Just another superficial American?

November 12, 2007 · Filed Under Life as an Expat · 10 Comments 

One of the stereotypes that Germans have of Americans is that we are superficial.  They’ll meet an American, the American will act like they are best friends, and the next time they run into each other, the American doesn’t even say hello.  I’ve often heard from Germans who’ve moved to the US that at first they are in heaven, thinking, “This is great!  Look at how many friends I’ve made and I just got here!”  But once they realize that the new “friends” are not really friends, the joy is soon replaced by bitterness at the “superficiality” of Americans. 

On the other hand, Americans often find Germans to be cold, emotionally distant, and difficult to make friends with.  This is because Germans are very careful in who they make friends with and if you are lucky enough to be friends with a German, you’ve got a friend for life.  You don’t just meet a German and ask them out for coffee or lunch or a movie.  We’ve lived here a year and haven’t been invited for coffee yet by any of our neighbors, but we’re on friendly terms with all of them.  I’ve found that it usually takes about a year or so of knowing each other before those first steps towards friendship are taken.  There’ll be several invitations to coffee, after a while, you might have dinner, and after a few years, you are great friends.

Neither way is bad, they are just different, and differences are often hard to adjust to at first, when moving to a new land.

Today, for the first time, I really felt like the “superficial” American.  Since Oliver was 6 weeks old, we’ve had a housekeeper.  She’s from Macedonia and starting from day one, we used the informal you (“du”) with each other.  We’d chit-chat briefly while she cleaned, but mostly I tried to stay out of her way.

Three weeks ago, I was feeling chatty and we ended up having a long conversation.  She asked about my family and wanted to know what Thailand was like.  I showed her pictures and asked her about Macedonia.  Then last week I was sick with a sinus infection and stayed in bed with Oliver while she cleaned, and today, I was not feeling very social and kind of ignored her (I went back to brief chit-chat).  At the end of the day, she looked at me and said (in German), “Christina, are you happy with my cleaning?”  I answered that of course I was happy.  We talked a little, and in the end, I gathered that she was a little hurt that we had shared a lot three weeks ago, but there had been nothing since.  And boy, did I feel guilty.  I can totally sympathize with not understanding the friendship signs that someone else is giving off.  I spent the first two years in Germany having no idea who wanted to be my friend and who just wanted to be a work colleague.  I don’t know how things work in Macedonia, but I can tell when someone has been disappointed.  Next week, I will try harder to be less “superficial.”

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Expat life in Germany

October 6, 2007 · Filed Under Life as an Expat · 15 Comments 

A recent post on whether Germans hate Americans by B. over at Eurotrippen got me thinking about all the different experiences I’ve had here in Germany.

First, I don’t think Germans in general hate Americans in general, but there are always going to be some people who hate some other people, whether rationally or irrationally. This being said, I have had odd encounters due to being foreign.

In Berlin, before I could speak German, a women in a bakery on Schlossstrasse claimed to not understand what I was saying as I pointed to and simultaneously asked for Brötchen, yelling “WAS??? WAS???” at me. Let’s just say I didn’t go back there again. There was also a Japanese girl in my class who wasn’t served a Bratwurst by a vendor in Mitte until she had pronounced it correctly. But other than that, I can’t think of other language-related ill-treatment.

As to getting slack for being American, I said in the comments to B.’s post, that I was yelled at by a guy in Berlin who recognized my American accent just after the Iraq War started. He wanted to know why *I* was starting this war. I just told him that I hadn’t voted for W, so he should buzz off. But that’s the only incident I can think of where I witnessed anti-Americanism.

Germans often ask me where I’m from, and after I say that I’m American, they’ll say (in German, of course), “No, where are you really from?” Uh, born and bred American, thank ya very much. This has occurred less often down here in the south, I used to get it ALL THE TIME in Berlin, Rostock and Potsdam. Sometimes they’d even say, “No, which country in the Americas?” I finally started saying that I’m a “US-Amerikanerin.” But that being said, when I lived in the US, I’d often get asked where I was born, and when I answered California, the people would get puzzled looks on their faces as they tried to work out a polite way to ask my ancestry. I’d enjoy their discomfort for a moment, then add that my mother is Thai.

