Epilog

So what did we learn during our two months in Germany? First, it takes a lot of time to really get to know a country. We were reasonably active in getting around but still managed to only see a small corner of Germany in two months. Well, you may ask, do you really have to see all the corners to understand Germany or is it all pretty much the same? Some aspects of German culture (time, walking, beer, driving, smoking) may be pretty steady across different areas of the country. But in my judgment the language and other aspects of the culture can change a lot, so I think you really do have to see at least each of the major areas to get a feel for the country.

Also Monika reported that a lot of things had changed significantly since she left a few decades back, so it seems the culture in each area is shifting over time. It would be interesting to see the rate of change in superficial aspects of the culture versus the deep core aspects of the culture. Kimi reported that the young generation shifts much more rapidly from the formal “Sie” to the informal or familiar “Du” than was the case for the older generation. Monika’s mother, for example, lived next door to 5 other families for over 30 years and was still using the formal mode of address to all of them.

The language also continues to assimilate English words but in a German manner. For example, the English words “job” and “shop” are changed to German regular verbs by adding “en” as in “jobben” and “shoppen”. Many signs just throw in English words and phrases, and occasionally an entire ad is in English, which surprisingly confused me! Altho the older generation disapproves of this “Neu Deutsch” (New German), I don’t think adopting English phrases is really changing the culture, certainly not the core cultural values. What is especially a hoot is the construction or use of English words in a completely new way—the best example is calling a cell phone a “Handy”, which is certainly an English adjective but one that has absolutely no essential connection to cell phones.

Having a house as a home base for this visit was very nice, and Monika noticed that getting around Hamburg is now easier since they have integrated the S-Bahns, U-Bahns (subways), and regional railroads into one network. I certainly sleep better once I’ve become accustomed to a place, and after the first week I got used to the house and slept well on the admittedly extra-firm bed in Reinbek. It was also nice just to know where the bathroom was located, how the light switches work, and so forth—less exciting, but more relaxing. But being in a foreign culture and language all day was stressful enough for me that I was very happy to have a relaxing house to come home to each night. Our rule, by the way, was to speak German while traveling around for the day, partly so I wouldn’t feel so dratted conspicuous on the trains or busses, but to switch languages to English when we were home for the evening. Having a home haven where I could kick back and speak English for a while was, I think, a necessary relief. Speaking German all day, however, helped improve my German fluency and I think I could become fluent in a year or two if I continued to work on it. All in all, this was a very enjoyable experience that showed me I could live successfully in Germany for longer periods of time.

But a large part of this successful visit was due to my wonderful German in-laws who provided mattresses, bedding, furniture, dishes, silverware, pots and pans, and car transportation. Had they not pitched in like that, we would have been up an unfurnished creek without a paddle. Having to purchase all these things would have been prohibitively expensive and having to throw them all away at the end of the trip would have been, for someone as frugal as I am, heart wrenching. So for anyone considering living in a foreign country for a few months, my advice would be to either marry someone from that country with really nice in-laws or rent a furnished house or apartment.

While living in another culture like Germany, there seemed to be an “adaptation curve” for becoming acclimatized to the way things are done there. Conversely, once we had adapted to German culture we were much more sensitive to, and perhaps intolerant of, many aspects of U.S. culture when we returned home. Already on the taxi ride back from the airport and while driving over the next few days I was struck by the sloppy, rude, and inconsiderate driving on the roads in our area. I was struck anew by the consistent U.S. pattern of slow drivers dawdling in the left lane while impatient, aggressive drivers were weaving over to pass on the right. Also, all the major streets in the U.S. were so much wider and uncluttered than in Germany, but the U.S. drivers were so imprecise in their lane control that they still wandered onto the lane control lines. However, there are also cross-cultural similarities. Drivers in both countries seem to speed whenever they get a chance, and talking on a cell phone while driving is a problem in both cultures from what I could observe. In Germany they are at least trying to raise awareness of this problem. We saw a billboard about that which showed a driver tooling along with a cell phone held to his ear by one hand and a bottle of soda in his other hand—the caption said, “Wer faerht?” (Who’s driving?).

