Experiential Evidence Against Moral Relativism Vis a Vis German Nightlife

I am entirely fascinated by Germany in what may be a slightly unhealthy way. It seems like I’ve greeted every revelation about German culture with a perhaps-slightly-exaggerated enthusiasm that nonetheless has entertained the Germans I’m with. Here are a few examples of things that have totally blown me away over the past two days:

-        Germans put butter on their ham and cheese sandwiches. This is actually a pretty great idea, since German bread can be a bit dry, and the butter acts as a nice grain lubricant.

-        Germans would never pronounce the year 2012 as zwanzig zwölf (twenty-twelve), but they would say that for something that costs €2.012. (Also, did I mention that they switch periods and commas for number decimals, and that Excel will add you numbers incorrectly if you put in 1.25 instead of 1,25? I’m pretty sure this is a European convention as well, and I have no idea why this isn’t standardized.)

-        Apparently, Mexican food means chili con carne, and for some reason chili con carne does not imply the use of actual chili powder. Generally speaking, it seems that Germans are not big on spicy foods or, for some impossible-to-fathom reason, garlic.

-        The big opening day for movies in Germany? Thursday. I still can’t get over this. It’s completely nonsensical. Are people really going to midnight debuts on Wednesday nights? Is Friday considered a weekend here? And what about the weekend box office numbers? They’re rendered completely meaningless here.

In any case, this general fascination with cultural differences has led me to a rather unfortunate presumption: specifically, that German culture is entirely different from American culture. This is the same concept that a lot of overly dramatic cultural theorists have espoused (I’m looking at you, Franz Boas), and after tearing apart hard cultural relativism in many a religious studies class, I’m glad that last night finally gave me a counter-example, even if it was a rather trivial and embarrassing one. To whit: in Germany, it is still a bad idea to let three drunk girls you met on the street drag you to a €7 club when you have work the next morning. I wish I didn’t have to make the same mistakes as a college freshman to get to this point, but it still feels nice to definitively debunk moral relativism (that’s right, Robert Orsi—erotic method my ass), and that’s the nice thing about being a foreigner—you basically have carte blanche to do anything, as long as you preface it with, “I’m not from around here.”

Speaking of which, I’m off to Berlin today. Pictures should be forthcoming.

Soccer! (How have I not written about this yet?)

On Sunday, I watched Germany’s final group stage game in the Euro Cup.

The Euro Cup is basically the other big soccer tournament that happens once every four years, except it’s a little narrower in scope. Germany (ranked #2 in Europe) got placed in the ‘group of death’ (which every soccer tournament seems to have) this year, alongside the Netherlands (#3), Denmark (#6) and Portugal (#7). Germany had knocked off the Dutch and Portuguese in their first two matches, and they only needed to beat or tie Denmark to move on to the next round.

Now, watching soccer in Germany is about much more than the game itself. Starting in 2006, when Germany hosted the World Cup, the country started getting some serious spirit (unexpectedly from a country that very rarely shows any strong hint of public nationalism), so during soccer games Germany looks kind of like downtown LA when the Lakers are in the playoffs –those fucking car flags – but with a distinctly weird European flavor (every cute girl painting black, red and yellow stripes on their cheeks, and way too many people wearing oversized German flags as capes). Every city is filled with public viewings (that is the term – in German – for watching a game in public. Apparently someone never told them that, in America, the object being viewed in those cases tends to be a dead body), and everyone goes to them. This is not negotiable.

So I had watched some games in different bars in Mannheim, but on Sunday we pulled out all the stops and went to the alte feuerwache (literally: old fire station), which has been converted into a concert venue that seats about 500 and has standing room as well as a beer and wurst dispensary. I went with my roommate and some of his friends from business school. We sat in the front row, although the guy sitting next to me (Toni – he’s half-Cuban) complained that sitting during the game made people too lethargic.

Germans know their team well, and Toni was quick to explain that a) Mario Gomez is the German equivalent of Manny Ramirez – a horrible athlete who constantly dogs it but still manages to score an uncanny number of goals, leading fans to an exhausting love/hate relationship, b) Lukas Podolski is terrible and should not be starting, c) Joachim Löw is way too conservative of a coach, even though he’s pretty good, and d) the Germans suck at corner kicks and free kicks, which he is worried could doom them against teams like Spain and Italy (this is also on Löw – apparently they don’t practice set pieces because he only believes in scoring during the regular course of play). He also complained about the fact that Podolski, Mesut Özil and Sami Khedira don’t sing the German National Anthem because their parents were born in other countries (they’re all native Germans) and pointed to the fact that the Serbian national team kicked one of their players off because he refused to sing their National Anthem. But oddly, when not everyone in the room stood up for the anthem (which threw me off way more than the idea of a player not singing), he kind of shrugged it off and said it was because they weren’t drunk yet. Go figure.