I have felt like I was treated differently because of my race here. I posted about a couple encounters with neighbors in Potsdam previously. It’s funny, in Potsdam we lived in a middle to upper middle class community, and people there wouldn’t talk to me, and I was once asked in a critical way while I was out walking Charlie, whether I really lived there. Next to the neighborhood we lived in, was government housing for the poor and unemployed. I ended up making friends with the mostly unemployed, sometimes ex-con, sometimes alcoholic, but very nice Ossies that lived there. They welcomed me to their dog walking group with open arms! (Rainer was shocked that I walked off into the woods with them, but after coming along once, he decided they were really nice guys)

But, Rostock has this big rep as an anti-foreigner city, and I never experienced any mistreatment all the time I lived there. Potsdam is really where I had the most problems. Like the time when a neighbor came up to talk to me, asked where I was from, then said, “Oh, you’re one of the good foreigners,” and continued to bash the Turkish for 20 minutes. I’d just met her! Of course, Rainer once went to a hairdresser on Patriotischer Weg in Rostock and after she learned that he’d lived in the US, she asked how the Americans could have elected a man [W.] president who couldn’t read or write. I went to the same hairdresser though, and she never said anything to me.

I do know of people who had bad experiences. The Japanese girl I mentioned before, she was chased through Alexanderplatz by a group of young men who yelled things and threw apples at her. No one helped. There was a Chinese guy in my class too, who said young men threw firecrackers at him. And once I met and spoke to an African man on the S-Bahn in Berlin who told me that German women won’t talk to him, and asked if Americans were all as friendly and open as me.

In the end, I’d say that there are probably just as many xenophobic Germans as there are Americans, but perhaps the Germans are a little bit more vocal and straightforward about it.

What are your experiences?

added 8 Oct 2007: Cliff reminded me of another story, which I actually think was less anti-American and more about just being a jerk. I had a boss who brought up the difficulties in entering the US, with long waits, fingerprints and biometric passports and all. She told me that she wasn’t going to be attending any more conferences in the US because of this, which is fine, that was her choice, but then she added snidely, that it wouldn’t be any great loss to her scientifically. Now that was just unfair and why say that to an American anyway? But I think it was more about trying to rile me up personally than being against America in general.

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Fünf Jahre geschafft!

May 14, 2007 · Filed Under Life as an Expat · 16 Comments 

Christina at ISDS picnic

Christina before Germany

On May 14, 2002, I stepped off a plane at Berlin’s Tegel airport to find out that Air France had missrouted 3 out of 4 of my bags. And that’s how my life in Germany began.

 

Kevin - Home Alone
Christina after Germany

 

 

 

JUST KIDDING!
 (kinda)

 

 

In the beginning, we lived in a two room 60qm apartment on Muthesiusstrasse in Berlin-Steglitz. I barely spoke any German, and the Schloßstraße shop employees liked to pretend that they didn’t understand the little that I could speak. I had a long commute to work in Berlin-Wedding, and was attending German evening classes three nights a week at the Goethe Institut near Hackescher Markt. After a long summer of searching, during which my belongings stayed in storage, we finally found our dream place, a three room palace near the Berliner Ensemble.

While it stayed warm, I bicycled to work, then bicycled over to Hackescher Markt to continue my evening German courses, something my boss thought was completely insane (the bicycling on Friedrichstrasse, not the courses). After six months, my colleagues said my time was up and after that, there was very little English chit chat at work. It was tough (really tough), but it worked and I went from nothing to speaking German pretty well in less than a year (it also helped that I got every cold, flu and stomach ailment possible that first year and none of my former East German doctors spoke English).

I gained the Expat 20 that first year (20 pounds, that is), and kept gaining that Expat 20 over again the next few years. It’s now five years later and I’ve found my place in Germany. Before Oliver came along, I even managed to lose one of those Expat years.

Rainer says I am different. I am Germanizing. I don’t complain nearly as much (although there are still days when I can talk his ear off), and I seem to finally have the hang of how most things work here. By golly, I’m so comfortable with the medical system now that I was finally willing to get pregnant.

 

Christina 14 May 2007

Christina today @ 30 weeks

Rainer asked me what I wanted to do today. I answered, “Let’s go to Austria!” Unfortunately, he had to work, otherwise I thought it would have been great to celebrate five years by leaving the country, maybe we’ll just go to that French restaurant Heza recommended instead. ;-)

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Who’s your momma?

May 7, 2007 · Filed Under Life as an Expat · 9 Comments 

Mother’s Day is fast approaching (it’s this Sunday, May 13th, in the US, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland; my Brit readers celebrated -or didn’t- back on March 18). I find it interesting that there isn’t a backlash towards Mother’s Day as there is towards Valentine’s Day, although I find that both are very commercialized and in both cases there is societal pressure to participate. Maybe moms just wouldn’t put up with any excuses to not have a day of appreciation - although as is often argued by V-day opponents for V-day, every day should be Mother’s Day.

So are you doing anything for a special mom in your life? My mom’s getting a phone call and four rose bushes to plant at her new house (I don’t mind saying that online because I know the extent of her internet ability is looking up addresses for making Thai food deliveries, and only if the internet is already open to Mapquest).

