The Reluctant Migrant: Trials and Tribulations of

Manners? Comparing cuisines?

Fri, 09 May 2008 10:32:43 +0200

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.

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Bergstrasse

Wed, 07 May 2008 09:31:16 +0200

So much for my writing every day! I managed to write for 2 days and it's taken me a further 6 days to write again. No self control!

May Day is a public holiday in Germany just as it is at home, except that here, you have May 1st off, or if it's at the weekend, you lose it - this year it fell on the same day as Ascension Day, so a day's holiday was lost.

The Germans are very good at maintaining their culture and heritage, and somehow seem far closer to the seasons and to nature, than we Brits. In general, I think this is great, although personally, I can't quite get my head around a Spargel menu. I mean, I love freshly griddled green asparagus, but whilst I will try one of the anaemic looking white versions, I can't ever see it becoming part of my life. But other seasonally ideas are truly great; the wine walk was one.

The wine walk on the Bergstrasse is apparently held on May 1st every year, and gives walkers a chance to sample wines along a 27km long trail. It's only held on May 1st, but I had no idea we would be joined by so many other "walkers".

If your German is any good, here is the link:
http://www.bergstraesser-wein.de/wanderung/stadt_bensheim/wanderung_frame.htm

We went en familie and met up with 2 other families at the Haupbaunhof, catching the train to the start of our tour at Heppenheim. Perhaps, I was naive, but I had imagined a nice, gentle stroll with several table-top sales on the way. Instead, we walked along in a continous herd, and on our 13km walk there were only about 5 stopping points, and at each of these the crowd swelled to such an extent that I feared for the younger children, and was forced to walk cheek by sausage with other walkers - and I got several other people's wine spilled down me.

The atmosphere though was great - relaxed and fun. We had 2 rain showers, but nothing that would dampen our spirits. The sun came out again, blue skies took over, and we were left with a feeling of wine-hastened wellbeing and contentment. Souvenir Bergstrasse glasses helped us on our way, but I am particularly pleased with my glass holder; this is a simple leather strap designed to hold the small glasses, but I think would be great at parties - no more leaving glasses down somewhere and forgetting where they are. Although, I can imagine people's faces if I did turn up with my own glass, strapped to my person. However great an idea, it somehow wouldn't be quite "right", I guess.

Perhaps strangely, my favourite stop wasn't a wine stop at all. For a wine walk, there was no wine. We could get coke, lemonade even coffee, but not wine. Anyway, this stop seemed like a hippy retreat, a clearing in the middle of a foresty area, with a few tables and chairs. There was a tipee for young kids to play in and an area for others to excavate - so the kids spent a good half an hour digging and getting covered in mud, whilst the adults soaked in the atmosphere (well allowed the wine to soak through perhaps), listening to a few German friends play really decend covers. My favourite was 500 miles, maybe not up to the Proclaimers themselves, but it was fun.

This is still one of my favourite 500 miles covers though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEMYYNLbEtw

WE left exhausted but happy - the kids as well, so don't go thinking it was just the wine doing its magic. Although on the subject of wine, I really believe that the Germans export only the stuff that they would never drink themselves as I've now had quite a lot of really good wine. I avoid the Rieslings and anything I fear might resemble Liebfraumilch and Hoch, but have been quite pleasantly surprised.

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Culture shock!

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:12:50 +0200

I hadn't really expected to feel much in the way of culture shock. I did know that Germans did things differently, but I knew quite a few Germans, and had been here a few times before. However, it is very different to live somewhere and experience life rather than to just pass through.

As a typical inhibited Brit, I have been amazed by how Germans seem quite happy to speak their mind. They seem quite happy to look into your business and are quick to tell you if you are doing something wrong. Obviously, this is simply my experience. But I have loads of examples.

This all felt particularly painful when I first arrived and was in shell shock, feeling insecure and very exposed. Thus to have another customer come up to my 7 year old in a supermarket and not stand on a child step, persumably meant for slightly smaller children was a surprise. To be told by a German how bad food in Britain is (this from the home of pickled vegetables and boiled potatoes). To be clapped at for sweeping the street alongside our house; to be told off for walking over a road when there are no cars insight; To be shouted at when I hadn't weighed my vegetables in a supermarket (my mistake but the only other supermarket I had been to, weighed them for you, and I simply got it wrong).

