I find it quite hard when I begin to try and describe how I find Germany and how I feel about being here. Inevitably, everything is mixed, and although I know that I am not happy - largely because I am so bored, I also know that there are many good things here.
So, in writing about manners and culture - "the way we do things here", I'm inevitably generalising. But these have been my first impressions and after 7 months, I haven't felt that they are incorrect. At home, I am able to distinguish between someone being rude and straight talking (mostly being rude, I guess), here the distinction is less clear cut. And although the next bit might sound fairly damning, I know *many* people who are just lovely.
Germany is not a country known for its amazing cuisine - though its cakes and breads are wonderful. It can be proud of its observance of the seasons, but I still cannot bring myself to understand the national obsession with white asparagus - whole "Spargel Menus"; yum? Don't think so, and I love fresh asparagus. Sauer Kraut? Perhaps you have to grow up with that. So that leaves us with delights such as "Hand Kase und Musik" - no, that isn't hand cheese and music, it's a lump of cheese with pickled onions on the top and (in my case) a thick slice of stale bread.
Try "Gruner sause" - a kind of egg mayonnaise perhaps coming with cold boiled potatoes, but the mayonniase sause contains 7 different green herbs. As part of an overall salad, I think it could be nice, but when that was my sole meal and came without any further accompagniements (when everyone else had salads to go with the ubiquitous sausages), I found it clawing to say the least. And worse still, the friends who had so proudly suggested it to me, watched beaming as I tried to get through it. "That was lovely" said I!
To be fair (I keep trying to be fair), German sausages are good. But it seems to be practically the only food that they do have.
So, to get back to my point, I was rather shocked when meeting a neighbour for the first time, she decided to tell me unprovoked how poor British cooking is. Now, I've no idea what her experience was like - in fact, I'm not sure if she had ever been to Britain, but if she was trying to compare bad food, how about a "vegetarian snitzel" in the Romer Platz. This turned out to be slices of cold potato covered in a kind of egg coating. Nothing like snitzel and as it came with cold potatoes and no veg of any kind, it was practically inevitable.
But I would still never say to a German, I think the food here is awful. The simple truth is that it isn't - all. The foreign restaurants can be great and are better value than at home. But German cuisine is not for me. Equally, I love good British food. Not the dire stuff that can be churned up in tourist areas or the soggy veggies left to age for hours. But properly cooked, home cooking can be amazing. It is too heavy for current lifestyles and as a non-meat eater, much of it does not interest me, but this is certainly a case of Germans in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Was the neighbour a one-off? No, I don't think so. My impression was really not that she was trying to be unpleasant, she simply said what she felt (and when I had picked myself off the floor I liked her).So, it is ok to tell someone that you don't like their haircut, or clap them because they are sweeping the path (yes, really),or tell them that they should get a skip to get rid of the clutter in the house.
I've been shouted at for not weighing my vegetables, for not having a blue parking ticket, for not leavinga trafficlight before it has gone green(!) and the list goes on. A very direct-talking people, me thinks! The simple truth is that my business is everyone else's business. It's just that I didn't realise it.