The wide cultural differences in driving such as precise control of the car and obeying basic safety rules like “stay to the right except to pass” can be traced in part, I think, to the different training of drivers, road conditions, and cultural assumptions about driving. Driver training in Germany is all privately done, quite extensive, and very expensive. Road conditions in Germany typically feature narrow and often obstructed lanes in such a way that imprecise driving could get you injured or killed. Gustl, for example, knew exactly where his car was at all times. The cultural assumption about driving in the U.S. is that all people have an inherent right to drive whereas the assumption in Germany is that driving is a privilege that will be revoked for improper behavior. That may be related to the fact that the U.S. mass transportation system is so weak in most areas that it is inconceivable that a person could live without driving, whereas in Germany many folks do live quite well without a car. These different cultural assumptions about driving are reflected, for example, in penalties for violations—drunk driving in Germany leads to an immediate, on-the-spot confiscation of the driver’s license for at least a year.

I also noticed the difference in gasoline prices. Prices for a gallon of regular in Virginia had risen from $1.55 or so when we left to around $1.75 when we returned, and premium at most stations was over $2.00 a gallon, a price that surely caught my eye. That was quite a jump for only two months, and I wondered how general versus local that price jump was and how the people felt about it. In Germany, the price for regular was, of course, much more expensive at about 1.05 Euro per liter, which depending on the exchange rate translates into about $4.20 to $4.50 a gallon. Some of that difference may be due to different costs of production and shipping, but I think most of the difference is due to the different rates of taxation in the two countries. Since driving is interpreted more as a luxury in Germany it is taxed at a correspondingly very high rate, whereas in the U.S. gasoline taxes are kept low perhaps in part because driving a car is considered a basic right. I still remember President Clinton proposing a 5 cent a gallon tax on gasoline to promote conservation and how the Congressional Republicans made political hay with how TERRIBLY BURDENSOME such a HUGE increase in the gasoline TAX would be, possibly leading to INFLATION or RECESSION, and finally the whole idea was dropped. The rather predictable result is that the U.S. now has a plethora of huge, gas guzzling SUVs and the oil-producing countries have us by the throat if they want to jack up fuel prices. Ah, politics.

Monika was struck by the much higher prices for agricultural products in the U.S. compared to Germany. We are very price conscious shoppers, and found the cheapest produce in Germany was at Aldi while the cheapest produce in our area of the U.S. was at Costco, a typical discount warehouse. Comparing cheapest to cheapest, we found that the German prices per 500-grams for tomatoes, English cucumbers, and new potatoes were much cheaper (.39, .39, and .25 Euro, respectively) than at Costco for the slightly smaller U.S. pounds ($1.10, $1.00, and $0.50, respectively). The price for skimmed milk, however, (once we found it in Germany!) was about the same (.49 Euro per liter versus $1.75 per gallon). In contrast, the cost for comparable fast food like Burger King Whoppers seemed to be more in Germany for a comparable meal (and don’t expect free refills on the sodas!!). These big differences in food costs may be due to government subsidies for produce farmers, more efficient farming, lower cost distribution, or some combination of these, but the differences are real.

The biggest difference in restaurant eating that we noticed when we returned to the U.S. was having the option of a non-smoking section, which only happened once in Germany. If anything, smoking in Germany was reported by the government to be increasing for both males and females whereas in the U.S. smoking has declined, especially for males. I suspect that having smoking ads plastered on all the billboards plus having cigarette vending machines on every street corner plus having role models of TV actors who were smoking are all having the predictable effect on young folks taking up smoking in Germany. The government does seem to be taking some actions on this issue including the ineffectual warnings printed on each package of cigarettes. Smoking is also not allowed any more on local trains and busses, and Monika noticed that the number of smoking cars on the inter-city trains was about one out of five nowadays compared to one out of three or so a few decades back. In the long run, though, if the number of young people addicted by the tobacco companies increases enough I expect that Germany will return to being a completely pro-smoking culture whereas in the U.S. the opposite trend seems to be occurring.

But the second big difference in eating in restaurants was noticing how many people in the U.S. are fat. I’m not talking “pleasingly plump” or “hefty” here; I’m talking fat as in obese and in many cases, morbidly obese. In the U.S., I was surprised to see a slender person whereas in Germany I was surprised to see a fat one. Quite seriously, I only saw about five fat males and females in the two months we were in Germany (yes, I was keeping count), and I saw that many fat Americans already on the airplane back to the U.S. Knowing how quickly my coronary arteries would clog up if I looked like that, it kind of gives me the shivers, and I don’t think the popularity of the low carbohydrate but often high-fat Atkins diet is helping matters any.

