It's a Small, Small World

Sometimes life is so full of coincidences that it simply defies belief. For example, I studied at Washington University in St. Louis. My roommate Amanda's mom grew up in St. Louis and her parents moved back there a couple years ago (she grew up in Texas). And Amanda's best friend in Dortmund, Becky, who she met because she heard her talking English in a subway station, grew up in St. Louis and moved here after college to live with her (German) boyfriend who she met while studying abroad in Spain. And now we're all in Dortmund, Germany of all places!

However a bigger coincidence, and the impetus behind this post, goes something like this: one day in December I'm riding the subway with an American friend. We're sitting next to two guys, one young, one rather older, talking in German, but we're not really paying attention to them but chatting away in English. After a couple stops the older man gets off the subway. As soon as he leaves the young guy next to me turns to me and says, in (American) English, "so where are you from?" Totally shocked to be accidentally sitting next to another American on the subway, I told him I was from Spokane, Washington. I was even more shocked when he replied, "Really?? I'm from the Tri-Cities!" Turns out he's a Mormon and halfway through his two-year mission, so we start talking about Eastern Washington and find out other things in common, such as that his family always vacations at Priest Lake, Idaho, just like mine.

Two people from Eastern Washington (not a heavily-populated area) randomly meeting in Dortmund would have been enough of a coincidence on it's own, but then today my roommate comes home and tells me, "I met your mormon on the subway today." She got on the subway home from work this afternoon, heard a guy speaking German with an American accent, deduced from the business-esque clothes and nametag that he must be mormon, and as soon as the seat next to him opened up, sat down next to him and said, in typical Amanda fashion, "don't try to convert me or anything, but are you mormon? And do you come from the Spokane area?" The poor guy managed to overcome his confusion and amazement at this crazy American girl who appeared out of nowhere and somehow knew his life story to respond in the affirmative. So there you go: there is a Mormon missionary from the Spokane area living in Dortmund and my roommate and I both independently managed to sit next to him on the subway. And there you have it, the crazy coincidences of Katherine Kerschen (check out that alliteration!)

Efficiency, organization, reliability, and other German stereotypes you can throw out the window

All of you (you being the presumably American readers of this blog), have probably heard some stereotypes regarding Germany. For example, that they’re highly organized and value efficiency, or that they’re crazy about punctuality and things getting done on time. I remember a shirt I saw and took a picture of at some store in Italy. It said:

United Europe

In Heaven:

            The policemen are English

            The cooks are French

            The bankers are Belgian

            The dancers are Spanish

            The lovers are Italian

            And it’s all organized by the Germans

In Hell:

            The policemen are French

            The cooks are English

            The bankers are Spanish

            The dancers are Belgian

            The lovers are German

            And it’s all organized by the Italians

As you can see, people just associate Germany with organization and being good at getting things done. In the name of deeper cultural understanding, I’m going to put these misconceptions to rest; unfortunately for the Germans, the stereotypes I’m going to discredit are actually pretty flattering.

First up: punctuality. Trains, trams and busses are late much more than they should be. Especially the trains in winter, because apparently they don’t have heating mechanisms for the switches that route trains to different tracks, so sometimes they freeze over, and presto, your train is 40 minutes later while they fix that. I really appreciate that Germany has so much public transportation, because it makes life without a car really easy, but I would appreciate it even more if everything was on time.

German systems and institutions also have the reputation of being reliable. Unfortunately, the experience I had with Deutsche (German) Post was anything but. My parents mailed me a package for Christmas, and about 12 days after they mailed it I found a notice slipped under my apartment building’s front door that I had a package to pick up at the post office. Usually they leave these notices when you aren’t home when they try to deliver your package, but this was a Saturday and I had been home all day. The doorbell never rang, meaning they didn’t even try to bring the package to me, possibly because I live on the 4^th floor (no elevator). I was slightly annoyed, because now I had to wait til Monday to get the package. On Monday I went to the post office, they couldn’t find the package, and recommended I call customer service. I did, they said they would make a second delivery request for my package, and it should be there by Wednesday. It wasn’t, so I went back on Thursday, still nobody could find it, called customer service again, they had no idea what happened to it, and asked me to call back with the tracking number. It took me until Saturday to get that from my parents, called customer service again, and they swore that, according to the tracking number, the package was in the post office. Not feeling very hopefully, I trudged to the post office once again. And after 10 minutes of searching, they found my package! Turns out it had just been sorted wrong and put on the shelf for domestic, not international deliveries. So it had been there the entire time. How many Deutsche Post employees does it take to find a package? Too many.

