Saturday 11 October 2014

Beth's Simple Guide to Passing as a German

Moin moin!

Update: sorry its been a while since my last post, life here is good, if rather stressful. I've been here for nearly 3 months now! Some weeks things get a bit overly stressful, and all I do is crave my bed/Wales (things escalated quickly there) but the drive to stay and work here never quite disappears :)

Anyway, back to original post (90% of which I actually wrote 3 weeks ago).

I had a little stroke of inspiration the other day (unfortunately in the middle of a project at work so this blog post was born on a couple of scribbled post-it notes) and started thinking of things I do to fit in, at least superficially, when out and about in Germany, and things one can do in general.

So here goes, here's my list of stuff you can do to masquerade as a competent German person.

drink beer
eat schnitzel/bratwurst
wear a dirndl/lederhosen at all times.


Ok ok I joke. Stereotypes don't have (much of) a place in this blog.

Here's the real list:

Have between 1 and 3 side jobs (Nebenjobs) at any one time.
Pretty much any student/young person will have at least one minijob. Pretty much any business, including even offices etc will have someone working for them on a "450 Basis" (i.e you only work enough to earn up to 450€ in a month, meaning its tax free). The more minijobs you hold down, the cooler you are*. Incidentally, this is part of the reason Germany has such high employment rates, as whilst many, many people have minijobs, this doesn't actually earn them all that much.

Shop effectively

  • Go into a shop, say dm (German version of Boots). 
  • Think of item you're looking for (in this case, contact lense fluid). 
  • Think of most logical place for this item in the shop (next to the glasses display, for example). 
  • Assume this is the least likely place it will be and save yourself 10 minutes wandering.
  • Think of least-related item in shop (i.e. condoms)
  • Find sought-after item (contact lense fluid) nestled neatly below random item (condoms). 
...true story. I've given up on going to dm for things I need during my lunch break, I just can't spare the time for the pointless treasure hunt.


Decorate your bicyle
This is a new realisation of mine, that Germans love to decorate their bikes. Mostly this is a sweet, understated twist of (fake) ivy, some multicoloured painting or some flowers dangling from the handlebars. I like it, and will adopt it as soon as possible: it shows you how important bicycles are to this nation, and they brighten up the overcrowded bike stands at u-bahn stations,

Sometimes this fad shows some real extremes though, and the best example is the guy who comes to the fishmarket on a bike completely covered in, well, anything you can hang/wind onto the frame.
One morning Diana and I were at the fischmarket and she started telling me about this guy who comes every week and is famous for his elaborate(ly crazy) bicycle. While she was telling me this, I spotted something over her shoulder and after a few moments she noticed I was distracted and asked me what was up. Gingerly, I pointed to a bike strung with, well, just about everything, about 3 metres behind her and asked "erm, thats not the bike is it"? Unsurprisingly, it was.

I have miraculously found a picture of this guy and his amazing bike on google! Told you he's famous. Ahh awesome Germans.
Wer keinen Stand hat, bringt die Waren eben auf seinem Fahrrad unter.
(http://atterrata.com/2014/05/12/hamburger-fischmarkt/)

When its your birthday, remember you bring the cake to work/school.
Not the other way around. I quite like this reversal, it says "yes, its my special day, but i want you to share in it". Plus it removes the awkwardness of hoping someone has remembered its your birthday and could be bothered to make a cake/ mark it in any way. This way, even if all your colleagues don't remember its your birthday, they can take a cue from the cake and hide their embarrassment with an overly-enthusiastic "ALLES GUTE!!!". 

Try not to let it be the highlight of your day when you can provide the grumpy supermarket lady with 12,89 € in exact change.
(But it probably is, lets be honest here)

Grow a magnificent beard.
Bit of a gender-specific one here but I sometimes wonder if I really just like the country for its beautiful variety of well-groomed beards.
Definitely not complaining.

Don't admit to taking painkillers.

It pretty much amounts to admitting to taking cocaine. If you do let slip by accident, immediately try to repair the situation by gushingly agreeing that every other natural alternative that is immediately suggested to you, regardless of form, is of course muuuuch better than those dastardly painkillers.

Litter your speech with the little words which have little meaning but, without it, its just not proper German. 
Examples:
halt: kind of like, well, "like" (or the usage that your parents, like, tell you off for, like, all the time)
zwar: example of use "ich hätte eine Frage, und zwar..." (I would like to ask a question, and its...). Not entirely sure of the translation but slipping it into my speech helps me sound more "native", at any rate.
nö: (nein)

Schönen Feierabend!: This literally means "nice party evening!" but roughly translates as "enjoy being free from your work for the evening!" and its pretty much law to say it to anyone after 5pm that you take leave of absence from. Whilst this is a nice thought, you realise very quickly the poor shop/bar workers etc who clearly aren't about to finish their shift and have, unwelcomingly, just been reminded of this fact by the smug person who works regular hours.

Queue on a whim
Or not at all. In fact, avoid queuing whenever possible , and if you are forced to stand vaguely behind someone who is vaguely standing behind another person in the vague vicinity of a service you require, make sure everyone knows about your disapproval of the situation. May I suggest an elaborate sigh? Or maybe a gentle but firm elbow in the ribs of another poor sod stood nearby? At the very least, exclaim "oh, man" and, should you have a friend with you, comment on the queue.

I know Germans despair of the British insistence on queuing however. And probably with some justification. But sometimes I really wish queuing came more naturally to our Saxon cousins, you really save time otherwise lost on trying to get served/on the bus as quickly as possible yet without pissing someone off.



That's all folks.
Oh, also, this blog is still getting a crazy amount of views, so I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who actually reads my ramblings :)

*or at least, I think

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