Observing Hermann...

It’s kind of like waking up and finding yourself in a scene from Hitchcock’s The Birds or something. The natives are all hysterical now about this bird flu (avian flu) “threat”. There is no threat yet, of course, objectively speaking, but that is of no consequence here. They’re gone completely ape-poopoo over it. They are now at the point where they are concerned about eating chicken or sleeping with down blankets or putting eggs in their Tiramisu or you name it. Their normal flu vaccination vaccine is long gone. They have noticed strange behavior in the bird population. The strange behavior in their own native population doesn’t seem to be much of an issue, however. It’s all Angst, Angst, Angst here these days. And they’re good at Angst, too. There are tons of books out there about German Angst, a real industry. The latest one is called Lebensgefühl Angst (lifestyle fear or a lifetime of fear). Books like these touch upon things like “the multiplication of fear in consumer society” or “fear dynamics” or “the fear virus”. I recently read that one out of ten natives take anti-Angst medication on a regular basis. I don’t doubt this, either. I also tend to agree with something the author of Lebensgefühl Angst wrote: The more one owns, the more one fears. They do own too much, the natives. Just like the rest of us. Too many down blankets, for instance.

Saw a good Angst-article the other day at www.bloggernews.net, too.

Bill Gates will soon turn fifty and most of the natives I know are absolutely thrilled about this. This will give them yet another opportunity to slam the hell out of him, you see. They despise and resent him. They resent him because he’s a visionary (they do not believe in vision), they resent him because the whole Microsoft philosophy has always been to keep it simple for the man on the street (they do not believe in simplicity and despise the man on the street, too), they resent him because he is a dyed-in-the wool philanthropist and has given away practically everything he has made (they are not capable of such generosity and therefore do not believe that others could be) and most of all they resent him because he is fabulously rich and successful. They resent him because they are neidisch (envious). Neid is a big problem here. All natives are naturally neidisch and don’t even try to hide it.

I took a quick look at www.n24.de this morning. I wanted to get the native angle on this Iraq payoff scandal thing. You know, where big German companies like Siemens and DaimlerChrysler bribed Saddam Hussein to get special treatment and undermined the United Nations “oil for food” program etc. I thought N24 was one of the “serious” news organizations over here. Strange, though. Their coverage of this was a bit, well, lacking. I couldn’t find anything about it. They were more concerned about some claim that the White House had apparently leaked the name of a CIA operative who had criticized the government’s policy once years ago blah, blah, blah. Then I went over to www.cnn.com and found what I was looking for. Funny how news stories get prioritized, isn’t it? I could have sworn that this corruption thing would have been big medicine over here.

Hermann called me over to the front window the other morning, laughing his Hintern off. I didn’t believe him at first, but it was really true. Two male natives, one in a Jaguar and the other in a Golf, were facing it off in the street in front of our apartment house. These streets can be awfully narrow sometimes (parking on both sides etc.) and it often comes to “incidents” like these. It’s similar to when two cars are trying to cross a one-lane bridge at the same time: Somebody has to give in and wait or back up and let the other guy through. Neither of these guys were even thinking about budging here, though. They had turned off their engines and had been facing each other off, bumper to bumper, for a good ten minutes already. At least that’s what Hermann claimed. I went back into the kitchen to grab my Kaffee and came back to watch a bit. Other cars would drive in behind them every few minutes, honk like crazy for awhile and then back up and leave. I counted seven or eight of them. These guys didn’t seem to be in any hurry, though, and the cops never showed up. Then I got bored and went back to my newspaper in the kitchen. Hermann later told me that the guy in the Jaguar finally knuckled under and backed out. Noblesse oblige or something, I guess. These natives always get crazy like this, wenn sie Recht haben (when they are right, or believe themselves to be right - in the legal sense). It doesn’t really matter that they may be wrong in the moral or decent (human?) sense. They are often blind to this. Blind is the right word, too, like color blind. Being right legally - you know, like having the right of way - that’s all that matters here sometimes.