Organizational failure #1: A few days after Christmas Pascal and I were trying to take the train from where his grandparents back to Dortmund. The trip is usually a little under two hours. Unfortunately, we had only been traveling about 45 minutes when the train stopped at a station and didn’t continue for 15 minutes. Finally an announcement came that there had been an accident on the track up ahead, and the train couldn’t go any further. We were all to disembark and wait for busses to pick us up and drive us to the next station past the accident. We were in a small town that didn’t even have an enclosed building at the train station, just open platforms. Did I mention it was 20 degrees and there was a foot of snow on the ground? We waited an hour and a half with no more announcements about when the busses would be coming. Since they could come at any minute we didn’t dare wander away and look for a café or something, so we stood in the cold. Finally, a bus came. 1 bus, for over a hundred people. We couldn’t push our way through the crowd, so we had to wait another half hour for the next busses. Then a half hour drive, then had to take 3 different trains to get back to Dortmund. All in all it took over 5 hours. Lesson learned: Deutsche Bahn is terrible in an emergency and at keeping people informed of what is happening.

The second organizational failure took place at the university. This post is getting long, so I’ll spare you the details, but it took over a month and 4 different trips to the international office to finally get registered as a student. I had to go so many times because they kept emailing me saying they needed additional paperwork, and once everything was complete the employee in charge of my file simply didn’t forward it to the secretary’s office, because the office was moving to a new location and she wasn’t sure where to send it. So, basically a total communication breakdown.

Efficiency: as an American citizen, you can travel to Germany without getting a visa beforehand and stay there for up to 90 days as a tourist. After that you need a residence permit, which is pretty easy to get provided you are a student or have some kind of job and insurance (basically you just need to show you won’t be a burden on the state). So in October I went to the International Citizens Office to register myself and get a permit. I had done the same thing before in Tuebingen, so I knew what paperwork I needed to bring with me. I filled out all the forms, waited about half an hour to speak to somebody, and everything seemed to be in order until she noticed that I had previously been a resident in Tuebingen. Apparently they needed to order a copy of my file sent from Tuebingen, and that was going to take a month. Since my tourist “visa” would expire before then, she gave me a temporary 3-month permit and told me I would get a letter with an appointment to come back and finish the process. I finally got the letter in late December telling me to come on January 10^th. They also all of a sudden needed me to bring more paperwork, such as copies of my income statements. I went on the appointed day, brought everything with me, and then the lady who was helping me informed me that I needed some official notice from my insurance company that I was insured there, because for some reason the insurance card wasn’t enough, and that her colleague had “forgotten” to put that in the letter. She started to tell me to call when I had gotten that and they’d make another appointment with me, but I interrupted and pointed out that I had no idea how to get the requested notice, because my insurance company is located in Hamburg, and my temporary permit was going to expire in a week. So she disappeared in the back for a minute, came back and told me the insurance card would suffice. Then we had another small issue, which was that while waiting for this appointment the time had come to book my return flight, and I had picked July 7^th because it was the cheapest date. However, my work contract technically expires on June 30^th, so that’s when I officially should have to leave the country. I told her I really couldn’t change the date, so she said if I had a copy of my ticket with me then they could make an exception. Of course I hadn’t brought that with me, so she disappeared in the back again, and eventually returned and said since it was just a week it would be ok. So in the end I got the permit fine, but only after jumping or being asked to jump through tons of hoops, many of which apparently are not even necessary. They could have just given me the permit in October and saved themselves a bunch of trouble.

