look at. Looks like it might be an older model ‘E’ class. But…with a decorative spoiler? I can’t believe Mercedes would actually do that to one of their sedans.
Listen Che…if it’s parked on the street next to a parking meter, it’s not a rich man’s car you drooling jackass. You think the CEO of AIG drives an ‘E’ class? You think the vice president at Exxon in charge of putting things on top of other things drives an ‘E’ class? What planet do you live on? That’s a working person’s car and if you think the distance between that ‘E’ class and a Kia Rio makes the Merc a luxury car you have obviously never laid eyes on a Bentley. You think that fat bloated pig of an Exxon CEO even drives his own motherfucking car, let alone parks it on the street, let alone wants to be seen anywhere near an ‘E’ class? As far as people like him are concerned, that car and its owner and you are all commoner junk.
You may think you’re sticking it to The Establishment, but in reality you’re still dancing for it. Not only does the owner of that car hate you now, but so does everyone else seeing it, holding onto hope for a better life for themselves. They look at this and they don’t see The Establishment is holding them down, they see you holding them down. And that’s the way The Establishment likes it.
If you spend much time in Germany, it won’t take long before you notice that speaking the language really isn’t that difficult. Any time you’re at a loss for a German word, just throw in some English and move on. For one thing, it’s the height of coolness to sprinkle your German with English. And for another, even if your German friends don’t understand, they’ll smile and nod for fear of looking dumm.
Plus, they do it too. Words like "office" and "meeting" long ago entered the German vocabulary. "Babysitten" and "downloaden" have been adopted. Even the word "people" has been molded to suit the needs of the German language — the term has a negative connotation to indicate folks who are disagreeable and tiresome.
Well that’s how some native English speakers use it too. But…anyway…
But when it comes to advertising slogans, the use of English is becoming passé. Some advertisers have realized that many Germans just don’t understand — or even worse, misunderstand — their hip slogans. Even such straightforward lines like "Come in and find out," for a chain of perfume stores, can be dodgy. It seems most Germans cycled the slogan through their spotty understanding of English and thought it meant, "Come in, but then go back out again."
…
…The Vodafone slogan "Make the Most of Now" has weird associations with fruit juice ("Most") for many Germans. "Welcome to the Beck’s Experience" didn’t work so well because many thought the last word meant "experiment." The grand prize for slipshod slogans, though, goes to German television station Sat1, which used the catchphrase "Powered by Emotion." This was taken by many to be a modern version of "Kraft durch Freude," the Nazi party’s leisure organization, often translated into English as "strength through joy."
I wonder what the person who did the test marketing on that one made of the startled looks they got. Hey…this one’s really getting their attention…! Way back before there was an Exxon…there was the Humble Oil and Refining Company, and its other trade names Esso and Enco. Then the gods of the corporate boardroom decreed there should be one name for the company everywhere in the world. At one point they figured to just rebrand all their existing gas stations as "Enco", which was Humble’s acronym for "ENergy COmpany", only to discover that "Enco" translated into "broken engine" in Japanese.
So they invented a word. Exxon. It means nothing, they took the family name of a sitting governor and added an extra ‘X’ to it and now it’s the company name. A lot of corporations are doing that now. Lexus. Acura. Genstar. Allegis. Enron. They’re non-words…words that never were…words that mean precisely nothing. But because they are empty meaningless words they are absolutely unique and can’t embarrass the company in some far away corner of the world. As it turns out, the only universal language consists of words that don’t mean anything.
Germans seem to just love to cobble German words together to make bigger German words. In German, there is no such thing as the word is too big. Sometimes a word isn’t big enough so another word gets added to it. Thus, gammeliges, which means rotten meat, gets combined with fleisch, which means ‘flesh’ to become gammelfleisch, which is German for, uh, "rotten meat". Somehow this new bigger word for rotten meat got coined during a recent food scandal, when it was discovered that some meat packers were shipping food that was past it’s use-by date to restaruants. I’m sure a certain someone could tell me why the one word just wasn’t good enough.
