Alice in Germany

I eagerly looked forward to the International Party at the Volkshochschule. I now had opportunity to cook Pavlova and share my favourite Australian dessert with my fellow classmates, not to mention the other German classes at the Volkshochschule. The memory of my friend Matt lamenting that he had ‘accepted the fact that no Australian girl from his generation would ever know how to cook’ was but a brief cloud on my happy expectations.

Ordinarily Pavlova is quite tricky, but I came to Germany equipped with a number of ‘just add water’ cake mixes so it should have been quite straightforward.

It was a flop. Literally. Due largely to us being too proud (well Bruno being too proud I, suffering from no such ailment, was simply too scared) to ask Ivanka if we could borrow her electric egg beater. Hence Bruno beat the egg white by hand using a whisk. This is not quite as effective a method of fluffing egg whites as an electric beater and as the dish relies almost entirely on the eggs rising ….

Secondly we had no baking paper. As we also had no baking tray I decided to bake it directly onto the presentation platter. This proved to be a good idea as when is came out of the oven it was immovable, which proved helpful the next day when I was running late for school – I found I could move quite quickly without upsetting the Pavlova.

Thirdly there was no fridge at school in which to store the Pavlova so the whipped cream melted during class. In the end the Pavlova was a deflated lump, covered in runny cream that stuck fast to the tray.

When I looked at my disappointing concoction my first impulse was to leave it at home and pretend that I had ‘forgotten’ that the party was today. I have previously (occasionally) been known to follow of Homer’s philosophy*: ‘if at first you don’t succeed destroy all evidence you tried’. However Bruno said I should take it to show I had ‘made an effort’. Apparently this was important. So reminding myself that ‘we are not what we cook’ and that embarrassment ‘is good for the soul, it teaches us humility, makes us stronger as people blah blah’, the Pav. and I arrived together.

Another class had already arrived in the party room, where a long table had been set.

I went to pop the Pav. and Kristy’s pumpkin pie with the other food when a middle aged Frau with the appearance of an old fashioned teacher (which I believe she was) bustled over and said something in German of which I grasped the following words:

Nein

Hinter

Wo

Du

Sitzt

Which, going more by the look on her face than by what she actually said, I loosely translated as ‘wrack off with your mush and pumpkin pie – this food is for my class only’. Her class, having formed a defensive circle around their end of the table glared protectively at their culinary exploits.

Sadly I did not possess the necessary German vocabulary to suggest that her attitude of ‘keeping to ones own’ might, in some places, be considered contrary to the party spirit, not to mention contrary to German governmental policy. It seemed that while ‘integration’ should be practiced by the Turkish-German community there was no need for any of that at the Volkshochschule inter-class international food party.

Two music students, in middle level five German and in their fifth semester of Music school, were produced to play German songs on the piano and flute. Despite their gallant efforts to get people to sing along the room remained sadly stilted. I could not help but think that although their playing was breathtaking and a privilege to listen to that if they wanted people to sing along they would do better off doing a one handed rendition** and producing some alcohol.

I was impressed with my classmates gallant efforts to part the Pav. from its tray and with their thoughtful comments:

‘So what is this made out of?’

‘Oh mostly egg whites’

‘And the crust?’

‘Yes that’s mostly egg whites as well’

‘Hmm interesting texture’

There was no other way of looking at it, I had failed my country.

* I refer of course to the traditional meaning of the word: A performance of a musical or dramatic work and not to the policy of kidnapping someone and taking them to a country where human rights, international covenants etc. are not considered important.

# posted by Alice in Germany @ 5:10 pm 2 comments

Jakob once told me that in Germany you could walk for days and never leave civilisation. The opposite from Australia. We however live in the middle of a farm. At first glance it is really special: a dirt track through the trees, over the lake filled with water birds, past the horse stables, not a house in site. A pause from the factories 300 metres away. Then Liana pointed out it is the perfect setting for a horror movie, with the lake being the perfect body disposal. A walk one night through the neighbouring woods did feel suspiciously Blair Witch like.

Of course that is all idle fantasy. The mice were another thing altogether. A true shock to a civilised lifestyle.

There are a number of other students who live here, four live downstairs and seven others live upstairs with us. Most are German but there are a couple of Bulgarian exchange students. We share a bathroom and kitchen with Ivanka, who has retained the temperamental spirit of her Yugoslavian forbears.

