I have been spending time in Germany since I was a 16 year old, including one two-year period as a student and another three-year period working. The current four-week trip in Polly Pocket has given me lots of food for thought about Germany in the present day and I think some of my fellow Germany fans might find some things to appreciate and comment on here.
So what has changed? Well as we know, nothing ever changes in Germany. For a start, TV programmes are exactly as they were 30 years ago and music tastes are unchanged. The same Schlager stars are on tour (for example currently Nena) and all the people who made their prog-rock careers in Germany are still touring, with posters for Manfred Mann’s Earth Band abounding. You still never see anybody daring to cross the road while the pedestrian light is red and it is still unthinkable to make any noise during the sleeping times of 1 to 3pm. The ritual of Kaffee und Kuchen remains unchanged. Just imagine if everybody in the UK still sat down to formal afternoon tea? Well, they still do in Germany.
But life hasn’t remained completely unchanged. For a start, we didn’t see a single vape shop or nail bar on our entire trip. Germans smoke, my god do they smoke (much, much more than we do), and yet this is in direct contrast to their extreme health consciousness and their love for anything that is supposed to be good for you. The biggest thing and the hardest to explain really is immediately noticeable. In fact, on our first day we ran up quite a large bill at an ice cream shop and were slightly shocked to find that it turned out to be a cash-only establishment. I had to make a trip to the local Sparkasse to get some cash out. We then moved on to some caves, a local attraction, and were astounded to find that they too only accepted cash for the admission fee. As we went around we found restaurants, attractions, museums etc that wouldn’t take card payments. Well, the Germans were very slow to adapt to modern technology but I did some research with the help of a friend and read an article that had been scrupulously researched for Die Zeit which came to the unavoidable conclusion that accepting cash-only payments is definitely a way of avoiding paying tax. This is such a shocking thing In view of the average German person’s scrupulous adherence to honesty.
Putting together these two aspects, technology and health, there are still cigarette machines everywhere, at the bottom of people’s gardens and attached to random walls. The only difference is that now they are all equipped with contactless payment facilities. We found some that were particularly sophisticated, as you can pay with coins, cards or even banknotes.
Germany is a nation of cyclists and since the introduction of electric bikes this fixation has become even more pronounced, with millions of elderly people hitting the roads, and why wouldn’t you? The facilities are sensationally good. The only problem is that it means that pedestrians have been relegated in the pecking order. If you absent-mindedly step into a cycle lane (as I do frequently), at best you will be shouted at and at worst you will be mown down. Added to the blissful cycling conditions we found that public transport in general in Germany has got even better than it was before. I have had people try to tell me that standards have fallen but we did not have that experience at all. Certainly in comparison with the UK’s public transport, well, let’s just say there is no comparison. On the island of Usedom we had to pay a minimal tourist tax of 3 euro 50 a day which was extremely cheap in view of the sensationally good facilities everywhere, but even more amazingly, it included free travel on all the frequent, clean local trains that comprehensively covered every village and town on the island. It was such a pleasant experience.
One thing I miss is my beloved Pommes Frites mit Mayo from an Imbiss. Although nothing about Germany feels multicultural, there is a sizable Turkish population and virtually all Imbisse have been transformed into “Döner-Buden” – delicious but they just don’t have the knack with the Pommes Frites.
Every town has at least one Greek restaurant. This is lucky for me because I love Greek food, at least the Greek food that they serve in German Greek restaurants, which I don’t think has very much to do with actual Greek food. What is interesting is that each restaurant seems entirely independent and to be a small family-run business, yet no matter where you are, the items on the menu are identical. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there wasn’t a huge corporation behind all Germany’s Greek restaurants.
On a related topic, I was mildly apprehensive because I knew our trip was going to be almost entirely in the old DDR and that the right wing AFD party has strong support there. In the event, life seemed to be completely normal without any evidence of unpleasantness or right wing radicalism, but of course who knows what people are really thinking, if you don’t go out specifically to engage people in political conversation? After all, I had many people asking me how I could have possibly contemplated going to Texas in March. In fact I spent a week in Austin and didn’t meet a single person who wasn’t emphatically anti-Trump.
In general, I maintained the feeling I always have in Germany of calm contentment, because everything is so neat, clean, tidy and well-maintained. There was no litter anywhere of course, and very few signs of any hint of deprivation, apart from the very occasional beggar in big city centres.
A couple of things about language for my German-speaking friends. First it is very noticeable that the lines between the formal Sie and the familiar du have rapidly become blurred in the more casual way we communicate nowadays. I had complete strangers happily calling me du and even on posters advertising jobs or products the word du is now more likely to be used than Sie. Personally I rather like the formal term of address but it’s rapidly on the way out, as also is the custom of saying Auf Wiedersehen when you leave someone. The little word Tschüss used to be reserved for family and friends but now it is used constantly between complete strangers and in situations that used to be relatively formal, such as leaving a shop or getting off a bus.
Before submitting this, I asked Birgit to read it and see if I’d omitted anyhing. Indeed I had – I was so shocked that I may have erased it from my memory. In Schwerin, in a café, she asked for a glass of tap water to accompany what she’d ordered. When the bill came, she’d been charged 3 euros – for a glass of tap water! That is something we’d never encountered anywhere in the world.
Anyway, we’ve had a great time. Tschüss!
