Oh my goodness… I always knew there was more than a little bit of European in me; but my conversion to the German Way was more subtle and insidious than I could have imagined.
I, unlike most other red blooded, consumer oriented, individualistic Americans was actually cheering at the German Supreme Court’s ruling prohibiting allowing businesses to stay open regularly on Sundays in Berlin. I don’t even live in Berlin.
Germans don’t do small talk. (Well, sometimes they do – but they rarely admit it.) Most German-speakers will tell you that their language is too serious and precise to be wasted on small talk or chitchat, especially with strangers. Anyone who has lived in Berlin for any length of time knows that Berliners in particular aren’t prone to idle chatter – even if they know you fairly well.
So I was amused to read an article on German stereotypes and “Chatiness” in the latest issue of The Atlantic Times (Dec. 2009). Jabeen Bhatti writes of her astonishment when – in a single day in Berlin – she experienced several strangers chatting with her, something “as rare as seeing a white Rhino.”
In the US, such banter among perfect strangers is nothing unusual. read more…
Many a time I have written about German schools, which sometimes seem to be the bane of my life, but are generally pretty okay. It seems that no matter how good the non-German parent was in school (and in our case, that would be me), when confronted with German math problems, I’m lost. And unhelpful. And really really frustrated.
Now granted, my oldest daughter is not a math genius. She would probably do pretty well if she found math interesting and had a little bit of faith in herself (the classic not living up to her potential). But our problems started way back in first grade when they start adding and subtracting. They even subtract differently here. No borrowing and carrying. The little numbers go at the bottom. Division is another story. As soon as I see that math book coming out I want to run for cover. I have to relearn it, remember how we did it, and end up asking my colleagues to explain long division to me German style. read more…
“Bald ist Nikolausabend da! Bald ist Nikolausabend da!”
(rough translation: Fun, fun, tralalala, soon it will be the evening before St. Nikolaus Day! Soon it will be the evening before St. Nikolaus Day!”)
If you are like me, this song has been stuck in your head all week. The Christmas season is upon us here in Germany, which is entrenched in traditions such as visits to the Christmas markets, lighting candles on the Advent wreaths each Sunday and celebrating St. Nikolaus Day.
This Sunday gone was St. Nikolaus Day, and my family and I were invited to celebrate the event on Saturday at a friend’s house. Our friend Melanie was visiting us from London this weekend, so it was amusing and interesting to see this tradition and all of its associated rituals surrounding it from her perspective. read more…
It is natural to feel less informed about your country of origin when you’ve been gone for a few years. Such is the case with me.
I still have access to most of the same news sources. My hometown newspapers are online, major news channels are available here in English (CNN, CNBC and so on) and of course there are the blogs. Yet I still feel out of touch with what is really going on back in the old country (by which I mean the US).
I’m quite positive that no one wants to read anything else about the swine flu at the moment, but unfortunately, the swine flu is the reason my blog was two days late this week. It has been a hard week for our family, because all four of the kids have been sick, and the au pair as well!
Before it hit our house, I thought all the bluster about swine flu was just that, bluster. I do have to say now that part of it is just that, bluster, but that it can get scary pretty fast. Ever since the news started in about the swine flu, I have been talking to my parents about the differences in news coverage in the US and in Germany. I assumed that the US would blow things up pretty large and sensationalize it as well, but it isn’t too far behind that here in Germany either. In the US it is clear that more people are dying, but the US is a much bigger country and seems to have been hit first. Here I’ve noticed more news about preventing the flu, and especially about whether the vaccine was dangerous or necessary. People in general seem to be more skeptical about vaccines over here, so it doesn’t surprise me that this is the case. read more…
Even though it’s the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall I won’t be addressing the relevant and memorable occasion in this post as fellow blogger Hyde already has. Instead I will be addressing the other side of the Wall. Far west of East Berlin in fact. I’m talking about the west of capitalism now.
It had been eighteen months since my last trip to the US, the longest stretch that I had ever stayed away from home since leaving the United States in 2000. The last time was March 2008 when my older daughter Vera was 15 months old and I was newly pregnant with my second daughter Stella. My pregnancy and the anticipation of relocating to another country (that ended up not happening) prevented us from planning a trip any sooner, but I was determined to celebrate Stella’s first birthday, a big milestone in Korean culture, in the US with my family this October. This expat entry is about culture shock in reverse. It’s about all the things I miss and have forgotten about life in America.
Consumer Gluttony. My husband and I have spent the first week of our trip on a shopping spree thanks to the strong euro, the lack of sales tax on clothes and shoes in Pennsylvania, where my family lives, and our compulsion to make up for lost time. After about four straight days of getting into my mother’s SUV and spending lots of dollars at the various outlet malls in central Pennsylvania read more…
For Americans that grew up during the Cold War (like me) or are interested in modern history, coming to Germany can be an eye-opening experience. I’m not talking about the events of the Cold War itself, but the fact that so many threats that we were told about as children are now so much closer.
Russian tanks? Less than one day from my house. Rogue nuclear nations? Half the distance from me as from the shores of the US. Wars in the Middle East and Central Asia? Why… those can be just a car ride away!
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