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.

Remember my entry on saying hi?

My favourite TV show about French/German inter cultural clashes (It's called Karambolage and can be seen every Sunday night on the French/German TV channel Arte) did their own version of my blog entry.

French version: http://sonix.sdv.fr:8080/ramgen/arte/karambolage/emission_118.rm
German version: http://sonix.sdv.fr:8080/ramgen/arte/karambolage/DE/karambolage_118.rm

Sorry, no English version...

As to quote one of my favourite comedians, Bill Bailey. However, I have photographed a French kebab for you... because there are differences!



Yep, they really put chips in and serve it in a baguette.

The French cuisine has a very high reputation in Germany, definitely so near the border but probably all over. It's justified, French people just have loads of good ideas to turn loads of stuff (including some slimy little animals with a low speed or green ones with an affinity for jumping) into really classy meals. Some things, like cheese or wine are also a very important export factor.
The French know this. I'd bet that most restaurants are genuine French ones (sounds obvious, but how many restaurants you've been to actually serve and specialise on German or [put in own nationality] food?). However, I found the reputation slightly overrated. I suppose your average French full-time mum can still do the most wonderful things if you get invited around. Among students, I mostly saw the same affection for food as amongst German ones.
French wine selection is incredible. A huge French supermarket will have several kilometres of wine shelves, a full range of prices, regions and tastes. This is fine as long as you don't want any foreign wines. Some people French always think their wine is the best - I say they don't know there is any other. Amongst the aforementioned infinite lengths of shelves I spotted a section 'Produits du monde' (Products of the world), about 70cm wide. 70% of these wines were French, too (well, I suppose France is a part of the world), but no German or even South American ones to be seen. If I had to stick with one sort of wines for the rest of my life it would probably be French, but the world of wine would not be the same without a good Chilean, Spanish or German one.
The cheese however is unrivalled. The reason we get good cheeses in Germany is because we generally quite happily import stuff from all over the world (including vocab), but the first time I went to a German supermarket the shopkeeper and several employees came running to see if I was fine lying in front of the cheese counter, crying.
Funny French cuisine hasn't managed to be more successful outernationally. How many French restaurants do you know outside France? Yes, they exist - but in Germany they're way down the list after Italian, Greek, Turkish, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Spanish, Mexican, Indian and probably even German. Well, they brought us the Crêpe.
As I wrote earlier, French bakers have an important role in their country. So, is the average French baker better than the German? NO, he's not. True, your baguette, croissant and pain-au-chocolat isn't the same here, but even the big baking chains smell wonderfully of brezels and good German bread, of which the variety is incredible. The first thing I bought here was half a loaf of bread which cost more than your average Döner Kebap and which still isn't empty even though I had some of it every night, enjoying it immensely.

The best way to pass as a Frenchman (if that's what you want) is to stick to group of other French people and not say much. However, you still have to get past the greeting ceremony - and that's more difficult than I ever thought it was.
I never thought much about greeting rituals, but they are more complex than I ever imagined and deeply integrated into local culture.
In Germany, we hardly ever say anything at all. A little wave or a nod to everyone in general is usually enough, perhaps accompanied with a little grunt or something along the lines of "'ello" (like "tach" or "yo"). Perhaps this is because of our efficiency-driven way of living; having to greet each other for ages would soak up valuable time we could put to work.
As if to confirm this, I read a description about some small island where the people seem to be particularly nice: "In a place where people having nothing else to do, they greet each other all the time.". It was a French journalist who wrote this, so I find it difficult to imagine - from my point of view, French people spend loads of time greeting.
The greeting ritual is still a mystery for me. A rough description: If you meet one or more people where it's not too crowded or awkward, you give all the blokes a handshake, all the girls the right number of 'bises' together with an appropriate micro-conversation about how you're doing. Sounds easy, but the details are difficult. If you're just greeting someone at the bakers for example, all this doesn't apply but a different set of rules becomes valid, that's when you start with the Bonjour-thing, but I won't go there for now.