Germans also tend to be brutally direct in their opinions. And thus gammelfleisch, becomes gammelfleischparty…
Gammelfleischparty is German youth word of year
German is famous for its long words — and today’s youth are just as adept at creating new ones as their predecessors, to judge by a poll released Wednesday by the publishers of Langenscheidt dictionaries.
Judges chose "gammelfleischparty", or "spoiled meat party," — an unflattering term for a gathering of people over 30 — as the "youth word of the year 2008." The word "gammelfleisch" was in the news frequently during the year when it was discovered that meat packers had been regularly supplying some kebab restaurants with past-due products.
"Bildschirmbraeune" or "screen tan" — referring to the complexion of someone who spends too much time at a computer — came second, while "unterhopft," meaning "underhopped," or in need of a beer, took third.
For the past several months I have been wading into German history and culture, the better to befriend a certain someone. Last week it paid off. Finally. But it was eye-opening. If you want to make friends across cultural boundaries, it helps to understand where the other person is coming from, understand their frame of reference, and learn what their expectations are in social situations. If they’re even a little interested in you, they are probably trying to meet you halfway, and chances are you are trying to do the same. But you just can’t wing it. You have to know where the other person is coming from. And all too often Americans don’t even know where they are coming from.
Anyway… I meant to post this some time ago. This is a passage from Germany – Unraveling An Enigma, by Greg Ness. If you are trying to befriend a German, or trying to do business with one, I strongly recommend this book…
It is no coincidence that the Germans call the Enlightenment the Aufklärung, literally, the "period of clearing up". With the German’s strong sense of history, they view the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on Wissenschaft (science and scholarship) and Vernunft (rational understanding), as a watershed in human development.
It would be difficult to overstate the German respect for understanding based on rational analysis and scientific knowledge, both of which are seen as ways of creating Klarheit. This desire for clarity can be seen in their attempt to define their germs precisely when discussing issues as well as their love of creating comprehensive categories and taxonomies. Because Germans love to converse at length, clear, well-thought-out, rational arguments based on broad knowledge elicit admiration and great respect…
…
Germans also desire clear, unambiguous knowledge as a way to reduce the general insecurity and anxiety that plague them, since having knowledge is one of the best forms of control. From the German perspective, you can only control that which you understand, keeping every lurking chaos at bay.
Which leads us to this, regarding German communication patterns…
In Germany, there is a strong emphasis on explicit verbal communication, which emphasizes the content level of communication, and deemphasizes the relationship level. This is especially so among educated Germans in business and public situations, and is directly correlated with the private/public distinction we examined in the previous chapter. Americans also place significant emphasis on the content level of a communication but do not deemphasize the relationship level as much as Germans do…
Educated Germans today have, as we learned in chapter 3, idealized analytical knowledge, and their communication style tends to be explicit, fact oriented, and academic. There is a widespread belief among well-educated Germans that only by remaining rational and constantly following clear principles will humans be able to achieve a better, more civilized society. Germans believe that to really express something exactly, one needs complicated language…
(like…German? Um…anyway…)
…This leads to a business German that is more elevated and convoluted as compared with the more pragmatic, popularistic American style.
Corresponding to the strong emphasis on content, the relationship aspects of communication, as mentioned before, are more marginalized. Conflict is generally avoided, not by emphasizing harmony in personal relationships or by smoothing over differences of opinion, but rather by maintaining formality and social distance. Direct attacks on the content of a person’s communication are common, but attacks on the person are avoided by keeping the discussion impersonal and objective…
At last year’s Oktoberfest visitors ate 521,873 roast chickens, 58,446 pork knuckles and 104 oxen. They consumed 6.9 million liters of beer which is supplied exclusively by Munich’s six main breweries and is brewed especially for the festival. The list of lost items collected from under the tables is a good indication of how intense the partying can get — last year it included four sets of false teeth, 1,600 pieces of clothing, 600 identity cards and credit cards, and one complete Dirndl dress.
Notice the precision of the statistics there. Okay…thinks I. I get it now…I think. Germans are really Vulcans. But instead of Pon Farr they have something called Oktoberfest…which is when they get to go crazy…
Members of staff found 680 identity cards and passports, 410 wallets, 360 keys, 265 spectacles, 280 mobile phones and 80 cameras, one set of diving goggles, one set of angel’s wings, a superman costume and four wedding rings.
