Culture

I live quite near to a patch of green called the Westpark. It's nothing special, an ordinary city park with a couple of lakes and lots of grass, not something I'd show friends who are around to Munich for a weekend. Mostly residents go there to relax and sit in the sun, as I do sometimes. And yet, I believe it may be used to show some typical German characteristics.

The one thing that marks the place as typical German is, of course, the signs that are all over the place. I've never come across so many signs in one place even anywhere in Germany - it makes me re-think my rules hypothesis. Here's some of my favourites.



These were the first signs to get my attention: 'Tobogganing forbidden' and 'Tobogganing slope (Use at your own peril)'. The reason this caught my interest was the realisation that here people are told things when things are allowed and when they're forbidden. Usually, you'd expect one at put signs up for the other - or not?

By the way, I tried getting the slope on the picture so you could get an idea of the danger the tobogganing here implies. Clearly, these signs are manifested spoilsports - all the interesting signs had the 'Verboten' signs up.



Definitely one of my favourites: 'Model (RC) boats are permitted here'. A sign of German liberalism? Probably not, the second sign already restricts the first: 'Additional rules for the lake in the Westpark. Only boats with reasonable speed are permitted. The use of racing boats, i.e. boats which have the purpose of going a maximum speed, is forbidden. Acoustic add-ons like sirens or music from cassette recorders or similar is forbidden.' A speed limit for model boats?



Of course we can't have that much fun all over the place. It struck me that 'Verboten' must take an important place in tourist guides for Germany. Still, we supply life-belts for a pond which is at best waist-high... I'm not quite sure what the empty signs are for, but I imagine they can be used to flexibly forbid something else. The green sign on the bottom right intrigued me, as well. It doesn't simply forbid people to feed the animals, but with a high biological precision it explains why (e.g.: 'The higher output of excrement of the animals will over-fertilise the water with nitrates and phosphates. This will lead to a negative change of the water quality...' and so on.).



Protecting nature is obviously quite important. Here we're stopped from walking across a wetland - although it looks more like a place no-one could be bothered to mow. I also like the one on the right 'Don't go on the ice or into the reeds - water birds and fish need their peace'.



The grill zone! Everyone understands this sign. There is, however, no sign anywhere saying barbecues are forbidden. I suppose they expect residents to read the Münchner Grüngartenverordnung or whatever, because obviously barbecues need to be explicitly allowed. Don't tell me other countries do it the same way.

The one on the right goes on for ages why we need to be careful concerning all the nature. I've seen signs like these elsewhere - but I get the impression that here, they're actually read.



'Dogs are only permitted on the paths, on a not too long leash.'. I'm surprised the length isn't specified. By the way: when I took this picture, I was standing slightly clumsily on the path, leaning against my bike. Another biker dashed around the corner and nearly ran into me. He started swearing 'Oh putain... quel con!'. I thought this quite an amusing thing to happen as I was working on my former Marseille blog, so I took this as a good sign. I had so much fun in France, I'll take a few 'cons' without being offended . It occurred to me that this guy might be the reason for the sign on the right, for which I had so far not found a use: 'Cyclists, go slowly! Dangerous curves! Take care of the pedestrians.' I tried getting some of the dangerous curves on the picture. This also was the only sign I could find with traces of vandalism, although some others were quite bent.


So, what does this mean? I don't really want to jump to conclusions, but one might interpret this as evidence that German's like their stuff well regulated. Perhaps - and this it not that unlikely - Bavaria is exceptionally German in this respect, although of course they'd never calls themselves German.