First of all, you have to judge if the whole greeting ceremony can be shortened down to just giving the nearest people or even no-one at all the full greeting monty without being considered impolite. Of course if you're seeing someone the other end of a crowded bus, you don't have to walk over but if you're meeting someone in the corridor you're the right level of close to you can't skip it. If you don't know the person that well a verbal greeting might suffice, but not if it would leave an awkward gap (e.g. if you're waiting for the elevator together). The threshold for bises seems to be higher than for handshakes, but you usually wouldn't shake hands with a girl (I think).
Of course this is all different for formal occasions, luckily - I just couldn't imagine doing the bises before opening a bank account. In high-ranking positions it's something else: you will often see politicians doing bises if they want to make the closeness in a relationship clear. Bises between men are not at all uncommon, but luckily not compulsory. Now I think about it, I've seen that in Germany, too, but mostly with Turkish adolescents for some reason.

The next bit is what to say. I usually try and get out of this by being the first to say 'Salut, ça va?'. That way the other person has to think of an answer giving me some time to improvise the next bit of the conversation.
Like in some other countries (I've seen this with US-Americans, but I couldn't say this is generally true) the question 'ça va?' (meaning 'how are you?') is mostly not really an in-depth inquiry about your physical and mental health, but more like the near-dead 'how do you do?'. Again, this is very dependant on the type of relationship. The closer you are, the more details you may reveal. The most common is one of these: "Ça va? - Ça va.", "Ça va bien? - Oui, ça va" or variations. If you're a bit closer, it could be something like "Ça va? - Ouais... il faut... " (You alright? - Yeah... well... not much choice really....). However, you can't reveal serious problems, of course. If you're good friends OR you're extra-polite, you could say 'Comment vas-tu?' which this time really means "How are you?" (Ça va? literally means 'It goes?'). If the question was asked less out of politeness and more out of general interest, you may go ahead and answer honestly.
I don't know if it's a local thing, but Marseillaise people have a special answer for when they're alright: 'Ouais, tranquil...' ('yeah, easy-going...'). This would be a typical Marseillaise thing to say, explaining that the best possible state is when nothing really is happening.

The number of bises, by the way, seems to be regionally constant and is usually 1 on each side (at least here it is).

So, who would have imagined that I could write so much about greetings? I wonder if the German greeting has so many sides to it. I'd appreciate some input from some non-Germans, here.
I know one thing, however: It's not compatible to France. My way of greeting friends I see in the street at a medium distance is usually by yelling something short and easily perceptible like "hey!". Not being a complete cultural equivalent of the famous elephant in the china store I don't usually do that to French people, but I still do when I see Germans. Trouble is, to French ears it sounds a bit like "hey you, stop that or you'll meet my friend Desert Eagle" - this whole article is actually inspired by the 3 French guys I gave a jump when I was just greeting a fellow ERASMUS student.

Due to some bad luck I had the chance to check out the French health system. This is actually quite well described in the book 'A year in the merde' which I can recommend to anyone who wants a funny story about French culture (it's about this English business guy who works in France for year - at the end he wants to stay).

If you went to the doctor's in France, it could end up like this:

Act 1: The waiting room

Our hero enters an inconspiciously looking building that could be anything from HLM to tobacco storage. He rings the bell and enters.
In the waiting hall, there's a truckload of patients who are doing their best trying to look ill.
"Bonjour."
"Bonjour. Cough, cough."
Everyone's trying to avoid eye-contact, but without trying to be noticed, everyone notices exactly who's coming and going. As there's neither as assistant who calls people in nor any fixed dates, you have to remember who was before you in the queue. But of course you can't just ask who's currently last in the queue because that would spoil this plot.

1h later. There's only 3 people left who came before you and the rest came after you. The doctor calls out the next one. Panic and confusion spread beneath the 3 others.
Patient 1: "Was it me or you?"
Patient 2: "I forgot..."
Patient 3: "I came after you two."
Patient 2: "I really can't remember. Please, go first."
Patient 1: "Thank you."
Patient 4 (who came later): "After you it's me then, right?"