A long-haired Dachshund was also found roaming the festival ground, but was later reclaimed by its owner.
"For the first time, no dentures were found," the Munich city press department said with a mixture of surprise and disappointment. "Is this a sign of demographic change, good dental hygiene or a higher rate of tooth implants?"
I see more identity cards are being lost. But…Diving goggles? And…what self respecting native child of the land that produced Nietzsche would be seen in a Superman costume for chrissake? That’s too ridiculous for words.
Beer. Enough of it makes even Vulcans let down their hair…and fall on the floor…
It takes work. You have to be patient, and you have to have a lot of resolve. Nerves of steel actually. When he says he’s going to have some free time in two weeks to chat with you, what you need to understand is that’s a sign of affection.
There’s a humorous list going around the web here and there titled, You Know You’re German If… What’s interesting about this list is that it’s been written, passed around and added to, by Germans. There are various versions of it floating around, and I would highly recommend anyone aspiring to be friends with a German to study them carefully. Let it be said they know how to laugh at themselves. Here’s a few items that absolutely apply to a certain someone I know…
-You feel like a fish out of water in unstructured organizations and foreign countries.
-Being spontaneous is at 3 weeks notice.
-The concept of small talk still puzzles you.
So…two years ago, after almost thirty-five years of searching for him, I finally found my old high school crush again. This is the guy who is the object of my affections in my comic series A Coming Out Story. And because I’m still in the middle of telling that story, there are a few major plot points I don’t want to give away (although I guess I just now did give one away…the fact that we haven’t seen each other since my high school days…). So I have to be vague about some of this. And also, I don’t want to embarrass him by naming him here. But just so you know, we’ve been chatting ever since, on the phone, and via email and post cards.
Post cards, largely because it took me over a year to get him to give me an email address. And that was because, as he said, he is "more into nature then technology". Or…according to the list…
-You separate your trash into more than five different bins.
-You have gotten splinters from environmentally friendly toilet paper.
-You’re the only one recycling not just bottles and cans but also light bulbs, water filters, batteries, printer cartridges
-You complain about people that just sit in their car with the engine running
But most American kids of my baby boomer generation actually don’t use personal computers all that much as adults now either. A Pew Foundation study some time ago put the figure at somewhat less then fifty percent of my generation who use computers on a regular basis. His job doesn’t require him to sit down to one everyday, and apparently he hasn’t much use for them in his home life either. I get the sense he doesn’t much touch one other then for the occasional emails he sends my way.
Thing was…back in high school, when I learned that both his parents were German, I wasn’t sure if that was how he identified himself. He was born in Brazil actually, and came here to the U.S. when he was still very young. He spent both his middle school and high school years here, attending the same high school I did. Back then, he seemed to identify more as Brazilian then German. For the longest time I thought he was your usual light skinned Brazilian, with a family tree that maybe went back to Portugal or maybe Spain. In high school he spoke English very well, with only the very slightest hint of an accent that I could never quite place. I figured his native language was probably Portuguese. He was also in the Spanish Honor Society back then. When I found out from one of the other kids about his German heritage I was surprised. He never told me. But there may have been a reason for that.
When I finally located him again, I still wasn’t sure how he identified. He’s spent most of his life now here in the U.S. But he still goes by this Brazilian nickname he always did back in high school. So as he and I began to chat once more after all these years, I kept wondering. I wasn’t sure how to go about asking him. The thing about cross-cultural relationships is they’re so damn full of landmines. The last thing I wanted to do was offend him in some way, or perhaps bring up old memories he didn’t want to revisit. I knew next to nothing about his family life, because he always politely deflected my attempts to ask him about any of it back when we were kids…which I respected back then despite my intense curiosity, because I was completely twitterpated and if he didn’t want to talk about it I wasn’t going there.
Back when I was a kid, I had this very fragmented view of Germans and Germany. There was all the World War II history I grew up learning. The rise of Hitler and fascism in Europe. When I first saw newsreel footage of a Nazi book burning, it completely shocked me. I was such a little bookworm back then. The sight of piles of books burning struck me as an attack on the human identity. Then came the newsreel footage of the death camps.
