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1.4 Going to the supermarket

I remember the first time I went to a supermarket in Hamburg, as most people remember the first time, they drove a car, or the first time they went on a trip without their parents, or that time they fell off their bike. I can’t really say if it was because of the psychological trauma it inflicted upon me, but I vividly remember every detail.

Basically, it went something like this:

09:58 — Enter the supermarket.

10:02 — Some tw*t barges into me without saying anything. Does not apologies.

10:04 — Standing at the grocery section, contemplating whether my Mac book Pro needs another memory card update, and some douchebag reaches right across me, again without uttering a single word. Instinctively I turn and say, “Sorry”, to which I get no reaction.

10:05 — Shop assistant ignores my attempts to get his attention because I can’t find the dairy section. I could well be standing in one of the mazes hidden inside the Egyptian Pyramids, surrounded by ancient hieroglyphs, or teleported to another galaxy, and I would be equally lost.

10:08 — Yet another aimless walk around the shop without any luck.

10:10 — After walking three times through every aisle of the shop I finally manage to find milk, bread, some toilet paper, and something that looks like chicken breasts.

10:12 — I get in the queue and wait. A guy walks right past me and queues up beside an individual checkout. “How rude,” I think to myself, making a mental note, but doing nothing.

10:13 — A woman walks right past me and does the same bloody thing. My head is about to explode, but this time I’ve learnt the lesson. I take a step forward into the left line and wait for my turn.

10:15 — I’m finally being served by the cashier, who looks at me with disgust and asks me which types of ‘Brötchen’ (bread rolls) I’ve selected. The three rolls are in a seethrough plastic bag. I shrug; my whole body takes the shape of a question mark. Apparently, I am supposed to know exactly which type of bread roll I have selected (and there are at least twenty in the bakery section). I apologize profusely and promise to memorize the names for all the different types of Brötchen before my next visit. The annoyed cashier demonstratively looks through the list behind her till. At the same time, I can feel the aura of disapproval emanating from the people behind me in the form of a quiet, but distinct murmur.

10:17 — “DREIZEHN NEUNZIG!” the cashier barks at me. I produce the only bill I have in my wallet, which is a fifty euro note. As you can imagine, this doesn’t go down well. I feel like Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom, about to get discovered by the mob. Another step in the wrong direction, and I will be compromised. I will end up rotating on a skewer with an apple stuck in my mouth.

10:18 — The cashier rolls her eyes at me in disbelief, followed by a very long sigh, then takes my bill while muttering something under her breath.

10:19 — Again, I apologize, take my change, and make a dash for the exit without looking back, like the sole survivor of a zombie movie.

1.5 DIY Saturdays & Church Sundays

It’s no secret that Germans like order and structure, and this mantra extends into pretty much every aspect of their daily lives. Since the supermarkets are closed on a Sunday (as is everything else, for that matter), most people do their family shopping on a Saturday — which is why you’ll find it a most unpleasant experience, should you foolishly decide to venture into ALDI, EDEKA, or any other major supermarket chain on that day of the week. For people who do not like food shopping, there are options to get your groceries delivered, but Germans are not very keen on that, for some strange reason. Another favourite activity reserved for Saturdays is DIY and the ominous and unavoidable trip to the Baumarkt, which is where you get all your home supplies. There is a separate chapter dedicated to this later on.

As a foreigner, you need to know that DIY is not allowed on Sundays in Germany – by law — hence why the Sabbat is also known as a Ruhetag (quiet day). So, things like drilling, mowing the lawn, vacuuming and even singing are prohibited. As you can imagine, Germans are very precise about these types of things, and they love making rules. Put two and two together, and voilà, you’ve got a list of rules of things you can and cannot do on a Sunday. So, for example, vacuuming is allowed but only if your vacuum cleaner produces sixty-five decibels of noise or less (no joke). Anything above that is out of the question. Whether or not you are allowed to wash your car (which you can only do at designated car wash places), is a rule that differs from federal state to federal state. Washing your clothes, on the other hand, is okay. I don’t want to be the one to tell you, but ignoring these rules can cause a lot of agro with your neighbors. They might even call the Ordnungsamt (a regulatory body responsible for the upkeep of such regulations) on you, and they are entitled to do so.

As a rule of thumb, Sundays are reserved for Sunday breakfast, which must include certain things for it to qualify as such: at least two different types of bread rolls (Brötchen) and one type of sweet pastry like croissants; at least two types of savory toppings like cheese, ham or salami and at least one sweet topping like marmalade or jam; sliced vegetables and, of course, coffee and tea. For most Christians, a trip to your local church is a compulsory activity on a Sunday, while others may choose recreational activities such as jogging, cycling, hiking, or long walks in the forest, basically anything that can be classified as exercise. In the afternoon, you usually have Kuchenzeit (cake time), spent with your family, in-laws, or friends. After your Abendbrot (dinner), watching an episode of Tatort is obligatory, to put the cherry on top of your perfect German Sunday. More on that later.

