Alice in Germany

I love current affair comedy! I found this really funny.

Take Baden-Württemberg's New Citizenship Test: are you worthy?

On Monday the unthinkable happened - I lost my wallet. Or if you are my insurance company ‘my wallet was stolen’ – Hey! Calm down, how am I to know whether my wallet fell out of my pocket or was pushed?

All I know is I arrived on the bus grasping a carton of eggs in one hand and my open wallet in the other. I flashed my monthly bus ticket at the bus driver and struggled through to the back end of the bus. When I arrived home my wallet did not. I desperately re-run the trip in my mind.

I seated myself next to an expensive old lady dolled out in dead animals; as is the fashion for the over 70s in Kirchenstadt. When interspersed with the general community one doesn’t so much notice this partiality for fur however Bruno and I once stumbled upon a recently arrived bus load of senior citizens. I had the eerie feeling of diving under water only to emerge in an abattoir. When I recount this to Liana she glanced anxiously out the café window as if expecting to see a parade of animal rights protesters covered in the fresh blood of their elderly victims: “they wouldn’t survive 1 hour in London dressed like that”.

I noted the school children across the isle throwing their apple core through the open door nearly hitting alighting passengers and then laughing to each other.

I got off the bus, walked down ‘murderers alley’ past the lake, note the stork has come back and spring must be nearly upon us, past the horse stables, exchange a few words with Nora before she struggles off on her bike. I pause to marvel at her ability to balance a bike while carrying a cloth bag full of beer bottles. Do I have to master this to become German?

That evening when I go to leave the house my wallet in not in my coat pocket where is always is.

I impress myself with my with my rapid progress through the stages of grief:

Denial: ‘must be here somewhere’. In desperation I check the fridge in case I mistook it

some kind of modern ordurve and unpacked it with the rest of the groceries.

Anger: ‘who stole it? The seemingly nice old lady? The school children? A professional

pick-pocket?’

Bargaining: ‘henceforth my coat pocket will remain closed.’

Depression: loosing my wallet has happened too often for me to linger long here.

Acceptance: I go through the agony cancelling my credit debit card and wonder how I will get

my bank in Australia to issue me a new one.

Germans obey the rules

As my monthly bus ticket was in my wallet I ride Bruno’s bike to school the next day. It is too big and (extreme) discomfort drives me to spend as little time sitting on the seat as possible, painfully aware of how silly this looks. In the picturesque areas of town the cobblestones conspire to bang series of little holes through the bike, up to the seat and into my bum.

Straight after class Kristy kindly accompanies me to die place of bus tickets. A middle aged gentleman assists us.

He encourages my halting, grammatically incorrect, largely unclear German in a most heart warming fashion. He is patient when Kristy and I reach for our dictionaries. His tolerance extends as I pretend to not understand that I must pay a 10€ replacement charge, all the while wondering how without wallet I am going to make 10€ materialise. When he goes on to ask difficult questions about cancelling the card the language becomes too difficult for me and he agrees to talk to Bruno on the phone.

Post phone call he goes into a back room and comes back with my monthly ticket. He tells us that as it is valentines day I don’t need to worry about the 10€, gives us both a tulip and wishes us a good day. We leave in a daze wondering what had happened?

To clarify I call Bruno: “he said he was just going to write into the computer that the card was damaged. Apparently he liked you guys”.

I am filled with affection for the Germans.

The lost and found.

Next we go to the city ‘lost and found’. After a wild goose chase involving a scrap of paper, numerous different directions, and 4 flights of stairs we eventually stumble upon the right door and, ironically, the lift.

Here is my wallet! Complete with all contents including all money. I am so happy I have to stop myself jumping the desk and kissing the lady!

Valentines dinner

As my wallet has turned up Bruno and I are able to upgrade our romantic evening from the planned walk in dark, drizzly German wood to dinner in real restaurant with cool waiters and stuff.