I was lying on the bed peacefully reading my book when I heard a terrifying scream coming from the kitchen (and I rather fancy a similar noise might be elicited from somebody being hacked apart with a chainsaw). Naturally, when faced with a potential serial killer in the next room, my first reaction was to lie there and play dead. But dear Reader when faced with the death of a loved on (well a hypersensitive, domineering housemate) it is true – I found courage within me I did not know I had.

As the noise did not subside, and not wanting to leave Ivanka to face death alone, I gathered my resolve and went to her rescue. On entering the kitchen I found her standing on a chair, whimpering, while two girls held her hand and tried to soothe her. The offending mouse having most likely long since died of shock was now nowhere to be seen. I have to say I shamefully found the whole situation rather amusing.

For the next few weeks Ivanka agonised over reconciling her belief that she is a Buddhist, love everything, left wing, vegetarian, pinko; and her huge desire to see all mice blown to smithereens and rotting in hell. This stress inducing conundrum was antagonised by the numerous unanswerable questions that the appearance of mice had raised: why were they here? Where had they come from? Are mice not dirty? And yet the house is German clean!

My suggestion, that every house without a cat has to deal with mice at some stage, was taken as a sign of my naivety. However it was conceded that perhaps this was the case in Australia.

Her torturous reveries were regularly broken by yelling down the phone at the landlord. Apparently in Germany the elimination of mice is the landlords responsibility. However the landlord, being an unorganised, un-German sod, never quite got around to it.

There were numerous household meetings in the hallway where various legal options were discussed. These meetings went unattended by the eastern Europeans. Someone said they had heard that Nora ‘did not care about the mice’. In hushed tones it was unanimously agreed that the Bulgarians must in fact ‘care about the mice’ but growing up in a police state they did not know their rights. Or if they did, they were too afraid to use them. That made sense.

When threatened with rent being with-held the landlord got off his sorry arse and sent around a pest exterminator. A large man who set poison everywhere. A professional he took great pride in his trade, gleefully explaining: ‘the mice think it is coconut, mice love coconut, and it burns them from the inside'. Ivanka translated this for me whilst trying to keep the huge relieved smirk off her face (think Buddhism, think zen, everything deserves life it is just unfortunate that the mice are disgusting vermin that must die etc. etc.)

Ahh the agony of reconciling who we want to be with what we can stand.

# posted by Alice in Germany @ 11:01 pm 1 comments

However you feel about Christmas it is one of those certainties of life we cannot escape, much like table manners.

The week before Christmas, Bruno, due to a swollen eye which he self-diagnoses as cancer, ‘misses out on’ a number of pre-Christmas events including: getting a tad tipsy with Liana and Kirsty at the Irish pub on Monday night, going to the Christmas markets with his best friends on Tuesday night, cooking Thai food at Kamchana’s house on Wenesday night, but by Thursday night I have no such excuse to avoid the all German ‘law dinner’.

I was lead to believe, dear Reader, that the dinner would consist of: me, Bruno, three of his classmates, partners, and their coach.

On arrival it becomes apparent (we have been given the back room with a table set for twenty-five) that our cozy ‘little group’ will be somewhat larger. Also present are a number of employees from ‘the law institute’ and a spattering of legal professors. Oh and there are no partners, let alone non-German speaking ones.

The restaurant is typical old-German style. There seems to be one in every village, though Bruno disdainfully refers to them as ‘Bavarian’. Clutured, kitsch, overpriced. I have to admit I love it. It’s tourist Germany with personality.

We order drinks first. With such a variety of red meat on the menu I decide to go for a red wine. But a glance around the table and I quickly realise if I want the German experience I should have gone with the beer.

After some awkward conversation attempts in stilted German I am well and truly ready for a drink but nobody has touched their glasses. At the end of the table sits a glaringly vacant chair. ‘In Australia you’d probably just start drinking wouldn’t you’ says Bruno, while I jealously watch the guy across the table sneaking sips of his beer. How we all laughed! What a young rascal!

Bruno translates the menu for me, turning his nose up at every dish as being ‘to heavy, to fatty for this time of night’. Then goes ahead and orders the German equivalent of the mixed grill – four different types of meat cooked in the plentifull juice from their own fat.

Finally an elderly professor arrives, makes a long speech in German, everyone raises their glasses and the merriment begins.

‘So what did the professor say?’

‘All the drinks are on him’.

As a non-wine connoisseur I would describe the wine as ‘plum like’ in flavour, sticking in my throat much the way a real plum might should I try to swallow it whole. I believe this phenomena is refered to as a ‘lingering after taste’. Bruno explains I am not used to expensive wine.