On TV and in the movies, Germans were either cold, calculating, weaselly Nazis who loved to torture people or big fat buffoons with a stereotypical Hollywood German accent. It was either…
…or…
So that was what my history classes and Hollywood were teaching me about Germans. But in my day to day world there was all the good stuff that came from Germany. When I was a teenager one of my uncles came down for a visit driving his new Mercedes-Benz 220D. I’ve written about that before, and how that car completely blew away everything I thought I understood about what a good car was. Mercedes-Benz instantly became my new dream car then. And when I got the camera bug, I quickly learned that some of the best photography equipment came from Germany. Carl Zeiss lenses…Leica cameras… When I was 17 I splurged a month’s pay from the burger joint I was working at to buy a lovely Rodenstock lens for my enlarger. I was both overjoyed and appalled at the results. Overjoyed because my prints took on an absolutely razor edged sharpness under that lens. It was magnificent. Appalled because that damn lens revealed every tiny flaw in my negatives. That lens told me I wasn’t nearly as good as I thought I was. But that was okay…it meant I could grow. And I did.
Back before high school, mom bought an absolutely lovely German made cabinet hi-fi. It was built from solid mahogany and not only did it sound as good as it looked, it had a radio with FM stations and Shortwave too! I became utterly fascinated back then with that short wave radio and would listen to it for hours, tuning in BBC, Radio Netherlands, Radio Johannesburg and so on… This was before there was an Internet…before cell phones…before 24 hour cable news…back in the days when my world effectively ended at the horizon. With that shortwave radio I could hear the world speaking beyond the horizon. I never found any English language German broadcasts, but because of that short wave radio I grew up with the knowledge that there was a world out there beyond our boarders, and that it was fun to listen to.
So on the one hand, there was Hollywood’s German, and the German of my history class lessons…and on the other there was the Germany that made the best cars and radios and hi-fi and camera equipment. I’d heard they drink their beer warm, but I never liked beer to begin with. I heard they were obsessive about organization and record keeping. I heard there was this really neat highway over in Germany where there were no speed limits. But I never really thought about or questioned any of what I knew, or thought I knew, about Germans. It was all just floating there in the background. And then there was the guy I massively crushed on back in high school. He was so damn beautiful. But also hard working, decent, good-hearted. But he always accentuated his Brazilian birthplace. So maybe he really wasn’t all that much German. For years I wondered about it, never really thinking about what I actually did and did not know about Germans.
So I found him again, and annoyingly, the completely twitterpated high school boy came rushing back out of me, like I was still 17, and I found I Still couldn’t ask him so many things I’d wished I had over the years. But we talked and talked over the months, and as we did I began to get the sense that his German heritage had come more to the foreground over the intervening years. Then last Christmas he sent me a card with a lovely handwritten Christmas greeting…first in German and then in English.
You have to picture this: There I am, sitting down reading this lovely little Christmas card he sent me, and suddenly every stupid, ignorant German stereotype I ever grew up with came rushing back to me and laughed in my face. All the stupid Nazi jokes…all the cardboard Hollywood Germans I ever saw on TV… I felt so embarrassed.
And I had an idea then why he presented more as Brazilian then German back in school. He probably got teased a lot for being German back then. The more I pictured it, the more I heard myself as a kid laughing and re-telling all the German jokes I learned from the other kids and I just felt so ashamed.
Is this how straight folks feel when someone close to them comes out as gay? Now I can’t even watch my all time favorite movie, Casablanca, without cringing the moment Major Strasser comes on screen.
So I’ve been making an effort to learn more about the German folk and their culture. But mostly their ways. I pay attention to what English language German newspapers and magazines there are online. Spiegel ran a series a couple years back, The Germans Explained, for Americans and other foreigners visiting Germany for the 2006 winter Olympics. It’s an interesting read. This from the article titled, Brutally Honest, Have You Gained Weight?