In any case, the game started at 8:45, and Lukas Podolski scored a quick goal in the 19^th minute. He made up for this small lapse by sucking (to a point where even I could see he was sucking) for the next 45 minutes, until he was pulled to massive applause within the firehouse. Denmark scored a goal in the 25^th minute off a corner kick, and then Germany controlled possession for a while but didn’t seem to be making a serious effort to score a goal (I’m telling you, these guys know their team).

Things got very tense for a few minutes in the second half when Portugal took the lead against the Netherlands (the two games were going on simultaneously). A Portugal win combined with a German loss would have put Germany out of the tournament, and I could actually feel the stress pheromones filling the room when Denmark put a ball of the post in the second half. When Lars Bender (a backup midfielder playing out of position at defense for the game) put away an errant pass on a German breakaway, the excitement in the room was beyond description. There was deep-seated relief combined with overwhelming ecstasy – everyone jumped up, hugged, screamed, pumped their fists and looked goofy for a solid minute. It was very clear that a) Lars Bender would have been able to drink for free at any bar in Germany for the next two weeks if he wasn’t stuck in the Ukraine, and b) there was more on the line that a piece of hardware – this game was a matter of national pride.

The rest of the night was fairly uneventful. Germany won, everyone cheered, the fans who were driving honked their horns and leaned out of their car windows, the fans on the street chatted, smiled and hugged some more. We ended up in a bar in Mannheim discussing the game and the fact that Greece (Germany’s next opponent) plays ‘anti-fußball’ but will still be a tough match because Germany never plays well against bad teams. I’ll be in Berlin for that game, and hopefully I’ll be able to watch it on the main strip, which will cap its public viewing attendance at 450,000 (and it does get filled up). Should be a fun one.

A Week in Germany: Food

Let's be clear on this: Germany is not and never will be a country of immigrants. People have nonchalantly told me that they can trace their entirely German family back to the 15th century and are constantly amused when I attempt to tell them where my family is from (I've resorted to just naming the first six Eastern European countries that come to mind). But, that being said, there are a lot of immigrants in Mannheim. (Semi-related: there's a really big American military base between Mannheim and Heidelberg. The second-runner-up in Germany's Next Top Model—I promise this is the last time I mention it—is from Mannheim, and her dad's an American GI.) Here's what happened: in the 1970s, Germany's economy was booming, and the Mediterranean's was, well, not. A large number of people from Italy, Greece and Turkey made their way up to Germany to find work, and while the majority of the Italians and Greeks eventually returned home, the Turks stayed.

I mention this now because it is nearly impossible to discuss German food without bringing up food from other countries, and Turkey in particular. For all the talk about traditional German food, the number of real Germans eating bratwurst with any consistency is pretty low (at least outside of Bavaria, but that's basically where all the German stereotypes hang out). One of my hosts put on a dinner with weisswurst and pretzels, but only because her friends got a kick out of eating them once a year. In reality, the favorite breakfast of Germany is bread and cheese, the favorite quick lunch is pasta with pesto sauce, and the favorite street food is döner kebap.

Part of me just wants this post to be an ode to döner. It's magnificent. It's everything good about gyros combined with everything good about shawarma, and I already know I'm going to miss it like crazy when I get back to the States. Döner is to Turkish food in Germany what chow mein is to Chinese food in the US. Even though Turks have been cooking meat on rotating spits for years, the döner in its current form was invented in 1971, when Mahmut Aygun decided to put the meat in a pita rather than on a bed of rice so that drunk people could eat it more conveniently (Wikipedia is the greatest thing ever). In Mannheim—which according to one of my hosts has the highest per capita Turkish population in Germany—döner is readily available on most street corners, and it's still the only menu item I've ordered multiple times here.

I don't know if this photo does it justice, but this is the most delicious thing ever.

Of course, there are plenty of other options at Turkish restaurants (including sheep's head soup and ayran, which is a combination of liquid yogurt and Ex-Lax), and Mannheim even has an area nicknamed Little Istanbul, which sports a cadre of Turkish grocery stores, restaurants and bakeries. Of course, there's a range of other foreign cuisines to choose from (Italian, Chinese, Spanish, etc. There's even a frozen yogurt/bubble tea place that I can go if I ever start missing Claremont), and the German food isn't too shabby either. I'm especially gaining an appreciation for German bakeries, which have pretzels readily available for 30 Euro Cents and sell salami sandwiches for breakfast.

A German bakery and a Turkish bakery. Both are pretty great.