After my first attempt to follow the conversations, the words flow through me in a mumble of unrecognisable sounds and syllables. I amuse myself by counting the dead animals on the walls of our snug little room:

- 77 skulls of what I would have assumed to be baby deer, did I not know that baby deer do not have horns.

- An eagle

- A chook

- The head of a big deer

I am undecided as to whether to count the huge chandelier made entirely of antlers and the rifle.

These ‘sporting’ trophys are an enigma in modern Germany, standing as a memorial to more barbaric times. They stand as proof that Germany once a) had animals bigger than a rabbit and b) was not entriely populted by meterosexuals.

The food arrives and Bruno whispers that here etiquette demands I use my fork and my knife, holding and using each in an apropriate fashion. Until arriving in Germany I never noticed that apart from the odd cutting requirements I have very little use for my knife, my fork is by and large sufficient for my needs.

I laughed and laughed when a friend in Australia moaned and moaned that her new ‘date’ held his fork in a funny fashion. How could she take him to the classy establishments frequented by her family? Everyone would feel uncomfortable. And the worst thing: he did not seem to care! I can not help but think why pay so much attention to the way people eat? Does it really matter? Does is really make people feel uncomfortable?

I am reminded of eating with Zara (an Australian friend I have made in Germany) in a Turkish restaurant in Kirchenstadt. Her parants are originaly from Croatia: ‘Mum explained that cooking and table etiquette are very important in Europe, she made sure I knew how to set the table perfectly before I left Australia. This is a bit bland’ she gestures to her food. ‘What’s your sauce like?’ She leans over and liberally spoons some of the sauce off my plate and onto hers. For me such ease is refreshingly familiar but I glance a tad aprehensively at our German and Swedish companions. They don’t seem to mind.

# posted by Alice in Germany @ 2:08 pm 1 comments

In our ‘German for foreigners’ class break, Liana, a sarcastic British lass, Kristy, an Au Pair from the States, and I retire to the usual local cafe. Liana is a tad stressed today, her lovely, sweet, understanding (‘he’s just like a woman really’) German boyfriend has ever so tactfully suggested that he ‘might not be making enough money’ to support them both and pay off her ‘debts from England’ and perhaps she ‘might need to get a job’. Not speaking the language is ever the barrier to employment but his friends have ‘heard about a call centre that employs English speakers’.

‘Oh I want to die, I want to die’ Liana moans into her coffee. After a string of unstimulating jobs she has been enjoying learning German and her new Hausfrau status.

Just last night Bruno and I were talking about something, the substance of which now escapes me, that resulted in him also moaning ‘oh I want to die’.

This statement, not meant to be taken literaly, still shocks me. Ok I now accept it as an exaggeration to, shall we say, ‘put things in perspective’ but it is a therapeutic technic with which I am unfamiliar. I’ve heard these depressing exaggerations a few times since being in Germany and I have put it down to being a ‘German thing’, but perhaps it is a ‘European thing’. Well a British and German thing.

It reminds me of a scene from the movie Notting Hill, when Hugh Grant and his friends are having a dinner party and each is competing to see whose life is the crapest. A very funny scene, which Bruno informs me he often plays out with his nearest and dearest.

A British friend in Melbourne used to tell me that on moving to Perth when people would ask her: ‘how are you?’ She would give the standard British response: ‘alright’. This was considered grossly inadequate by the ever chirpy locals who naturally assumed that because things weren’t ‘fantastic’ or ‘great’ something must be seriously wrong. ‘There’s nothing wrong with alright’ an exasperated Sorcha would say ‘alright's alright’.

Yesterday Tanya (a German from the English conversation group) was telling me about her experiences as a German exchange student in Florida. (Sadly I have developed an unhealthy interest in cultural stereotypes – something I had always rejected as a non-traveller). ‘Yea I found the Americans friendly. On the surface. But they don’t tell you about their problems, they don’t let you know what is wrong with their lives. Whereas we Germans always complain. Maybe too much’.

Bruno has his own theory on this: ‘I think Germans complain because they want to show they know things could be better’. Hmm, I suppose a country couldn’t have produced BMWs without being able to see faults in a perfectly good Holden.

My own theory is based around a quote I read somewhere: ‘the happiest people, like the happiest nations have no history’. Or maybe (and I am looking at you Australia) that should read ‘deny their history’. Of course my theory has many holes and I don’t think overt displays of cultural cheeriness and suppression of negativity is necassarily a good thing. On the contrary.