Personal invitations of all kinds are to be taken at face value. "We’re having a party, please do come," means "We’re having a party, please do come," and not "We feel rude not inviting you in front of these other people, but surely you’ll have the grace not to show up." Similarly, "Come over to my house and we’ll have tea," means that you should start planning a date and time for that pleasant event. It is not to be confused with the Anglo-American "We should get together sometime," which means "I hope I never see you again."
Yes means yes and no means no. If you ask whether you can share someone’s table (or borrow a pen, or get a ride) and that person says yes, that’s the end of it. Even if the person does not smile or tell you to go right ahead, you do not have to ask again. Germans will be perplexed when you insist: "Are you sure? I won’t be bothering you, will I? I’ll just take this little corner and be done in a minute." For heavens sakes, they said yes already, and it’s not like you’re asking them to donate a kidney. Just sit down.
“I never, ever got involved in sport,” said Winston Churchill wisely. Not so, Sporty German Male. Oh no, he loves it. Running around Hamburg’s Alster when you fancy going shoe shopping, or forcing you to go Nordic Walking on a Sunday morning when you’d still rather be under your duvet stuffing yourself with scrambled eggs, Sporty German Male laughs in the face of blubber, Wiener Schnitzel and chips.
My one brief encounter with Sporty German Male included a doomed mini-break to Mallorca. Stretched out by the swimming pool in my bikini, I asked: “Do I look fat in this?” Sporty German Male looked confused. “Of course not, Liebling,” he said. “If you were fat, my sweetness, you would not be here!"
I browse the online forums here and there where they gather, and at least a little English is spoken. And I’m finding that I’m actually coming to like them. I’m making a few tentative steps at learning German…mostly so I can read it. I doubt I’ll ever be in a place where I hear it spoken a lot, and without that there’s just about no possibility of me really learning the language very well. If I can just learn it a bit I’ll be satisfied. Then I can hear them speaking in their own voices.
-You call an afternoon stroll "Nordic Walking".
-You always fold your Tetra Pak before you throw it in the appropriate bin.
-You eat a cold dinner at 6pm.
-You can tell at least one Manta joke.
-Your childhood diet consisted of Alete and Zwieback. Your college diet consisted of Miracoli and Döner.
-You have your ‘feierabend’ at 1730hrs – the world can burn down.
-You expect chocolate in your shoes on December 6th.
In the meantime I am trying hard to be the friend to him I was too shy to be back when we were both kids (there goes another plot point…). If he was another American kid, and he told me that in two weeks he’d have time for a chat, I’d think what he was really telling me was to bug off. But he’s German, he has always called when he said he would, and what you have to see in that isn’t that he’s pushing me off for two weeks but that he’s making time for me. Over and over again in the past two years I’ve run smack into his "time management", and no kidding, that’s exactly how he refers to it. I’ve found in conversation with him that he’s got his life organized in a way I would find absolutely suffocating. But that seems to be a German thing, it’s where his comfort zone is, and if I want to be his friend I have to adjust to it. It’s work. I have to be patient. But I have a lot of resolve. And the signs look good. Very good actually. Here I am after three and a half decades crashing back into his well organized world and he makes time for me.
The Germans have a word, vergangenheitsbearbeitung, or "working through the past," to describe that nation’s attempt to achieve something that, while not nearly as world-historic, dramatic, or portentous, is structurally similar to what has been happening on the American left over the last decade or so, apparently without many conservatives noticing: doing the hard work of reckoning with collective errs, facing up to them, unflinchingly staring them down, and restoring a community to balance by transcending them as best as we mortal humans can.
Vergangenheitsbearbeitung. Vergangenheitsbearbeitung. Vergangenheitsbearbeitung. Christ almighty. Okay…I think I’ve figured something out about Germans. When they want a new word, they take the definition of that word, remove all the spaces between the words in the definition, and presto…they have their new word. Vergangenheitsbearbeitung. Vergangenheitsbearbeitung. I’m not sure I can make my mouth do that without pausing for breath.
That’s as opposed to us terse Americans, who simply take the first letter of each word in the definition and make a word out of that. Radar. Laser. Scuba. CD-ROM. WTF. Okay…that last one isn’t a word…yet…
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