Luckily, our hero could save the situation by a super-fast usage of politeness and self-preservation:
"I'm sorry, I think it's me after him. I arrived before you did."
Patient 4: "Oh."
"Yeah, it's confusing, isn't it?"
Patient 4: "Yes, it is. Why don't we get a number?"

Unknowingly, patient 4 has just ask the most fundamental question of them all, nearly making the French health system collapse.

Act 2: At the doctor's.

The last patient is already at the doctor's. Our hero has strategically put aside his literature he cleverly brought along to spend the afternoon with. As soon as he hears the doctor saying good-bye to the last patient, he jumps up like a leopard to make a point of it being his turn now.
The doctor comes out of his room, a gleaming white light shining from it accompanied by a faint choir of angels in the background. Has all this waiting been in vain?

Doc: "Good afternoon. What can I do for you?"
"[explanation of injury]".
Doc: "OK. First of all, can I see your insurance card?"
"Sure, here it is. I've only got this German one, though."
The doctor, seeing his patient is a foreigner, tries talking English for a few sentences before finding out that his patient is actually a lot better at French than he is at English.
Doc: "OK, now I need your date of birth and your phone number although we'll probably never call you."
"It should be in the database already, I've been to your college who's room is exactly next to this one."
Doc: "Oh, the databases are different. So far, we haven't managed to coordinate them yet."
"All right. It's 06..."

Surprisingly, the actual diagnostic seems to the same as our hero's used to.

Doc: "Hm, doesn't seem to be any broken bones. Still, I'll prescribe you half a ton of medicine and I'd like to get an X-ray to go sure. That'll be 21€, please. Cheques are graciously accepted."

The hero is already looking forward to the Adventure, part II: Getting the German insurance to re-pay me, er, him.

Act 3: Pharmacie

"Hello. I'd like all this, please."
Pharmacist: "Sure. Your green health insurance card, please."
"Oh, I don't have one. I've only got this from my German health insurance."

Panic and confusion. The pharmacist turns to her colleague for help. After some research, they find out I can just pay the 40€ directly and handle the insurance myself.

Pharmacist: "Here you go. Do you need a small truck to carry all of this?"

Act 4: X-Ray

Our hero enters the X-Ray place. To his surprise, the radiologist has an assistant at the entrance.

"Hello. I need an X-ray."
Assistant: "OK. Do you have an appointment?"
"No. Do I need one?"
Assistant: "Yes, I'm afraid so."
"Oh. OK, could I make one and come back?"
Assistant: "Oh no, just wait in the waiting room."
"All right."

Our hero starts unpacking his book to pass the next eternity in the waiting room.
30 seconds later, he gets called in.

Afterwards, he wants to check out.

Assistant: "Can I have your insurance card, please?"
"I've only got this German one."

Panic and confusion.

Assistant: "I'll have to call the doctor."

Doctor: "Don't you have any insurance?"
"Apart from this excellent German one I just showed you, no."
Doctor: "Phew, we'll have to fix this when you come back for your pictures."

Next morning, our hero return for the pictures. The doctors have finally decided that he could just pay directly and handle the insurance himself.
While filling out the cheque, our hero misunderstands the amount and accidentally puts in 1€ less than the actual price.

Doctor: "Oh, you forgot one Euro. Well, never mind."

The hero is baffled.
Doctor: "Here's your piece of paper for the insurance."
"Thanks. Say, why did you sign the paper for me?"
Doctor: "Oh, my assistant thought she'd sign it for you. Do you think your insurance might mind if there's a different signature on this one?"
"Er, yes, I think they would."
Doctor: "OK, we'll make you a new one."

After staying at the doctor's for about the same time as for doing the actual X-ray, our hero returns home with all the necessary papers, knowing that now he has fought and survived the seven-headed monster of bureaucracy in two different countries now.

