She was about 5’6, of slight build, dark hair, black plastic rimmed glasses. She spoke English pretty well but spoke German to me as a matter of principle. The only visible clue about her visit to our home were the papers she was clutching. Otherwise she could have been any visitor. We’ll call her Frau X.
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Jet Lag: No Heia for the wicked!
Having spent the past week dealing with jet lag in small children, with my mind still fuzzy and my eyes still bleary from lack of sleep and too many espressos, I only have one thing to talk about this week: recovering from a cross-time-zone trip.
Raising a Native “Shpeaker”
My daughter Vera is now a few months older than two, and like many parents, my husband and I have been marvelling and taking delight over her speech development. Like so many German Way readers, we are doing our best to raise her multilingually and have gone the route of one parent one language (OPOL).
Unsurprisingly, Vera’s first words were in English, her mother’s mother tongue, followed by a smattering of German. Progressively though, her dominant language has become German. She attends a German day care (Kindertagesstätte/Kita) every morning, so along with speaking with her father, she gets a lot of input auf Deutsch. And not unusually, she mixes her languages frequently. When she discovered infinitives, she made up her own. I offered to cut her food for her, and she responded, “Cutten!” read more…
Where My House is My Home
Germany, like many expats, is seemingly caught between two worlds. Globalization and the new capitalism on one side with tradition and democratic socialism on the other. I am not going to write about capitalism vs. socialism, particularly… this is about how Germans treat the idea of home, but these things often spill over into politics and economics. I’ll do my best to steer away from those since they’ll just distract us.
Over the past few years Germany has been making the transition from traditional Continental European nation to a globalization convert. This means that certain old ways of looking at the world have been evolving. This is (sometimes painfully) clear with the global real estate and economic crisis.
Cook, Shop, Seek
Since I have known him, my husband has been obsessed with cars. But don’t worry, this post won’t be about cars, because I get enough of that kind of talk at home. For the past year or two, his interests (obsessions) have taken a turn in a more gourmet direction. Now, instead of eyeing the latest little sports car, he is eyeing produce. My husband actually reads cookbooks and cooking magazines for fun! His favorite chef is Jamie Oliver, of course. Jamie is manly and has a British accent. He cooks with a lot of chili and everything looks simple when you are picking out your next recipe. But when you start looking for ingredients, the simple part ends and the fun begins. read more…
The Expat Trap
As I write this, I’ve been living in Germany for about two years. From time to time I meet up with other English-speakers in cafes or restaurants just to get that “fix” of speaking my native tongue at full speed complete with cultural references and a chance to drop my guard. Being in a foreign culture you tend to be guarded with respect to things you say and expect simply because people behave so differently in your host country.
In the time that I’ve been here, I’ve noticed something. Generally speaking, there are two types of expats. Integrated or potentially integrated are the first type. The second type are the non-integrated. Expats in the first group are difficult to pick out of a crowd, by their very nature of blending into their host society.
The second group is more obvious. First off, they speak very little German. The next thing you notice when you engage them in conversation is that they tend to bond over the negative aspects of their host country. “Germans are rude” or “Germans have no sense of humor” are two popular refrains.
Integrated expats enjoy participating in lesser known traditional German observances such as Saint Martin’s Day. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons
I tend to think these folks are reluctant expats. In my experience these are people who made the leap to live in a new culture because they are following an employed spouse, have been given little choice by their employer or career demands, or perhaps made the leap willingly and lovingly just to have their relationship fall apart before they could establish their own friend network.
Now here is the thing… where I live in the Eifel, a rather remote part of Germany, there are nearly no foreigners from English-speaking lands. There are plenty of Russians around here, but we don’t share a common language so there is not a lot of bonding going on there. Thus, I have been thrust into the most immersive of “learn through immersion” environments that are possible. I must speak German in order to do my daily chores. The ladies at the bakery speak no English. None. The people at the hardware store know a few words, but not enough to convey anything more intelligible than “the lights are down there.” Asking for advice on insulation in an attic prone to mold just cannot be done in English. read more…
Oh, the Places You’ll Go
If you are an expat in Germany with children, at some point or the other you will probably have to endure that oh-so-anticipated but oh-so-dreaded journey of traveling home to wherever you hail from. If your kids are over the age of 5 or 6, the trip may not be so difficult, but if your kids are younger — be prepared! read more…
Expatriate Eating Adventures: Volume 1
Food, food culture and cooking has always been important to me. All three of those things are hobbies of mine. By extension I am also interested in matters of health when related directly to food and cooking.
So my move to Germany a few years ago was, in part, an opportunity to dive head-first into a new culinary world. Americans commonly complain that there is no culture back in our homeland. Spending a few rainy afternoons craving everything from macaroni and cheese to burritos to BBQ to a good old fashioned Thanksgiving turkey dinner will correct that notion.
You don’t have to like it, but it is tradition.
Food and how we approach it is part and parcel of who we are. In this case my expectations as an amateur chef in the New California school of cooking was a big part of my identity. It formed the basis of what I cooked with, how I felt about certain cooking methods and ingredients, how I felt about certain restaurants and cafes (*cough* Starbucks) and basically meant that I was a hardcore food snob. More to the point, I was a food snob of Russian-Jewish background. That meant pork was automatically on the blacklist, except for bacon which we all know was accidentally made part of the pig as an administrative error by God’s underlings. So bacon was OK. And cheeseburgers. Clams are good too… well, I was never all that religious, anyways. read more…
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