April 2011 - 'direct' Germans and Royal Wedding mania

BVB Barbecue

So yeah, coming back to Germany was something of a shock after all. Due to my sudden lack of friends, I needed to get out there and ideally meet some more Germans, but any kind of new friends would have been nice. Luckily, the start of April and good weather also signals the start of another German obsession, barbecuing, or 'Grillen'. All the students Wohnheims are already kitted out with a big fat grill and seating area, and for the first couple of weeks it felt like barbecuing was literally all I did. Which was no bad thing, because it's done damn well here - people bring Bratwurst, kebabs, steaks and every form of pig meat possible, the beer is obviously there in copious amounts and is top quality, and even healthy things like salads are thought of. One of the main student bars, Eastend, had to be shut over the first few weeks of term, so the students just went out, bought beer, spirits, cups and all forms of mixers and just proceeded to sell them all at such barbecue nights. Something struck me as very German about that enterprising spirit.

Then there was getting back into the ways of going about things here. There's no denying that life is taken more seriously here, and the British are seen as immature and silly for always trying to make light of situations, because let's face it, life can be a bit shit sometimes. I've met Germans who are genuinely pissed off with how we always try to make a joke of things - 'why can't you be more serious?!' This is quite evident at the tennis training that I frequent over here - while I laugh at my mistakes (and sometimes at theirs), there's none of that from the other side of the net. Sport generally seems mostly mostly to be played to be won, and enjoyment comes from winning, and less from the sport itself. This is backed up by the time I was told that the reason fan's don't celebrate so much after Borussia Dortmund win a match is that 'only titles count here', so winning a match is just another step on the way to true victory, and not worth making massive song and dance about in itself.

At the tennis was my worst encounter with the German directness, shall we say. While getting changed after a training session, an tall old man in work clothes strode into the room, and announced 'Tag!' (as in Guten Tag) in a booming voice. Given I didn't know this man, there were other people in the room who also said nothing, and the not particularly friendly or personal nature of the greeting, I left the room without saying anything. Big mistake - the man waited for me to leave, turned and stared at me, shouted at me 'I said Tag!' and slammed the door in my face.

Psyching myself up to say hello
to some more Germans

Naturally I was quite shocked and taken aback by that. On the weekend me, my German mate Robert and a couple of others from the foreigner asylum where I live went on a cracking little bike ride to the port in Dortmund and along the river, where we decided to carry out an experiment on greetings. This involved standing to the side of the track, greeting most people who come past, and seeing what sort of responses we got. When smiling and/or waving and saying hallo, around two thirds of people we encountered just went straight past us, no smile, no wave, no reaction. Maybe they thought we were taking the piss (and I guess they'd have been right), but I really can't understand how people can do that - just completely ignore a friendly greeting without breaking stride or pausing for breath. We then had more success on our bikes greeting other cyclists with a 'Guten Tag' or 'schöner Tag heute, oder?', so maybe it is just that Guten Tag requires a response and hallo somehow not. Essentially it's just not the done thing to engage in mindless conversation about the weather with total strangers here. The whole thing is summed up rather nicely in this this article from the BBC website:

Post-ride

Yeah, so there's obviously a lot of interest in the differences between Brits and Germans, and the same can be said for Brits and Americans. After going to a barbecue (what else) to say goodbye to Iver the massive cool danish guy with a wife, I headed up with Hugo to meet some of the new American students. We didn't get off to the best start at Hugo introduced me as 'this is my British friend Rowan, and he always goes on about how much he hates Americans' They were all totally engrossed in a John Wayne film, but once they got going on my Britishness, there was no let up. They wanted to know if I could speak like the queen (I couldn't), how I pronounce tomato (in the correct way) and whether I wrote Jeff or Geoff (who cares?). The best bit was the accent discussion. Americans find the British accent equal parts cute and intelligent, which was somewhat embarrassing as some of them apologised for their stupid-sounding southern accents, to which I said that it was all the same to me and if I or any other Brit hears an American accent then we just presume they're stupid, no matter where exactly in the states they're from. I guess the love just isn't totally mutual.

So finally, this undying interest in our strange polite little ways and our accent came to a massive head in April, for the wedding of the year/decade/century/whatever. The Germans went absolutely crazy for it. I mean, I wasn't in England for the big build-up, but from what I gathered, most people were for it since it meant a four day weekend and a chance to get pissed and have a bit of a party. Not here though - oh no. If I had a Euro for every time I'd been asked if I'm excited for the big wedding, I'd have a lot of money, however not enough to buy all the magazines, special edition newspapers and merchandise hanging around here. The newspaper Bild (for those of you not familiar, the absolute dirt of the German press, shittier than the Daily Star, but massively popular) had a headline about the royal wedding every day in April, my favourite being a feature on the most embarrassing German royals, with the question 'why can't our royals be as cool as the British?' At times I felt I was being personally stalked by Kate Middleton and her 'fairy tale' ways, so often I saw her (admittedly far from unattractive) face grinning at me wherever I went.

Our lovely spread:

Matthias totally out-britishing me

 Inspired by this, me and a few German friends of mine (yes, at this stage I had actual German friends) had a tea party on the Tuesday before the wedding, since I wouldn't be there on the day of the wedding. We had a lot of tea, biscuits, Marmite sandwiches, scones with jam and cream, and sticky toffee pudding with custard, which was regarded with suspicion for looking like mud, but it turned out to be lecker in the end. They totally went for it, with the girls wearing silly hats and the boys in braces and Sunday best, before taking 'typically British' family photos of ourselves. On a personal level it was important as it helped me spread the word for Yorkshire Tea, and to teach them the ways of proper tea drinking (always top up before the cup gets empty, just a little milk so it's the right colour, little finger sticking out etc) because weirdly, these things that are the very cornerstone of our lives are alien to some people. Weird.

Typical British family photos:

In all that excitement there was still time to get a bit of travelling in. Firstly, me, Hun-gu and Marcos headed to Bremen (a four hour train journey away) for the day, as you do. Bremen is mostly famous for being the setting of the fairy tale 'The Bremen Town Musicians', and for being the home of Beck's Beer. Guttingly, the brewery was shut when we went there, but there was still plenty of things to keep us interested. Bremen is similar to Hamburg in some ways, being a hanseatic port town and former industrial centre, and boats a very cute artists quarter called Schnoor, full of chocolate box houses and little nooks and crannies, proper classic German style. Being able to relax with a glass of fresh Beck's in the market square made all taste that bit sweeter.

Bremen:

Eating kebabs in front of a windmill

The Bremen Town Musicians

Schnoor

Schnoor again

I liked this postbox

Jess also came for the last time to Dortmund before she headed back to England, and we saw that off in style with a trip to Haltern am See - a big boating lake north of the Ruhrgebiet. There we hired a pedalo and drank sparkling wine and ate strawberries on it, before a spontaneous trip to Münster, the Aasee and schnitzel by the lake (Jess got a bit addicted to schnitzel and demanded we eat it at least once a day). I totally love the laid back attitude of people just hanging out by the lake, drinking beer and eating ice cream, without any of the health and safety or security bollocks that you get in England. Our safety debrief before getting on the boat was "Are you drunk?" and "Can you swim?". We answered no to the first (which was a lie) and yes to the second, and got a 'Viel Spaß!' and were on our way. Brilliant.

Living it up Andrew Flintoff style on the pedalo