The Journey

Gentle Reader, you may want to read the full account of the interesting journey we had on the way here. Let me fill you in on the gritty details.  When we missed the train in Frankfurt, I went to the closest Deutsche Bahn office to explain that we had missed the train because the train was MISLABELLED save for the last car, and how could we get assigned to a different train.  Here is the conversation:

Two DB guys: You should have known that that was the train to Erfurt.
DPage: How was I to know that when the train number and destination were different?
DB guys: They probably just forgot to reset the (digital) sign on most of the train.
(repeat of the three previous sentences in different words)
DP: (realizing this exchange is fruitless): So how can we get to Erfurt?
DB guys: Oh, the next train comes along in one hour, and you can just get on.
DP (over tired and a bit miffed): OK, reserve that one for us.
Result: done, boarded, flew at 120km/hr and got to Ilmenau 12 minutes late.

This tendency of Germans to publically chastise people for things they "should" know began to irk me the last couple times I've been here.  On reflection, this is probably a good thing, since I think it is most often used with natives, which would indicate that I'm passing.  Should have brought those white sneakers to stand out as a foreigner and get some patience.  But what does this say about Germans?  It seems to me that they are not so tolerant with themselves making even common mistakes.  The post war period of re-education and de-nazification set into motion a plan to change the way Germans think to prevent them from starting a third world war (they had direct implication in two already by 1939).  In many ways this plan worked.  Germany today has compulsory conscription, where many young men choose civil service instead of military service, giving the country a lot of young subsidized workers, and plenty of soldiers to assist police.  Afghanistan is the first time since WWII that German soldiers have been in a war setting (and their participation is very unpopular).  Germans are trained to be tolerant of women (they did rescue the country after WWII) and Jews.  They were forced to hire guest workers from Turkey, Greece and Italy after the war since there were so few men.  This remains an uneasy partnership, and if you get a German tipsy and talkative, you'll hear how the "should all go home," but you will never hear this in public discourse.  Children born after WWII were forced to learn the guilt of their parents--a preventative measure of the re-education.  They were taught to appreciate other cultures, and to adhere to the rules of tolerant public discourse toward other cultures.

BUT.....what happened here among themselves.  I think, given experiences I have had, that there is an anger that doesn't get expressed to others, and it manifests inself with German-on-German curtness.  Follow the rules or else.  Sort your recyclables, be quiet after 10, don't chew gum in public, etc, etc...

I think it's important to provide a bit of contextualization to what happened immediately preceding this encounter with the DB guys:  my airplace companions.  On the first leg I sat next to a Swiss woman who works for corporate Johnson & Johnson in Germany (Hamburg) and who had just spent two days in Blue Ash.  We had lots to talk about.  In a lull, she turned to me and asked, What differences do you see between Germans and Americans?  This is really a loaded question, and I attempted to answer her truthfully and openly, without denigrating either side.  Her response to my return of the question was a bit more direct.  As a Swiss national (they are not German!) working in northern Germany, she had noticed plenty, and her analysis was spot on:  They are very rule-oriented, but efficient and amazing engineers because of it, but..they are unable to be flexible in problem solving.  Every problem has to follow a carefully scripted protocol, with no thinking outside of the box.  This Swiss lady from Zürich and living in Hamburg clearly preferred the American (and Swiss) way of problem solving.  We had a great conversation, and she posed so many questions that my head was spinning by the time we got to New York.  It was a mini interrogation.  She asked the following about American culture, and generously offered her opinions about Swiss practices and attitudes:
normal age for marriage
partners vs. spouses
preferred travel destinations and types of vacations
role of women and attitudes toward them (she was decidedly anti-Swiss here)
corporate big wigs in US, Germany and Switzerland
reading habits
education practices

I had a different companion on the longer flight to Frankfurt, this time a woman who is currently living in Seattle, but who is originally from Eritrea, and was on her way home.  I asked how she happened to be living in Seattle (because I am just nosy), and I got a wonderful story of how she was sponsored by a church, that she had four daughters and one son, that her sister was happy she was coming home to visit, etc.....  What I didn't get was any contextualization about why she left Eritrea, and it's often those types of stories that get at the real truth, which I suppose is really none of my business.  She had already travelled 6 hours from Washington, was on a 7 hour flight to Frankfurt, then needed to fly all day to southern Europe, then to northern Africa, then to Eritrea.  Her English was difficult to understand, and she knew no German.  She had not eaten since leaving Washington, and dinner was a couple hours away, so I pulled out every snack I had for her.  She had a gentle spirit that was comfortable to be next to.  I hope she made it home safely.