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Germany vs The Internet

by | Jul 14, 2010 | , | 0 Comments

Lots of ruckus has been made over the past few months, including here on this blog, about Europe’s reaction to Facebook, Google Streetview and the like.  It finally took a self-promotional e-mail from a professional acquaintance  to get my ire up enough to actually write about it.

The ire inducing part didn’t have much to do with my acquaintance directly.  It was that the “people who you might know” section along the bottom which is designed to get us connected was eerily accurate.  All but one were, in fact, people I knew.

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Before Amazon, there was…

by | Jul 5, 2010 | , , | 0 Comments

I’m an avid reader, and always have been. But as an expat in Germany, it wasn’t always easy to feed my fervent need for reading material. When I was a kid, I sat between my brother and sister in the back of the car for every vacation with a pile of books at my feet. Or, this being the seventies, I sat on the floor of the car with the books on the seat. My brother, who was dyslexic, couldn’t be bothered with much more than Tintin, but I went to the library and grabbed a stack of books that were beyond my age and reading level, but kept me happy.

When I first moved to Freiburg in the early 90s, I quickly noticed the gaping hole that came from having no access to the library, and no money to buy books myself. Sure, there were English books in the German bookstores, but you really had to depend on someone else’s taste and hope that one of the ten books available appealed to your taste. The UB had books too, but these also tended towards the classics, and there is only so much of that sort of the thing that a person can consume without being hungry for something lighter. Magazines at the train station were 10 – 12 DM a hit, and when you read as fast as I do, it quickly becomes a very bad Preisleistungsverhältnis (price-performance ratio).

I remember the sheer desperation of the situation hitting me when I had to plunder a shopping cart of castoff books that someone left in the hall of the dorm, reading anything I could find that was in English, even dark mysteries and very bad true crime stories, which normally aren’t my thing. This approach did open new literary doors, as it were. At that point in my German career, I could read German, but not well. I managed to drag myself through Rosamund Pilcher, but couldn’t be bothered with much else. Nowadays, I can read German almost as well as I can English. But with the stress of my life, job and everything else, I still prefer English. read more…

Goodbye Deutschland

by | Jun 21, 2010 | , , | 0 Comments

The title of this post is not meant to be in reference to Germany and its standing at the World Cup. Rather, it is in reference to the fact that this will be my last post on this blog while living in Germany. One prominent aspect of expatriate life is a higher probability of relocating. Although my husband is German, we have been anticipating an overseas move through his job over the last five years.

It’s been a long, drawn out process anticipating where and when we’ll move. There have been some false starts including absolute certainty that we were moving to Singapore some time soon after the birth of our second daughter. She’s now 20 months old. In fact, it seemed likely that we were moving to Asia, so it took some getting used to that we are in fact moving to San Diego, California, back in the U.S. of A.
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Living in Germany FAQ

by | Jun 15, 2010 | , , , , | 0 Comments

For quite a while now I’ve been thinking that putting together a frequently asked questions (FAQ) list about living in Germany and other German speaking lands would be a good idea.  Many questions come up time and again on the German Way forums and e-mail list.  They are mostly addressed by our website, but having everything in one, concise list makes life easier.  So here is the start of the Living in German FAQ.

I’ll start with one item and I then extend an invitation to anyone to submit questions and answers to me for inclusion on the list.

Question 1:  Can I get by in German speaking countries without speaking German. read more…

The Death of the German Language

by | Jun 7, 2010 | , , , | 0 Comments

The reports of its death are premature

Lately, the Germans have had more important things to worry about than the death of their language. But once they have dealt with the collapse of the euro and the resignation of their flaky President Köhler, they’ll get back to worrying about the demise of German, one of their favorite things to worry about.

As I wrote in my book, The German Way, it is no accident that the term “angst” comes to us from German. Worrying is a national pastime in Germany. Next to soccer (Fußball), worrying is the number one German pastime. To be sure, there are sometimes truly serious things to worry about. I think the endangered euro falls into that category, since it also has to do with European unity, the EU and all that. (By the way, Angela, you really could be more of a cheerleader for European unity.)

When it comes to their native tongue, Germans are terribly conflicted. On the one hand, they take immense pride in what a difficult language Deutsch is, almost daring foreigners to learn it. read more…

Vacationing on the Cheap in Germany

by | May 31, 2010 | , , | 2 Comments

Since our family is still affected by the dreaded Kurzarbeit (Germany’s solution to the recession provides an alternative to laying people off. They cut down on the amount of hours employees are supposed to be working and the Arbeitsamt makes up 2/3 of the difference in pay), we were not planning a vacation at all this year. I would have loved to go home for Pfingsten, which is two weeks this year, but flying six people to Detroit is not on the cards for now.

But after a couple of days of school holidays with four bored kids at home and a lot of rain, and a meeting with friends who had gotten a deal on a Ferienwohnung (vacation cottage) from a website called www.fewo-direkt.de, we decided to see if we could find anything affordable last minute. Since there are a lot of us, it isn’t easy to find a hotel or any sort of all-inclusive cheapy vacation anymore. We’d been to Greece and Spain a couple of times, but never vacationed in Germany. I was always afraid that a Ferienwohnung would not include much relaxing for me, because we still needed to cook and clean and pick up after everyone. But since my husband learned to cook before Olivia was born 3 years ago, my opinions have changed slightly. I can say that it isn’t exactly relaxing, but at least we got outta Dodge and are not at home! read more…

A Night at the Ball: A Glimpse at German Fraternities

by | May 24, 2010 | , | 1 Comment

Last weekend, I accompanied my husband to Heidelberg to celebrate the 130th anniversary of his fraternity. A German fraternity is not quite the same as an American fraternity, but some things it does have in common are a heavy emphasis on drinking and membership into a male-only club.

I haven’t quite made up my mind about the whole concept. It is all a bit antiquated and an attempt to perpetuate some sort of “establishment.” At the same time though, I know that the network has been very important to my husband and I’ve enjoyed talking to and getting to know some of the members and their respective partners throughout the years.

I was having a lot of fun at the black tie ball last Saturday and was thinking once again about the peculiarities of this slice of German university culture. After five years of marriage, the costumes, the swords and the fencing, although still a bit odd, have grown on me. But how to explain this to the outside. In less than 500 words, I’ve tried to provide a quick and dirty definition. read more…

A Different Kind of Food Fad

by | May 17, 2010 | , , , | 0 Comments

OK, maybe it is not really a fad.  Not here in Germany that is.  But almost 6000 years ago the Kosher food “movement” (everything is a movement now) started.  It still exists but has a big brother, Halal.  The two dietary systems have much in common which shouldn’t be surprising considering the shared roots of Jews and Muslims (and Christians).  Funnily enough, following these food customs is something that can bring Jews and Muslims together in a place like Central and Northern Europe that barely acknowledges non-pork fare in most restaurants.

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