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!).