In manner of professional makeup wearing girl I expertly apply makeup in 5 minutes (skill learnt in Germany) and leave the house looking quite spiffy. I had told Bruno that as special ‘date’ treat if he wanted to ride the bike I’d sit on the back and wear …. high heals! He said that was OK, we could walk.

So we had a fantastic dinner throughout which I felt quite endeared towards the Germans.

Last week I received an urgent phone call from Bruno:

“Honey I have something important for you to Blog!!!”

“What??”

Was the hijab now allowed in German state schools? Had the German Government started collecting taxes on behalf of all religious groups not just Christians? Had Baden Württemberg’s Muslim immigration test been abolished? Were crosses going to come off government buildings as a sign of their commitment to secularism???

No! He then launched into his Denmark/Mohammad cartoons/freedom of speech crusade. Freedom of speech was under attack we had to stand with Denmark as a sign of our support for hard won liberties.

By the time he’d finished I was so flabbergasted that Bruno had finally registered Denmark’s existence, that all I could muster was:

‘No, I can’t do it’

‘What! Honey, people are sending death threats!’

‘I don’t like to make fun of minority groups and encourage people’s prejudices it’s …. not nice’

‘We’ll talk about it when I get home’.

Bruno and Denmark: a somewhat vague relationship

When I met Bruno two years ago in Nepal we were quizzing each other on capital cities (come on it was a three hour hike in the middle of nowhere!). Bruno was gliding along easily rattling of cities in far flung parts of the globe:

“Argentina?”

“Buenos Aires"

“Indonesia?”

“Jakarta”

“Somalia?”

“Mogadishu”

I thought I’d lighten it up, throw in an easy one …… “Denmark?”

“Mark what? Densa who? Oh right! Denmark! … hmmmm … ahh”

I thought he was joking.

“arghhh I really should remember that one”

“Are you joking?”

You may find that hard to believe but it is true.

You’d think after that (ever so slightly) humiliating episode that Denmark would have stuck in his mind, but no.

A year later I emailed him a funny quiz (see below)– the emphasis of which is on entertainment not difficulty – however one does have to think of a country starting with the letter ‘D’. From there one must come up with an animal starting with the last letter of their ‘D’ country and then a fruit starting with the last letter of their animal.

On average people come up with: ‘Orange, Kangaroo, and ….Denmark’, or sometimes ‘Apple, Koala, and … Denmark’, one strange girl (my sister) said ‘Apricot, Koala and … Denmark’. Either way I am sure you scientists out there recognise the constant factor in the experiment.

That night I spoke to Bruno on the phone:

‘So what did you get?’

‘Orangutan’

‘Orangutan!’

‘Yep, and Nectarine and’ somewhat sheepishly: ‘the Democratic Republic of the Congo’.

‘What! How did you even know the full name of the Congo?’

‘I looked it up on Google’

‘Oh don’t worry about it, English is your third language Denmark is probably something really different in German right?’

‘Nope it’s Dänemark’.

Fast forward 6 months.

Me: “Honey guess what! The crown princess of Denmark is Australian”

Pause: “In Germany we care not for such antiquated relics as monarchies”.

Did I imagine it or was his mind ticking over: Denmark… Denmark, sounds familiar must be around here somewhere…

Denmark comes home

So imagine my surprise to come home and find Bruno changing our computer wallpaper. What was a nice picture of the beach is now a Danish flag with ‘I support Denmark in it’s struggle for freedom of speech’ scrawled across it.

“Shouldn’t that be I support Denmark’s right to be an arsehole” I splutter into my coffee. “After all what exactly are they trying to say?? Because all I am seeing is ‘get focked”

“It’s the principle! Newspaper content should not be dictated by threats of violence”.

There we stood: two different continents of understanding and experience suddenly stopped by a common need to be understood - something that seemed so clear suddenly isn’t.

It makes for interesting conversation.

Try not to look at the answers below!

