Refamiliarizing oneself

Moving back to ones native country after a prolonged stay abroad is like being released from a longer prison sentence: One needs to adjust to some changes that have happened during ones absence. And one needs to refamiliarize oneself with some basic features of the local culture.

Concerning the first point, the most obvious are shop opening hours. When I left for the Netherlands, supermarkets still closed at 8 pm during the week and 1 pm on Saturdays (this is already an improvement -- during my childhood, they closed at 6 pm and were closed Wednesday afternoons). Anyway, yesterday evening I was getting hungry and when I was checking my fridge, I just found emptiness. A glance at the clock told me that it was a quarter to eight. Remembering the times before I left for abroad, I rushed to the supermarket (mentally already preparing to eat either nothing or a Döner tonight) only to find out that it would have been open till 10 pm. Times have changed.

Perusing the second point, that one needs to refamiliarize onself with basic features of the local culture I have another story: Recently, I was riding my racing bike when a car overtook me, braked sharply (so that I almost had to make some evasive manouver headed towards a ditch), honking and yelling at me at the same time. What's the matter? Well, I (as quite often) dared to not use the bike path and took the road instead. I know this is a traffic violation but it is -- in my experience and after having cycled in a dozen or so countries -- only in Germany that ordinary car drivers usurp the role of deputy sheriff when it comes to traffic violations by cyclists. I guess there is some law and order gene in most of my compatriots that doesn't leave them any other choice.

Schwätsch Schwäbisch?

Whenever I tell someone that German is my mother tongue I hesitate a bit since I am not entirely sure if this is true. As a matter of fact, whenever I need to speak "proper" high German I feel a bit uneasy as I grew up speaking some form of Swabian, the dialect spoken in the South-Western corner of Germany. And when being forced to speak high German, I continously have to wonder if this is indeed proper German or some Swabian artifact. It already starts with greeting someone. In Swabian, we use "Grüß Gott" (literally: pay respect to god) as a formal greeting, whereas in standard German it is "Guten Tag". So just greeting someone without thinking may get you looks saying "aw, you must be a long way from home". And it continous with things like using the "wrong" article for a word -- we say "der Butter" and the dictionary says it is "die Butter" (the butter), "der Radio" (that one is obvious -- radio) instead of "das Radio" and so on. Plus, we almost never use the correct past tense. As a rule of thumb, we use present perfect for whatever has happened or did happen in the past. 
 
And that are just our linguistic artifacts when attempting to speak high German (not to speak of a different language melody that makes it hard to deny you are from deep South). Real hard core Swabian dialect might be as incomprehensible to non-dialect speakers as a totally different language. For example, we use the expression "No net hudla" which means "no hurry" -- in standard German it is "Keine Eile". Or we may say "Gutzla" instead of "Bonbon" (sweet drop), "Guggl" instead of "Tüte" (bag), "Wecken" instead of "Brötchen" (a bun), "Hafa" instead of "Teekanne" (tea pot) and so on and so on. The situation where I almost automatically fall back into dialect is when I need to swear: "Du hast sie wohl nicht alle" sounds totally feeble and artificial to me, whereas "Du bisch fei it ganz bacha" just comes out naturally (BTW, both mean "are you crazy or what"). Anyway, let me end this excursion into strange dialects with something my grandmother liked to remark and which is a rather adventurous grammatical construction: "Mr woiss halt nie nix genaues net" meaning literally "you never don't know nothing for sure" (a triple negative!). 

Like a leaden Zeppelin

Did you know that an engineering product of my hometown Friedrichshafen had a major impact on the history of rock'n'roll? No, probably not. Well, the reason is far from obvious -- no guitars, drums or in fact any other musical instruments are or ever have been manufactured there. But probably the most beautiful (well, I am biased here) way of airtravel was pioneered there: the Zeppelin airship. Like for example this one:

This photo depicts the fiery end of the Zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg (named after the former president Paul von Hindenburg) in Lakehurst, NJ. And today happens to be the anniversary this disaster. Well, the rock'n'roll connection is the following: Apparently, or so the legend goes, Keith Moon of The Who commented on Jimmy Page's plans to form a new band that any band with Page on board "would go down like a leaden Zeppelin" -- and hence the name of Page's new band became "Led Zeppelin" (the older ones of you might remember them).

Well, growing up in Friedrichshafen is impossible without learning to love Zeppelin airships. I don't know how often, but probably quite often, my parents took me to the Zeppelin Museum downtown to see the few artifacts that remain of the behmoths of airtravel. And somewhen during primary school, Eugen Bentele, at that time one of the last surviving crewmembers of the Hindenburg visited my class. Must have left quite some impression on me that time, as otherwise I would have -- like almost everything that happened during primary school -- long forgotten it.