-- THE END --

Wow, what a quote. I'll break some journalistic rules and start with both a quote and a joke:

A US-American, a Frenchman and a German are sitting on a bridge. You want to make them jump down. What do you say to them to achieve that?

To the American: "There's a 1000$ down there"
To the Frenchman: "It's forbidden to jump off this bridge"
To the German: "Jump"

Where's the connection between the joke and the quote? Easy: this is an article about rules and German and French people.
Everyone knows the German are a law- and rule-abiding people. Well, at least everyone says so. And I have more than once done something like stopping at a red pedestrian light even there's no car around in the middle of Brazil, for example. I had a little chat with the secretary for internships here and she immediately started telling me about her trips to Germany and of course some anecdotes about German law-abidingness.

My observation: it's all true (I leap right back into the over-generalisation without any data backing me up again). But there's a twist, and here's my theory: Germans are more rule-abiding, but they also have more sensible rules.

France is by no means short of rules. You get them everywhere and by the hundreds and loads of them are ridiculous (in my humble opinion). So no wonder French people don't stick to rules: they couldn't budge a meter without breaking one. So hey, why not break a couple more while you're at it.

I think a typical French procedure is something like this: there's millions of rules, you stick to those you can care to do so, then someone 'in charge' will come complaining, you start a discussion and bargain out some understanding. When I organised a birthday party for someone from the student's home I had to sign a piece of paper that there wouldn't be any alcohol at all, I wouldn't invite more than 15 people, there'd be no noise and the room would be handed over spick and span by 23.00 tops. Quite impossible to both do a birthday party and stick to those rules, but I was assured by some people who do parties more often that you just have to have a quick word with the security guy and it would be OK... (and I didn't invite more then 15 people, they just came).
Rules are everywhere. There's traffic lights and crossings I wouldn't even notice without the lights. You're supposed to stop at zebra crossings if someone wants to cross, but there's one every 25m. My student card has some space just for general rules (in Karlsruhe the space is rented out for advertising). You automatically ignore them because there just not enough time to read them all. I am not allowed to attach an electric hotplate in my room, but a microwave oven is fine. A fridge is not. If you want cars to drive 40km/h because the road is dangerous there's a sign limiting to 10km/h.

So far my unqualified observations. There's lots of stuff I'd like to know, e.g. if the law system is something like that (see the quote), and if they started off with lots of laws and started ignoring them or if the many rules were introduced to compensate for the ignoring.

The title is (ironically) a quote by Charles de Montesquieu, a Frenchman (you've probably heard of him, he's the one who came up with the division of the administrative powers executive/legislative/judicative). Quite a loose translation, the German translation is "Wenn es nicht notwendig ist, ein Gesetz zu machen, dann ist es notwendig, kein Gesetz zu machen." His favourite author, Tacitus, also had his opinion on this subject: "The most rotten countries have the most laws." And here's the catch: this country is far too nice to be called rotten. At least French people don't blindly jump of bridges.

Whenever you see a (German) caricature of a Frenchman (say, a picture where you can see several different nations and the illustrator wants to make it clear that it is showing normal people instead of celebrities), he'll be likely to carry a baguette. This long, white piece of bread really is a symbol for France, and completely justified.

I'm not just talking about eating habits, here. Having lived here for a while, I've really got the impression that the baguette is an integral part of French culture.

First of all, let's clarify what we're actually talking about. If you go to a German bakery and order a baguette, you'll get also get a long white piece of bread, but that's not the same. A good French baguette is more crunchy on the outside, nice and fluffy in the inside and it doesn't have any nutritional value whatsoever. Often enough, they're just freshly made and still warm.
Getting a baguette, especially in the mornings has a cultural significance equally important as getting fresh rolls has in Germany. Every morning, you can see small armies of French people walking to the next boulangerie and back with one or several baguettes, which are impossible to carry without displaying them. If you're feeling peckish, you can get a nice croissant too, but that's another (yummy) story.