After all of this it may sound like I hate Germany, but I really don’t. Nor is everything here complicated and senseless. I’ve just had a few frustrating experiences, which comes with the territory of moving to a new country where you’re not as familiar with the systems and bureaucracy that you have to navigate (and you’re not confident enough in your language skills to yell at unhelpful employees). To prove that Germany doesn’t suck, my next post will be about my favorite moments while teaching so far. Til then!

Weihnachten (Christmas) in Deutschland

Ah, Christmastime in Germany. I'm a huge Christmas-love as is, but this was probably one of my favorite experiences so far. The city centers were all decked with lights, the scent of candied almonds wafted through the air, and bottles of Gluehwein (mulled wine) could be had for as low as 99 cents at the supermarket. Yes, life was good. It also didn't hurt that this area of Germany got more snow in December than just about ever, so there was almost always snowflakes falling or a fresh coating of snow covering the Christmas markets. The markets themselves are incredibly kitschy, but so much fun. I particularly enjoyed the Gluehwein stands, such as the one pictured below in the shape of a windmill/pyramid, which is a replica of the famous carved wood ornaments from the eastern mountains of Germany. Also to be found at Dortmund's market was the tallest Christmas "tree" in Germany/Europe/the world depending on who you're talking to. I put tree in quotations because it was actually a giant wire frame into which they stuck dozens of normal-sized evergreen trees. Watching the construction was pretty hilarious, actually, but kind of ruined the magic ("Mommy, Johnny told me that the Dortmund Christmas tree isn't real, is that true?" "Well, honey, it's kind of real..." "Nooo, my childhood is over!")

The Essen Christmas market had absolutely gorgeous lights covering the trees and hanging over the streets, because Essen combines the Christmas market with their annual "Weeks of Light," which is something a lot of German cities do (light up a part of town or a park for a couple weeks), but usually in the summer. I had a lot of fun walking around the markets and sampling the food and drink (roasted chestnuts, candied almonds, fries, bratwurst, potato cakes and any kind of hot, alcoholic drink you can imagine) with Pascal, friends, and my colleagues from work. Besides food, you can find all manner of handicrafts (usually overpriced, truth-be-told), from hand-carved Bavarian wooden ornaments to Peruvian wool stocking caps, jewelry, candles and soaps, plus some really strange things, like silicone muffin pans. For some reason all my pictures are from the evening, but the markets really do look much more exciting and magical in the dark, so it's probably for the best.

After I got my fill of the Christmas markets it was time to actually celebrate Christmas. I stayed in Germany to celebrate with Pascal and his family, which was very nice, though I did miss my family a lot and all of our traditions. On Christmas Eve we decorated the tree, had a very nice dinner, then opened presents, and then had an impromptu "concert" before going to Midnight Mass. All I can say is, Pascal and I really need to work on our drum-piano duets, and his brother needs to work on his singing. I'd post the video of our attempt at "Jingle Bells" here, but his brother made me promise to never distribute it to anyone outside of our families, so I'm afraid you'll be spared from that particular agony. On Christmas Day some family friends and their kids came over for brunch, and on the day after Christmas (or as the Germans call it, "2nd Christmas Day") we went to visit Pascal's grandparents for several days. Also, there was apparently something really interesting on the ceiling after brunch. The rest of the pictures are winter landscapes from Essen and Sauerland. A white Christmas is very rare around here, so I think it was a special gift to me to cheer me up about not being with my family (it worked) :)

These last two pictures are from New Year's Eve, which Pascal and I celebrate with two of his friends and their girlfriends. One of them brought a "MiniWok" set, which, as you can see in the picture, is just individual pans on a griddle to which each person can add their own vegetables, sauce and noodles. It was very fun and tasty, and then we drank various forms of alcohol while watching ridiculous German New Year's Eve specials on TV (my favorites were the reruns from 70s comedy shows). Toasting and setting off of fireworks ensued at midnight, and now here we are, a whole week into 2011. I hope you all are off to a good start in the New Year and haven't given up on the resolutions yet! I never made any, which is the best way to guard against failure and disappointment. But hopefully you all are more motivated than me! Happy January!