Ah, shoot, I wanted to get a picture on the day after Obama's speech in Berlin, when all the local and tabloid newspapers displayed outside the city's many convenience stores were splashed with Obama headlines – they looked funny all lined up like that and all so excited about the US president's visit – but I didn't manage to get my camera out in time.
My favorite of the headlines was the silly-sounding "Warum Obama sich wirklich auszog" ("Why Obama Really Took Off His Jacket"). I thought it was because it was, you know, 91.5 degrees out, but apparently all the papers are having fun speculating that it was because there was a problem with the teleprompter and he was trying to buy himself a bit of time. Well, whatever!
(Huh, technician for the president's teleprompter during speeches – now there would be an interesting and high-stress job...)
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Okay! Before I leave Berlin for much of the summer, here comes another "ragbag" post, which means one where I collect all the little anecdotes that accumulate over time, but none of which are enough for a whole post of their own. Here we go...
• Favorite recent amusing sight: A guy leaning against a payphone talking on the phone...except it was his own cell phone he was talking into, and the payphone was just something he happened to be leaning against.
• Also, a very formal-looking businessman on a very funny, small scooter.
• The word "Ausflugslokal," which has come up a couple times recently in my translations, and which I can explain but find hard to slot into a sentence in a way that scans naturally. An "Ausflug" is an outing or excursion and "Lokal" is another word for restaurant or bar, so an "Ausflugslokal" is basically a restaurant, but one located in a nice enough spot that it becomes a destination in and of itself, somewhere you might go as an outing on a sunny weekend day. Think of a beer garden by a lake or down a nice path through the woods or on top of a hill with a great view. That's an Ausflugslokal. What a very German concept!
(A Canadian friend once told me about going hiking with German friends in Canada, and how she kept having to remind them, You have to bring your own food on this hike. There will not be a beer garden at the top of the mountain.)
• The other day, a German friend said she felt she hadn't had asparagus enough times this season. (I guess I haven't written about it here before, but asparagus season is a Big Deal in Germany. Much fuss is made over asparagus while it's in season, with restaurants even putting a special "asparagus season" page in their menus and stands popping up around town selling it. It's only ever the anemic-looking white asparagus, too, which is created, I kid you not, by burying the plants under the dirt so they can't get any light! But I digress.) Anyway, my friend said she should make sure to get some asparagus again, because it was almost the end of the season – she was pretty sure asparagus season ends on June 12.
Sorry, what?
It turns out what she meant is that this is the agreed-upon date when asparagus farmers stop harvesting stalks and let the plants go to seed (a necessary part of the process for asparagus, which is perennial). But that there's an official end date for asparagus season in Germany? Of course there is.
• Speaking of German quirks... I saw an ad in the U-Bahn (on the "Berliner Fenster," the little TV screens that show some news, but mostly ads and stupid stuff about celebrities) about how more and more job announcements address potential applicants with "du," the informal "you." The advice in this ad was that, if this is the case, you should probably go ahead and respond in kind, and be informal when you go in for your interview – but also, if you're unsure, you could call the company ahead of time to check.
Which is where I can't help responding: Germany, you do know, right, that if you just finally did away with the formal/informal "you" thing (English managed it a few centuries ago, and Swedish did it within living memory) you wouldn't have this problem anymore?
• Sleeping long, sleeping late... This is something I noticed a long time ago: Germans talk about "sleeping long" where English would say "sleeping late," and where in fact "late" is more accurate: i.e., if you're out super late one night, and as a result get up in the late morning while still only having a slept a few hours, a German will still say you "slept long." (The same is true of working – they'll said "I had to work long" if they finish late, regardless of when they started!)
I thought of this as no more than a quirk of language, until I read this interesting article about our internal clocks and how they really do differ from one person to another, not only in terms of how much sleep we need, but also when we feel the need to sleep. The article focuses on a book by a German scientist, Till Roenneberg, which also delves into the value judgements we place on when and how much we sleep.
What I found amusing is that an excerpt from the book (in English, translated) notes that we assume people who sleep during the day are lazy, regardless of the reason they might have for it (for example, having worked a night shift). Then the excerpt continues, "This attitude is reflected in the frequent use of the
word-pair early birds and long sleepers."
...Except, no it isn't, because that isn't a word pair in English! That's German usage, "long sleepers."
The article also goes on to say, "Yet this pair is nothing but apples and oranges, because the opposite of early is late and the opposite of long is short."