So, imagine you've got a baguette and start eating it. As mentioned before, a French baguette barely qualifies as food and you end up eating more of what you put on the baguette (most likely cheese, of which there's an excellent choice here, and butter, probably salted). So, having a lunch that consists mainly of baguette and cheese is hardly a lunch, it's more like nibbling. That's typical: while a typical German meal is made of a few basic ingredients (e.g. meat or potatoes) and designed to be eaten up and to make you big and strong, a French meal is more like fiddling around with loads of bits of food. So you'd usually have a baguette with something else.

The story isn't finished, here. Here, there's only one place to buy a baguette, and that's your local boulangerie. And a boulangerie is basically a place that sells baguettes. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but my that's my impression: you can get croissants, pains au chocolat, pieces of pizza, other sorts of bread... but the number of sold baguettes is way bigger than of all the other stuff. I've actually gone in and ordered 'One, please' and got one baguette without further inquiry. So, in a boulangerie they chuck some flour and water together and sell it for around 65cents. There's so many bakeries around - so how do they make money?

Ah... another interesting cultural thing! As I said, thinking about baguettes can get quite fascinating (well, I find it fascinating). First of all, that last question doesn't seem to crop up in France. It's a typical German question, I believe. That's probably why we Germans are world champions in rationalising, which is such a nice word for finding means to fire people by replacing them by efficient machinery. The biggest European baking company, by the way, is Kamps, founded in Germany. They have huge bread factories and have optimised the distribution to all the Kamps shops - because Germans have this urge to re-organise and optimise processes. The French love their boulangerie, and that's why it's usually an artisanale - they make their own bread.

You could probably go further and further into French culture and always find parallels and connections to baguette. But then, you'd have to be German to actually bother.

The title's really just to get some attention. I really like France in general and Marseille in particular. However, there are - of course - some things that might theoretically drive a german student nuts. Just talking in theory, though

I've compiled a small list:

• French bureaucracy is just incredible and makes me feel like doing some stuff at the Stadtverwaltung Germersheim to relax. A lot of you might know the film Asterix erobert Rom (sorry, only know the german title) where Asterix has to get form A39. Just to remind you: Asterix is originally french, meaning the author didn't have to exaggerate much. The difference is that in the Asterix movie, everything was in the same building, here you have to dash across town and others even have to go to Aix-En-Provence for some of their paperwork. I'm not mentioning any of the trouble the non-EU-students have to go through.


• French driving is just generally a minimisation of used space on streets. Here, leaving more than 10cm between cars is considered a waste. For the first time in my life I was actually stuck in a traffic jam - with my bike! I couldn't move for at least 5 minutes. Same goes for parking (that's what the pavements are there for). A famous quote about french driving goes something like this: 'Traffic in France is just a matter of vocabulary', although I believe it's a lot worse in Paris than here (so I've been told).


• Standing at the till in supermarkets. All of a sudden, the same person who was wildly honking his horn at everyone in the same district will calmly load his stuff into plastic bags, chat with the person at the till, think a couple of minutes about how he's going to pay, decide to use Carte Bleu if he's in a hurry or Cheques if the next person in the queue is, fill out the check slowly and double check it was right (although the tills have printers for checks), say goodbye to everyone and then pack the rest of his stuff.


• The way there's always loads of food and half of it get's chucked away. Would anyone enlighten me if it's good manners to leave food on your plate or just habit?


• AZERTY keyboards


• The little liberty École-Students have. I'll write an entry about that sometime later.


• The fact that as soon as someone knows I'm german, he or she'll start quoting random phrases they remeber from their german classes ('Guten Tag! Gesundheit! Ich liebe Schokolade! Jawohl Herr General! Heute hat es geregnet!' - never omitting the exlamation marks'). Don't mix this up with french people who just want to have a chat in German to brush it up - I like that, especially as those kind of people are more likely to correct me when I'm doing mistakes.


• The bread. It goes stale after 12hrs and doesn't fill you up in the first place.

I'm not doing a list of stuff I like, though - it would be too much. Southern France is great!