1.6 Thrifty Germans

In my younger days in Germany, when I used to go food shopping with my flat-mates, I was often baffled by the thriftiness that possessed them. It’s not that I’m throwing money around left, right and centre, constantly living it large. Not at all. However, in comparison to my German counterparts of the same age, I definitely was. To them, I was borderline careless with money. For example, if I picked up a packet of cheese that didn’t have a red reduced sticker on it, I was promptly told to put it down. And if there was a similar item that was — let’s say — seven cents cheaper in a supermarket a fifteen-minute walk from us, then it was always the obvious choice to go for the cheaper item there instead. Another example of my apparently cavalier attitude towards money: the cashiers at the supermarkets would never let you off if you turned up even one cent short of the sum required. I’ve tested this myself, and every time I was told to produce the missing cent. The truth is, German’s love saving money, and they love boasting about it too. Indeed, such a topic is very popular in all social circles, whether at work, in a pub, at home, or in any other setting. There is never a wrong time or place for this kind of a discussion. Germans are happy to discuss the money they have saved on car insurance, food shopping, gadgets, clothing, or even their last meal with friends. Incidentally, that last point deserves a special mention. If you find yourself dining with your friends or colleagues, it is very common to split the bill at the end, down to the very last cent. There won’t be anybody saying, “Just give us a tenner mate” or “Let’s just split it all equally” and definitely not, “Just buy us dinner next time.” Instead, there will be a meticulous process of calculating how much each and every person owes, including the tip, followed by each individual paying separately to the waiter. If the staff are particularly useless, in some instances, you’d be expected to add the sums and pay together — one bill, that’s how it works over here.

Once in a while, many German people deliberately forget their thriftiness for one evening, a weekend, or even a week, and that’s when they go and splash the cash. The German term for this is gönnen — literally meaning, to treat oneself. I’ve seen this many times in my experience as a hotel musician. Couples would arrive for a weekend package at a five-star hotel, the kind of place where a room without breakfast starts at about three hundred euros. They would wine and dine, cocktails, champagne, fancy dinner, the whole smorgasbord, and as the weekend progressed, they would visit the spa, go for various massage treatments, do walks on the beach and so on and so forth. Others might treat themselves to a cruise, a holiday to Mallorca, or a skiing trip in the Alps. The principle is the same. It is quite common for the Germans to reward themselves for the hard work they do, and indeed, Germans do work a lot.

1.7 Pfand: Do not bottle it

Germany is a country obsessed with the environment, carbon footprints, and recycling. Perhaps only second to the Netherlands, Germany has one of the most sophisticated recycling systems in the world. For example, it was one of the first countries to introduce charges for the use of plastic shopping bags from the supermarkets, long before anyone else followed suit. The Bundesrepublik has always portrayed itself as being a pacemaker in matters like reducing carbon emissions, wind and solar power, renewable energy, and so on and so forth. But perhaps the most cunning invention that was introduced by Germany is Pfand (literally translatable as ‘deposit’, it is a system for recycling plastic bottles). It’s simple enough: you pay an extra twenty-five cents at the shop for each drink in a plastic bottle (or eight cents for glass bottles), and, when you bring the empty bottles back, you get your money back. Simply deposit your empty bottles into one of the recycling machines, which you will find at pretty much all supermarkets, listen to that crunching sound it makes as your bottles are squashed down to the size of a coin, and presto! Once you get the hang of it, it becomes a bit of an obsession, so even if you buy a bottle of Coke at a football game, you hold on to it and take it home with you, because otherwise that’s twenty-five cents you’re throwing away! The most extreme case of this I’ve witnessed in public was at a classical concert venue: a guy was refused entry because he had an empty Coke bottle with him. He protested vehemently, shouting, “But it’s PFAND!”2

1.8 The insurance obsession

Relatively recently, I ordered some cinema tickets online. Before the booking was finalized, I was taken to another page which asked me if I wanted to ensure my tickets, which I found a bit absurd. Presumably, some people feel the need to take out insurance on cinema tickets which cost about nine euros each, in case they fall ill and can’t fulfil their commitment.

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2 If you’d like to know more about recycling in Germany, you could do some further reading on the https://www.nabu.de — the nature preservation society. What I learned there, was the fact that there are in fact two systems of recycling bottles: the socalled single use, and multiple use one. As the word suggests — single use are your cans of coke, and anything that can’t be reused, while other plastic bottles can actually be used again, hence the term.