1. Think of a number between 1 and 10.
2. Times it by 9
3. If it is a 2 digit number add the digits together
4. Subtract 5
5. Now we are going to apply a letter to your number. If you have number 1 then your letter is A, if 2 then B, 3 is C and so on.
6. Think of a country starting with your letter.
7. Take the last letter of your countries name and think of an animal beginning with that letter.
8. Take the last letter of your animal and think of a fruit.

Answer

Did you get Denmark, Kangaroo and Orange?

“In America there is no need for campaigns to tell us to be proud to be American, we are taught that from birth”.

Kristy and I are discussing the ‘du bist Deutschland’ campaign.

January 26th was the ‘Australia day’ national holiday, when we are told to ‘celebrate what's great about Australia and being Australian’, and it has got me thinking about nationality and identity.

January 26th commemorates the arrival of the ‘first fleet’ from England. With ‘invasion’ connotations and the exclusive focus on the ‘British’ role in the Australian story it is not an un-controversial choice. At any rate in the past it hardly aroused national sentiment. I have heard it said more than once that ‘what we need in Australia is something like the German ‘Unity day’, something that unites the people’ (if only they knew!).

For a long time Australia day was simply another day off work, an opportunity to have few beers around the BBQ. Nobody really knew what it was about and nobody cared. But over the last few years the vibe has shifted. September 11, the war on terror, the Bali bombing, the war on Iraq, etc etc. changed that.

The sense of being under threat saw the re-emergence in Australia of the phenomena of the ‘the other’. Something against which we could, and (dare I say it) were encouraged to, define ourselves. In a country where once it was a source of pride that nobody knew the second verse of the national anthem suddenly people en masse were buying the flag.

In the lead up to Jan 26 politicians and social commentators inevitably jostle to have the last say on what it means to ‘be Australian’. As a migrant country, and by global standards modern Australia is a young society, the definition of what it means to be ‘Australian’ is always a bit hazy and therefore up for grabs. As if by verbalising a definition the country can be made in the image of the loudest speaker.

Polarised opinions predictably exacerbates the debate: our conservative Prime Minister emphasises the need for migrants to ‘integrate’ and embrace ‘our way of life’, while social commentators celebrate ‘diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism’.

This year the debate has expanded to how we remember, tell, and teach Australian history. Our spokespeople grapple for ownership of the past and how and what we remember. I guess they understand how a nation tells its stories create the boundaries within which it views itself. We are encouraged to remember the positives and gloss over or ignore negative actions because people were only ‘doing what they thought was right’.

Now I am half a world away and following another campaign to inspire national pride in a country that deals with its history in a very different fashion.

The ‘du bist Deutschland’ campaign hasn’t gone down well with the Germans and something tells me it’s more than the irritating background music. Germans are not overly plagued by patriotism. The last time the country was in the grip of something akin to guilt free national pride culminated in a world war; this seems to have resulted in most Germans viewing any such national enthusiasm with perhaps an unhealthy amount of cynicism.

Bruno felt it ‘was good to see something positive for once’.

“Yea we had a campaign like that in Australia before the Sydney Olympics: ‘I ride in the front seat of a taxi … I believe this is a prawn and not a shrimp…..’ I liked it, it was funny, I felt understood” I reminisce. Pause. “Oh no actually that was an add for bier”.

On occasion I have been surprised at people’s knowledge of Australia. While in Germany I have been called upon to explain such unexplainable facts as: treatment and living conditions of the Australian Aborigines, incarceration of asylum seekers, and why Australians voted to keep the British monarchy as their head of state – ‘the monarchy, after all, are at best a colossal embarrassment to their own country so why are Australians so keen to be part of the party?’

But mostly being an expert on Australia implies knowing that the capital city is not Sydney: ‘it’s Canb… something or other, right?’

So when a lady berates Liana and Kristy for their respective countries involvement in the Iraq war (and they make their respective apologies on behalf of their governments) I can’t help but have a little smile to myself as I glance out the window because in the big wide world being Australian largely means being insignificant.

But to what extent does our culture of origin really influence the people we are?