What I'm saying! Listen up, Germany – I may be sleeping late, but it doesn't mean I'm sleeping long.
• The inevitable German "krankschreiben" – this means getting a sick note from your doctor to excuse you from work, and yes, I do think it's telling that in German there's a single word for this concept!
Because in Germany, even if you just have a cold, you go to your doctor and get a note, and then you go home and stay in bed for days. It's just the normal thing to do. (Can you imagine if American workers, in the American workaholic culture, tried to do this??)
Honestly, I'm inclined to say the Germans have the right idea here: When you're sick, you rest, so that you actually get better instead of the illness dragging on. It's like how Germany understands the importance of vacation time – that it's a normal, human thing to need time off in order to recharge.
The "krankschreiben" system definitely also gets abused, though, by people who just want time off and are "sick" for months on end.
Anyway, the point of this anecdote is the way it doesn't apply to freelancers, who only earn money when they're working and don't really have the luxury to say, Oh, I have a cold, I think I'll stay in bed for three days.
This came up because a fellow translator, who's French, was complaining about how you go to the pharmacy in Germany and they're like, "Here, take this herbal remedy [because Germany also LOVES its herbal remedies, which I suppose can sometimes be useful, but not in cases where you honestly just need antibiotics] and stay in bed for a week."
It's so intriguing to me to see a French person – since the French are also Europeans, and thus surely must have more in common with Germans than with Americans? – having a "Germans are so odd" reaction over exactly the same things I do!
• It came up again with phone messages; the other day, my French colleague checked her phone and then kind of rolled her eyes and said, "In France, when someone calls you, they leave a message." Yes! But in Germany, they call you, leave no message, tell you nothing about why they're calling, but expect you to call back just because you saw their number.
I think this is because until very recently it was common for people to have to have to pay to check their own voicemail (!) and it's carried over.
But it's still annoying.
(Am I imagining this? Am I wrong that Americans, even now with cell phones and caller ID and all, will still usually leave each other a message?)
• Also, let's talk about how Germans loooove ice cream... What is it about cold countries and ice cream? Apparently the Swedish are the champions ice cream eaters.
This was another thing my French colleague commented on: How often people go out for ice cream here in the summer. She finds it really odd when adults (not just families with little kids) say, Hey, let's meet up for ice cream. (I don't find it odd; ice cream is a big part of American summers too.)
I do love how many very, very good (and very cheap!) ice cream places my neighborhood has. But it's still funny how there's a mad dash to the ice cream shop son the first warm day of the year – and then it stays that way, every shop completely overflowing in the evenings, long lines out onto the sidewalk, for the rest of the summer. Good luck trying to get an ice cream cone on a warm summer evening in Berlin!
• Recently a British friend commented, a bit disparagingly, "Germans make such a big deal about birthdays," and I got to thinking about that. It's true – where an American or Brit would just invite friends to join them at a bar for drinks, and maybe the friends would buy the birthday person a drink and that would be that, Germans have these massive undertakings, where the birthday person pays for a round of drinks – or many rounds – and plies their guests with food and all the guests bring presents, and it's very nice, but also kind of overwhelming to participate in!
Then, just as I was ruminating on that, I was at a café when a crowd of young kids came in, dressed up in costumes and hunting down clues – as part of a party, the parents had set up this whole complex treasure hunt that took them all around the neighborhood.
And the guy behind the counter – who was Irish – said to me rather wonderingly, "Germans make so much more of an effort to organize nice things for their kids."
So there's that side of it, too!
• So, I complain occasionally about how Germany as a whole is so much more progressive than the US as a whole (socially, environmentally, (almost) everything), yet so much less progressive than the liberal pockets of the US I'm used to (like Ithaca and Oberlin). And I miss that, everyone being alternative and a bit weird and all on the same page about that. Germany is much more conformist.
As only a very small example of that, when I was in college in Oberlin it was more or less normal to wear strange things – like men's ties. I still own a few ties, in fact, but I've never quite dared to wear them here. It just feels out of place. (I'm not sure why, really, seeing as Berlin is a mecca for people who dress weirdly in all sorts of ways. But Germany as a whole just feels less...wacky that way.)
Then one day, I got completely fed up and decided, Today I am going to wear a tie.
And you know what happened? The only comment I received about it the whole day was from an usher in a movie theater (this was during the Berlinale), who said, "Das ist eine schöne Krawatte, wenn ich das sagen darf." (That's a nice tie, if you don't mind me saying so.")
Rock on, Germany!
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