According to a recent woman’s magazine survey conducted here (Lisa), the natives apparently consider themselves to be a laugh a minute. 74 percent of the men surveyed believe that, if in the “proper mood”, they could “get a whole auditorium of people to crack up”. 89 percent of the women feel the same way. 87 percent of the men claimed to have no problem laughing about themselves, 91 percent of the women said the same thing. As a whole, a mere 25 percent admit to being susceptible to “Schadenfreude”, you know, laughing at other people’s misfortune. I couldn’t stop laughing as I read this. None of this has anything to do with reality, of course. These folks really are hilarious.

They have talk shows here, too. Sort of. They call them Talkshows - that’s one of those new Neudeutsch words. The strange thing about their talk shows is how polite and civilized their guests usually are. They just don’t get it. Their discussions often degenerate into lofty, complex issues or abstract, cerebral topics that nobody with half a brain can follow. I’ve never once seen a native talk show guest start a fist fight, for instance. They don’t even throw things at each other. Not even on a political talk show. They just can’t seem to build up enough of that necessary rage that the rest of us all have in such abundance and the more I think about it the more it irks me so I’m going to stop right now before I start throwing stuff at myself.

I’ve finally given up. It’s been a few years now and I must have asked at least 30 people by now. You know, randomly-selected individuals evenly distributed among various groups, income and education levels and all that. It’s clear to me now that nobody here can stand the stuff. The natives refuse to eat peanut butter. I asked Hermann the other day if it could be because of some genetic defect or something. He said something to the effect of “Oh no, it’s because that stuff really sucks.” They sell it in their supermarkets here but I can’t imagine why. I’m the only one within a radius of 1000 kilometers who buys it. I’m tired of hearing all the snide remarks in the kitchen and have moved my stash elsewhere. I eat it secretly in my room late at night, in the dark - with a flashlight.

Will and I were in a Chinese restaurant today when we heard this little girl ask her father "Daddy, which one of us will inherit the most?"Her sister was quite a bit older and should have known better but wasn't prepared to laugh about it. She obviously wanted to know, too. The natives are obsessed with inheritance. With their inheritance, of course. Meine Erbe, they call it. There are books and classes and self-help groups and websites and you name it, it's out there, all dealing with the subject. It's a real industry here, a growing industry. It's understandable. The natives have always been known for their frugality. They have also proven to be quite talented at passing money down from one generation to the next. At least up until recently, that is. Now it's all coming to a head. Now they've stopped having children, or they stop at one kid. And these kids aren't stupid, either. They've gone with the times and have wasted no time in developing great expectations. Most native kids feel as if they've got something coming to them. A whole lot of them know that they do - and just how much. They are good at math here, you see. They have pretty well figured out what they will be getting by the time they are twelve.

According to the weekly Die Zeit, only four percent of the eastern natives have not yet traveled to see  western Germany. A full third of all western natives have yet to travel to eastern Germany, however.

The natives may not always seem to be able to warm up to American culture (at least not openly), but they certainly don't have any problem incorporating Americanisms into their language. German is full of Neudeutsche terminology. Neudeutsch is "new German", get it? And they can't seem to get enough of it, either. Just pick up any German newspaper (no, you don't have to speak German) and you'll be amazed at how well you can speak their language. Here are a few examples I found just today: Networking, capacity building, empowerment, visibility, brand awareness, noise, outsourcing, fast food, comics, cool, mountain biking, hiking, tracking, paragliding, key account manager, new, news, mail, container, meeting, notebook, talk show, team, tour, made in Germany, wellness, e-commerce, stretching, homepage, accessibility, car sharing, mobbing, facility management, content management, reform, start-up company, coaching, multimedia, look, feel, taste, newsletter, skills, hot spots, links, live, trends, trademarks, brain drain and  home banking. And there are about eight thousand more out there, too. But that's just a rough estimate, you know.