But the question is, when is my first Mother’s Day? I have put forth that although Oliver is not yet “out and about”, I am a mom and ought to have some recognition of this fact on Sunday. Rainer disagrees and says that this is not the German way. He says my first Mother’s Day gift will not come until Oliver can make it himself (the typical present would be a drawing or flowers from my garden). He says it’s a holiday between kids and moms here, and that German dads have nothing to do with this holiday. Since I’ve often caught Rainer making stuff up out of the blue about Germany, I put it to my readers: How do Germans celebrate Mother’s Day?

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My Likes and Dislikes of Deutschland

September 4, 2004 · Filed Under Life as an Expat · 3 Comments 

I was pretty surprised at how different Germany is to the US. Before I moved, I expected it would basically be the same, just a different language. I had visited Germany for a whole month and liked it a lot, but visiting and living are not the same. It is very different here and it took me a long time to adjust (I guess I’m still adjusting).

Things I will miss if I ever go back to the US:

1. Cheese selection - I love cheese and they have a lot of it here.
2. Pedestrian shopping areas - I just love walking around and looking at the shops. It’s not even the same as the open air malls in the US (like Reston Town Center). Those still have a “mall” feeling.
3. Market Squares - I like going and buying fresh flowers and fruit here. Sure, there are Farmer’s Markets in the US, but in Germany, they’re there every day.
4. Not paying at the doctor’s office - except for 10 euro per quarter.
5. Bakeries on every street corner - I love good fresh bread. Hard to find this in the US.
6. Eating on a terrace or square - I like eating outside, but there are not that many places that have outdoor eating areas in the US. Most have one here.
7. Good wood-grilled Krakauer sausage.
8. Being able to walk - to the supermarket, electronics store, video rental, bakery, flower shop, department stores, restaurants, doctor’s office, and work. I don’t even have a car half the time because Rainer takes it to Berlin for the week.
9. Unobstructed views - it’s kinda nice having wide open windows with no screens. If you want to stick your head out the window, it’s no problem.
10. Small fuel efficient cars - in general, people in Germany are not driving around in massive, polluting, fuel-sucking monstrosities that are by far bigger than they need.
11. Life satisfaction does not equal material posessions - from what I can tell, German’s don’t have this need to have a bigger house, better car, prettier wife, smarter kids, etc than their neighbors that Americans unfortunately do. There isn’t a whole society in debt here.

Things I will not miss about Germany:

1. Lack of customer service - Some people say customer service in the US can be bad… There is no concept of customer service in Berlin, the salespeople and waiters are doing you a HUGE favor by showing up to work at all, you should be grateful! I was boycotting stores with bad customer service at first, but then I ran out of stores to shop in… in Berlin! A city of 6 million people! Although I’ve noticed customer service seems to be catching on in Rostock.
2. Doggy poop everywhere - Germans don’t scoop poop. I even saw poop in Quartier 204 in Berlin once (VERY expensive indoor shopping area - I was in there looking at the cool architecture, I can’t afford Gucci clothes, not that any of them would fit me anyway).
3. Public urination - German men - Okay! - SOME German men, feel urinating on street corners is completely acceptable. There is a field in front of my office window where men are often urinating. Nice work environment! Just to be fair, one of Rainer’s friends told me they saw a woman crouched down taking a dump at a bus stop in Berlin, so I guess it can be both sexes.
4. Doctors - there are some nice ones, but I found these few and far between. Most treat you like you have no brain and I can’t count how many times I’ve been misdiagnosed. not to mention there is often a several hour wait due to the elderly German sport of doctor visiting.
5. Making friends - It seems with Germans that you are either a good friend or you are an acquaintance. In the US, there is a middle stage that allows you to have someone to hang out and do stuff with, without being best friends. I always made friends in the US fairly easily whenever I moved or started work somewhere new. Not here.
6. Junk food - Paprika flavored potato chips and Erdnuss Flippies (peanut puffs). Blah! These are gross. I miss Doritos and Cheetos.
7. “American” food - this is generally pretty gnarly. Hamburgers are usually made from a mixture of ground pork and beef. This is just wrong! I had ribs in an “American Western” restaurant that were marinated in cinnamon and sugar. Just plain strange.
8. Work environment - too strict and formal for my taste. There’s way too many rules and paperwork and hierarchy. Germans generally believe that work life and home life should not overlap. How do you make friends if not at work?
9. A house full of bugs - okay, you get bugs in American houses too, but there are no screens on the windows here and no air conditioning, so in the hot summer, your house gets full of moths, mosquitoes, and flies (lots of them).
10. Over-priced electronics, appliances, and clothing - these things just cost so much more than in the US. My KitchenAid mixer was $179.00 in the US and is priced at €400 here.

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