So what is the shock for me? I think it comes down to the unofficial Australian motto: ‘She’ll be right, mate’ which roughly translates as ‘everything will work out, I don’t want to hear your problems so please stop whining and have another beer’. This motto might be explained in European terms as ‘the opiate of the people’. Yea, sure I have taken a bit of poetic licence but you get the picture.

# posted by Alice in Germany @ 2:05 pm 1 comments

I arrive in Europe days before bird flu, but as I am escaping the new ‘every school must have a working flag pole and teach values’ Australia I figure I’ll take my chances. Patriotism and dictated values have never really been my thing. Time to broaden my horizons, embrace another culture etc etc. All very well and good in theory, in practise the first thing I do on arrival in Germany is track down the local English speaking club. Oh, who am I trying to kid – I found it on the internet well before I left home.

In my defence I know barely a word of German and know only two people in the whole country. Bruno, my ‘very German’ boyfriend, and Marianne who I sat next to on the 12 hour flight from Ho Chi Minh city to Paris. Poor Marianne brushed her teeth with the water in Vietnam and was vomiting all over the place as the plane landed in the City of Love. That was my first trip Germany. We’ve been friends ever since. But I transgress.

Now I am coming to Germany to build some semblance of a life. I want friends and I figure a common language will fasten the process. Yes I am well aware most people at ‘le club of English’ will very likely be older than my mother. But quite frankly I often prefer the company of ‘baby boomers’. I love talking about how much better the world used to be - that is before my ‘politically apathetic’ generation reached adulthood. No, really I do.

I arrive at the designated meeting point. The room has been double booked so we have to forgo the lecture and adjourn to the Irish pub. Fantastic. As it turns out most members of ‘the club’ are German. Great, a chance to meet the locals. The normal meeting is re-scheduled to next Monday.

Monday arrives, the room is booked and I eagerly prepare for ‘the real thing’. Sure I know it will be a tad more formal, maybe a lecture and then a group discussion. Should be fun, just like my old university tutorials, full of novel ideas and stimulating debate (well how I would have liked my university tutorials to be).

An elderly Irish lady has chosen an Irish short story to share with us. Fantastic. Time to embrace my Irish heritage.

Wait ... before we start they’ll just pass around this English grammar test to be corrected at the end of the night. Just for fun. It’s from a magazine article entitled something along the lines of ‘common grammatical mistakes made by stupid Americans’. Ha ha, everyone shares a knowing chuckle. It seems to be a widely accepted fact that nothing unites nationalities faster than a little laugh at the Americans. I’m not really sure why this is, but that is another blog entirely.

I sneak a nervous glance at my grammar test while hiding behind my nervous twitter. Can I face the humiliation of fitting straight into the ‘stupid American’ (read: ‘Australian’ or better still ‘native English speaker’) category in front of my new (and only) German friends? In a matter of hours I will be exposed for the intellectual fraud I am. Yes I come from an English speaking country where not only was I not taught a second language but I also never learnt grammar.

To be honest the Irish story is a little long but funny and quite entertaining. Ok time for discussion.

Oh .... no wait ... what’s she doing? Oh alright there is another story.

My attention is beginning to wane. She speaks quietly and I strain to hear. But I think I pick up the general gist – enough to get by in the group discussion. 20 minutes later the story concludes.

No .... she can’t be .... yes she is .... we are now pushing the one hour mark and she has a third story.

I do not attempt to pay attention. I prefer to read one story and digest it. Think about it. Discuss it. Take something away from it.

By the end I am exhausted. Is this because, while I like to think of myself as relatively intelligent (or at least able to appreciate intelligence in others), I am actually the intellectual equivalent of a mouse with the attention span of a gold fish? No I think not - I arrived at 7.45 pm and it is now nearing 10 pm and I have been sitting for the entirety.

But I can not go to bed yet, I have forgotten the grammar test correction. I cleverly hold my paper so as to shield it from potential prying eyes while stealthily glancing at my neighbours answers. I, who abhor cheating, have been reduced to this, just for the sake of maintaining the respect of a few flegling friendships. I think I managed to nod knowingly after each correct answer is given, while all hopes of being able to teach English slide under the door with the last shreds of my self confidence.

Heated discussion regarding the correct position of ‘with’ in sentence structure follow me out the door.

# posted by Alice in Germany @ 2:01 pm 1 comments