Goin' to Munich

It's about time to get used to the idea of starting to work again. And to consider myself a resident of Munich. To get a flavor of what being a Münchner means, I did some research and consulted some local experts -- the "Spider Murphy Gang", a band that does neither count a Spider nor a Murphy among its members but that comes definetely from Munich. Anyway, they had a couple of hits in the 1980s (some of the older readers may still remember those) with Bavarian language rock'n'roll songs. Like this one: "Die Schickeria"



One thing Munich is famous for is the "Schickeria", as we call the (wannabe) VIP night club scene. And that is what the song is about -- that there are nightclubs in Schwabing (the in-quarter of Munich, at least in those days) where ordinary people cannot enter. At least as long as you behave normally, don't wear flashy clothes, do coke and pretend to be someone important. OK, I'll keep that in mind.

A bit more juicy is the second song, "Skandal im Sperrbezirk", which is also Spider Murphy Gang's biggest hit to date. It deals with the city's attempts in the early 1980s to crack down on prostitution by declaring almost all of Munich to be an area off-limits for prostitution (in German, this is called a "Sperrbezirk" -- hence the title). Anyway, the Spider Murphy Gang makes the point that establishing a Sperrbezirk is at most a cosmetic measure. Well, so much for now. Sit back and enjoy the song!

Carnival

Well, it is carnival season again (luckily, I must say, only for two more days). My friend Catherine put a nicely concise definition of this carnival thing on her blog:

Carnival is when all the uptight, humorless, Recht und Ordnung Germans don garish costumes and face paint and exercise every long-suppressed impulse to conduct themselves like frat boys.

After having shared a train with about a hundred carnival goers on my way back from Konstanz yesterday (coincidentally, or better say unfortunately, I had a get-together with friends on the same day as peak carnival), I can totally confirm the part about the frat-boy behaviour - this includes apart from drinking way too much the singing of every profane song known to man.

In general, carnival is only important in predominantly Catholic areas. In my eyes this is because catholicism demands that people go to confession once in a while. To make sure, that there is something to confess, carnival was established. Roughly speaking, there are two types of Carnival, namely the Karneval of the Rhineland, centered around Cologne, Düsseldorf and Mainz, and the Swabian-Allemanic Fasnacht/Fasnet/Fasching (the name varies with location) of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Western Austria.

The modern Karneval in the Rhineland started in the 19th century as way to mock first the French and later Prussian occupation. Thus, this form of carnival is dominated by parades in mock uniforms with music and dance. On top of that, one staple of Rhenish carnival is the "Sitzungen" (festive sessions) of the carnival clubs, where the club members or invited guests entertain by performing dance, comedy or songs in costumes. Sounds not quite entertaining, and having suffered through countless TV broadcasts of those sessions during my childhood I can tell you, this impression is justified.

The Southern, Swabian-Allemannic carnival is a somewhat different animal. There are also parades and carnival sessions but the spirit of the costumes is different: the costumes of the organized carnival groups are inspired by local tales and therefore often depict witches, monsters and the like, or refer to local characters. In general, most figures wear wooden masks, like for example this one:

A "Hopfennarr" from Tettnang (Tettnang is about 10 km north-east from my hometown). Photo: Andreas Praefcke (Eigenes Werk (own photograph)) [GFDL oder CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

As said, there are many local variations on carnival. One very common feature in many communities in the South are "Hemdglonker" evenings (often held the Thursday before Ash Wednesday), when everyone roams the streets wearing old-fashioned sleeping garments.

Hemdglonker evening in Radolfzell at the very western end of Lake of Constance. Photo by Usarobert (own work) [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

This is especially true in Konstanz (the town where I studied). There, the whole city is filled with people in sleeping garments on Thursday night before ash Wednesday, going from pub to pub till way too late some mornings later. Furthermore, there are also "Lumpakapellen", brass bands whose sole objective seems to be to play any song as fast, loud and drunk as possible, playing in the streets the whole night. Since this provides quite a noisy background, you are only left with two options as a local: Either participate or flee downtown Konstanz. While I was living there, I usually compromised - celebrating one night, then get the hell out of the city. Since continously partying from Thursday to Ash Wednesday, i.e. for a whole week, is something that is better left to the professional partyers. And I am an amateur at best when it comes to that.

Hello world!

In the introduction to his book "Notes from a big country" Bill Bryson claims that there are three things you can't do in life: Beating the phone company, making a waiter see you before he is ready to see you and, lastly, going home again. Although, you might reasses the feasibility of the last point. In Bryson's case "going home again" meant moving back to the US after twenty-odd years spent in the UK, in my case this means moving back to Germany after having spent a couple of years living in the Netherlands (well, four years an some months in lovely Delft) and Canada (just a bit under a year in London, Ontario).

The main lesson I have learned living abroad is that nothing makes you more aware of your ethnical background than living in a place where almost nobody shares it with you. For example, my lack of beer drinking (not to speak of loving that stuff) never caused the tiniest remark in Germany. Abroad, I was often introduced to new people by comments along the line "he's from Germany. But can you believe it: He doesn't drink beer." Anyway, in this small blog I am going to write about the curious, funny and sometimes disturbing aspects that come with living again among Germans after a prolonged stay abroad. And since I am quite interested in politics and history, I won't refrain from publishing my -- often wikipedia fueled -- ejaculations on these topics here either. So you have been warned. And if this warning hasn't put you off: Enjoy the reading.