While watching the evening news back in the U.S., I became so frustrated with the agonizingly slow pace of presentation of important information and the prevalence of fluff and the focus on celebrities (Coby Bryant and Michael Jackson, to be specific) that I simply turned it off. With the German 15-minute news program I often felt that I didn’t get enough information or details on particular issues, but I was never frustrated with a slow pace of delivery or poor content. I also noticed how not-funny all of the U.S. TV commercials were, in contrast to a decent percentage of the German ones that had funny skits. These effects may wear off as we re-adapt to U.S. culture, but I will always remember how some of these things were done better in Germany and wonder why we can’t do it that way here.

But the most curious impression that I got about German culture was how individual rights, liberties, and responsibilities were rigorously being protected by the government and their Supreme Court. The government, for example, was vigorously debating whether to have stricter examination of people who wanted to immigrate to Germany from certain Arabic countries. The proponents were, of course, concerned with preventing terrorism but the opposition feared that a closer examination of these folks was tantamount to a subtle form of discrimination and therefore unacceptable. I do not think that type of immigration provision for Arabs would cause protests in the U.S. I was left with the uncomfortable feeling that rights and liberties are more assiduously protected in Germany than in the U.S. after the Patriot Act. Considering the history of each culture that is a reversal of monumental proportions, and it was embarrassing to me as an American as well as just plain wrong. I could only hope that the U.S. would reverse the current erosion of individual rights and liberties like the “sneak and peek” provisions that have voided the “unreasonable search and seizure” provisions of the Constitution. German lawyers, interestingly enough, could not understand how we as a country could really repeal the Habeas Corpus protection against arbitrary unlimited detention without a trial as in the case of the Guantanamo Naval Base prisoners.

The German emphasis on rights and liberties is, however, tied to an equally strong cultural assumption that an individual will act in a reasonable and responsible manner. We continually noticed the lack of warning and cautionary signs in potentially dangerous situations on train stations, boat docks, bell towers, and the like. Insurance companies similarly limit their coverage of car damages exactly to the extent that the individual was judged to be responsible for the accident. That is, if you are 50% responsible for the accident, your insurance company would only pay 50% of the damages to your car, and that provision was upheld as legal by the German courts while we were in Germany.

This expectation or requirement for individual responsibility was upheld in other ways by the German court system. I recalled that in the U.S., morbidly fat consumers of fast food brought suit against chains like McDonalds for providing them with high fat food. The German Supreme Court heard a similar kind of suit from a woman who had consumed 400 grams of licorice a day for several months until she finally had a heart attack, whereupon she brought suit against the licorice company. For those of you who don’t know this, licorice does apparently include enough of something that acts as a heart stimulant to be dangerous in large doses. But 400 grams of licorice is about a U.S. pound, and eating that much licorice per day is clearly ridiculous if not dangerous. I remember reading a clear warning on the Salmi brand of licorice to the effect that it could affect the heart and that people with heart disease should not eat it. Anyway, the German Supreme Court’s decision was, in a nutshell, “Selber Schuld”, which translates as “it’s your own fault!”

And so our interlude in Germany came to an end. It was a dream vacation but certainly also had its share of surprises! Neither Monika nor I kept track of expenses in the same way we did on Wanderung 2, but by living in a house we don’t think we spent much, if any, more on a day-to-day basis than we would have by living at home or while traveling in the U.S. If you have the wherewithal to make such a journey, you might consider trying to live without a car and relying on public transportation—it’s reasonable, dependable, relaxing and, in my opinion, fun! If you must have a car, consider renting the car from a non-airport, non-downtown source to minimize your additional costs. Before driving off in a strange culture, you should familiarize yourself with the street signs, exactly what they mean, and exactly which ones are really observed by local drivers and which ones are ignored. That way you won’t have the experience that I did of flying up to an intersection and trying to decide if the stop sign, yield sign, or stop light showing green had precedence for what I had to do during the next 500 milliseconds! Finally, understanding the language greatly helped me understand or at least try to learn about the German culture, so I would advocate learning the language of a foreign country if at all possible before you go. Of course, you could also marry someone who speaks the language, but some folks might consider that an extreme step!