Becoming a German

My new fulbright friend Emily Johnston said it best when she said "[being a fulbright] is so roller-coastary. Somedays I'm like 'whoa! I can't believe I'm here!' and other days I want to punch myself in the face"

Wise words of a scholar... for sure.

A prime example of this would be the difference in my blog entry from yesterday and my blog entry from today. Now, you didn't get to see my blog entry from yesterday as my computer accidentally gobbled it up somehow before it was published, but as things tend to be, it was a blessing in disguise. It would have been a shame to let you read what I thought was a 'culturally enlightened' entry, when really, I knew nothing about Germany compared to my perspectives after today's culturally enlightening events.

I guess I'll begin with my hypothesis of adaptation in a foreign country. While it is only my third time spending significant time abroad,  I consider that enough to create a best fit line, so I'm going with it.

This is how it typically goes: The first 2 weeks are full of shock and awe. Most of your observations start with "WOW!" or "Hmmm interesting..." but that is about as far as your observations go. A combination of jet lag, newness, being generally lost, and grateful for any type of help you get leaves you unable to go any deeper than that.

After these first 2-ish weeks of shock and awe wear off, mere observations and survival instinct turn into comparisons and frustration.  The newness of riding the bus, and the joy of simply finding your destination wear off and you start thinking to yourself... "hmm... busses? Well AMERICA (spoken in snooty comparative internal voice) has cars, and VIENNA has subways". Subsequently you become frustrated that you arrived at your destination late because not only has the joy of simply arriving and surviving worn off, you have yet to actually master the timetables. You have only been here for a few weeks.

Somewhere between this point and about 3 months you turn a corner you didn't even know existed and suddenly things that were worth noticing before (for example: wow these milk cartons are small... or, hmm I guess germans DON'T j-walk...wait, I have to recycle that?) simply are. It's like taking a super-highway exit that has tons of signs and curves and you have only a slight hope of where you are or where you are going and pay extremely close attention to ALL the signs until you look around and realize you've made it to the correct highway and are going in the right direction. When you finally arrive on this highway it feels really good. You can finally relax and enjoy the ride.

That's where I thought I was yesterday: here and enjoying the ride. That is, until today when I got too comfortable and merged without looking and almost crashed (I'm going to stop talking in this highway metaphor now).

My day began with my first period class. They had a small vocabulary test for which about 1/3 of the class prepared. I quickly found out, that's about all the kids that needed to prepare in order for the class to pass.

 I'd heard about the prevalence of cheating before, but I had never seen it in action. As the main teacher read out the words aloud I was SHOCKED and sickened by how many people were quite inconspicuously looking off their neighbors papers. I mentioned something quietly to my advisor/the teacher giving the test and he LAUGHED, stopped the test, and had me explain how cheating just doesn't happen in the US, to which the students responded by laughing, and nobody stopped cheating.

 I guess it does happen in some places in the states, and probably a lot more often than I think, but having graduated from 2 schools where honor codes rule and where cheating is quite possibly the worst offense you could commit as a human or student, my view of the cheating world is quite niäve. When I told my roommates about what happened they ALSO laughed and then proceeded to tell me some of the coolest cheating tactics they knew. Not the sympathetic response I was looking for, and it took all my strength not to plug my ears and run away screaming "LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU".

So that was life lesson number 1 of the day, which was quickly followed by German lessons number 1,2,3, and 4.

For the sake of general information giving, I'd say the stereotype of germans being "ordentlich" or, needing to have everything in the right place and the right time and you follow rules simply because they exist, is pretty darn accurate for anyone above the age of 40 and/or people acting like they're that old. Young people tend to be rebellious punks (probably in response to this strict rule following forced upon them by the older generation) but they'll probably turn into superstitious, über-cautious rule followers when they turn 40 too.

Germans are also extremely environmentally cautious, doing things like washing the dishes in yucky dirty water that hasn't been drained instead of keeping the water running, and unplugging the microwave so we don't waste electricity when we're not using it (except for the fact that I want a CLOCK in my kitchen, thank you very much...) and having several small trash cans for all of our recyclables. And let me tell you, dear Americans, everything is recyclable. woof.

It should have come as no surprise to me that I got yelled at big time for forgetting to turn the water off after I did the laundry last night. Germans don't have dryers (they're obviously environmentally unfriendly) so their washing machines go for a SUPER long time and do their best to wring out your clothes of all excess water by the end of their 2+hour cycle. Not only does it leave your clothes still wet and very wrinkled, it makes the washing machine obnoxiously loud.

I put the laundry in a 9:00pm. I thought it was a little late, but I was out of socks, so whatever... warm feet? Bending the not-established-but-probably-existant- rules? ... warm feet win. Somehow, before 11:15 when the laundry should have been done, I fell asleep. I had to get up at 5:15 to get ready for school, so I was able to sneak away without getting caught hopefully for forgetting to turn the water off and unplugging the machine after washing... or so I thought.

I also had to hang all of my clothes to dry really quickly because I had to run out the door to class, and in the fog of being late, and it being too early to be awake, I left my space heater on. I was also OK with that a little bit, because my room has no real window and no heater in it, so when I got back from school 2 hours later it would hopefully be warm and a bit less damp than if I had just let my wet clothes sit. BUT My über-german roomate christoph was not a little bit ok with it.

He was waiting for me when I got home from class with a list of things I had done wrong: You have to unplug the washing machine when you're done, you can't do the laundry after 10:00PM, you can't leave the space heater on because it could melt something AND it uses a lot of energy (sin of sins). Also, since you were out of town this weekend, he told me, you forgot to wash the steps.

I looked at him at this point with an apologetic (for the inherent environmental unfriendliness of my past 14 hours), but clueless look. Wash the steps?

Yes, once a week each tenant has to sweep and mop all the steps in the apartment building and shake out the mats. Knowing better than to question silly rules and/or "ordentlich-ness" I grabbed the mop, grit my teeth, and cleaned the stupid steps.

I'll leave the cultural enlightenment to that story. So now you know, if you ever come to germany, FOLLOW THE RULES. And hug a tree.

And that's my roller coaster. I went from thinking "wow I'm here!" to wanting to punch myself in the face (only a slight exaggeration)  in a few short hours. Welcome to Fulbright! I'll let you know when I officially become a german and these things don't happen to me anymore.

love always,
mere