The more unpalatable examples have occured on 3 or 4 occasions when older people have decided to try and shove my kids of the pavement, or even in an aisle in a shop. Presumably they just didn't think they should be there. But rather than walking past or even pushing past, they decided to swipe away. Unfortuantely, Ihave stod open mouthed when this has happened. I've also stod open mouthed when I waited at a station to let someone through some double doors (rather than swinging the doors into the face), only to have someone push past me, barge into the doors and thus swinging them back into my face and telling me there are 2 doors you know. I knew, he'd just flung them straight back in my face!

As an immigrant, it's difficult to judge when somepne is simply a horrible person or when it is a cultural attitude that you're up against. In the UK it is easy to meet unacceptable rudeness. Those people are to be avoided etc etc, and here, it could easily be the same, and not knowing how things are done, means that we're more likely to experience difficulties. Although as I didn't know that there was a law against children being on pavements, I find that hard! Still, perhaps I should feel pleased that people are happy to interfer in each others lives or toot if you haven't moved away from a red light the second before it's gone green. People are not afraid to show their feelings - no fear of a litter-lout morphing into a knife-wielder for the sake of thrown wrapper.

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The Start

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:04:30 +0200

Today is day one of a new me. Well, not a new me at all. But a consistent me. A me who writes more and thinks less - at least that is the idea.

So me and blogging. Not new to it exactly, but new to talking openly.

I moved to Germany from the UK last year for a 4 year stint and have so far survived just over 7 months. I moved with my husband "Sci" and 2 kids "One and "Two" for want of better names. I moved with enormous reluctance.

Some boring but explanatory background:

There is a background to this as obviously I did not move kicking and screaming - and was fully a part of the decision making process. For 6 years our lives had been shadowed by a move to the West Country which had never felt right to me. Yet at the same time, the area where we lived was changing rapidly. Students amoungst you might sniff at this, but our road seemed to be converting into a student halls of residence - buy-to-let city with landlords packing in students from the backrooms to the rafters. Bang goes the community feeling and as this was a Victorian road and so many students appear to have cars, this made parking a daily battle.

Add to that our local school sliding down the scale and graffiti appearing all around us, a council seemingly impotent to create a safe crossing to get my children to school a full 3 minutes walk away and you have a picture of discontent. I'm not sure you could count the drug dealers occasionally seen in the pub car park at the end of our road or in the alley between the primary school and our road, as they are presumably everywhere. But, I really don't want to be anywhere near them.

Discontent is only the background though as meanwhile we had a house we had believed that we would end our days in, the vestiges of a community spirit which was fantastic and neighbours like family. I had after a long time looking found the job of my dreams (unfortunately without the salary but seemingly you can't have everything). We had great friends and aside from wanting the area to change (I know we couldn't make it, but still), we were very happy. But trapped. Trapped by an impending move that for various reasons became if anything less attractive, we could not move within our adopted town nor it seemed anywhere else. We could not afford to move, and even by using mortgage simply to change areas, we ran the risk that a few months later we might simply have to move again.

And of course, a new job locally might have solved this issue. But when you have a loved one who loves their job, who loves their niche field, how many could really ask them to give it up for something else? Well I couldn't, and so had resigned myself to moving. But the move appeared to get delayed and the feeling of entrappment - and then let down continued, so when an exciting secondment came up in Germany, it seemed like an opportunity to apply for it. Better for my husband, better opportunities for my kids, and if I would have to give up my job anyway, what difference did it make to me?

But loss of that job and distancing from family and friends, together with a feeling of loss of self have been and still are a constant burden, so I am blogging myself out of a cycle of why? and allowing myself to look and laugh at the many scraps we have seen and cultural clangers committed by us and to us over the past few months.

That I will change, now seems inevitable, but I have no idea what I will change into. I doubt I could possibly exist as a lady-who-lunches, and so 7 months in, still wonder what on earth to do. More anon.

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