Still, my favorite "German" (and I'm using this term pretty loosely, because it can probably be found anywhere in Europe) food so far is a piece of toast topped with salted ham, fried eggs, tomatoes and cucumbers. Although I have been digging the curry wurst. And the french fries with mayonnaise. And the beer, but that's another post in and of itself.

This meal was one of the highlights of my CouchSurfing experience. And my CouchSurfing experience has been pretty freaking awesome so far.

Basically, there's a lot to like about the food in Germany. Of course, there's also some really weird stuff here, but I'll leave a fuller discussion of that theme to a later post. For now, I'll just leave you with a mention of Radler, which is probably the most German thing I've ever heard of. Apparently, back in the day, bikers (radler means cyclist in German) would drink a lot of beer and get dehydrated/drunk during their rides. Someone had the brilliant idea of giving them a beer that would also quench their thirst and give them some electrolytes. So they decided to mix beer with sprite, and the Radler was born. Personally, I think it's pretty disgusting, although all the Germans I've met seem to enjoy it. But I do like the fact that the Radler has become the "girly" drink of Germany. That's right, instead of Bacardi Breezers or Smirnoff Ices, German women just put some soda in their beer, and they're good to go. Fantastic.

A Week in Germany: Entertainment

I need to start putting these posts up in a more timely manner. I wrote this two days ago, so do the math for the next paragraph.

Two nights ago I watched the finale of Germany's Next Top Model.

Now, let's be clear: this is not the kind of thing that I would do in America, but in the interest of cultural exchange (and knowing that it would be impossible for me to understand anything that was going on anyway) I agreed to go with my CouchSurfing host to watch the show. For the record, groups of German friends also watch bad reality TV shows semi-ironically. That being said, no one I've talked to has heard of Jersey Shore, which is probably a good thing, since I'm pretty sure Germans would take it less as an explicitly over-the-top drama and more as further evidence that America is insane (to be fair, there are plenty of Americans who feel the same way, but still).

In any case, I had seen some foreign reality TV before—Israeli "Survivor" was definitely a fun one—but this was different. It took place in a massive stadium in Cologne, opened with a fireworks show, and featured two musical guests—Maroon 5 and Justin Bieber (completely unrelated sidenote: the contrast between Adam Levine and Bieber pretty much sums up the differences between the 18- and 30-year-old male mind. While Levine spent all of "Moves Like Jagger" determining how many of the show's losers he could convince to come to his trailer at the same time, Bieber was completely zoned in on Heidi Klum—the host, of course—in an effort to realize what was probably one of his first sexual fantasies. This resulted in some painfully bad flirting, which Klum had the decency to repeat in German for extra awkwardness). Basically, it was a completely overblown, don't-miss-television special-event-of-the-year—exactly what you would expect...in America.

And that's why I was so taken aback. The way Germans usually process TV and movies is very different from the United States. While dubbing in the US is essentially reserved for pseudo-Japanese comedies, Germans almost never use subtitles, sometimes with disastrously funny results (this is where I would put in a link of the German Tracy Jordan if I could find one. Definitely in so-bad-it's-good territory). The only other Western country that I can think of that totally embraces the dub-over is France, and it's an established fact that the French hate all things in English ever, so this is hardly surprising. What's interesting is that most of the Germans I've talked to are actually pretty annoyed about the ubiquity of German dubs—they claim that the reason Germans are so much worse at speaking English than, say anyone from Scandinavia, is that people in those countries learn by watching TV and movies with subtitles, a luxury that Germans don't have.

So when Germans watch American TV shows, they often just forget about the dubs completely and just watch in English. After Germany's Next Top Model, we watched the pilot of 30 Rock (only available on pay stations in Germany, but my hosts had seasons one and two on DVD) in English sans subtitles, and they seemed to understand it pretty well. Still, not everything translates culturally. Even though Germans are obsessed with a lot of American TV shows (my first CouchSurfing host could play the Scrubs theme on guitar, and another really wanted to go to Seattle solely because of Grey's Anatomy), no one has heard of Seinfeld here, which takes away about 90 percent of my pop culture references. Ditto with Curb Your Enthusiasm, although I'm pretty sure with some effort I can get a few of them hooked on Archer by the time I leave.

In any case, that was definitely an interesting night. Some more notes from my experience with German entertainment:

- Germany's Next Top Model is apparently a perfect clone of America's Next Top Model, with Heidi Klum playing the part of Tyra Banks's host/center of attention. According to one of the girls I was watching with, Heidi Klum also has a really annoying voice when she speaks German.

- You know that Snickers commercial where men turn into old ladies because they're hungry? They have those in Germany too, just without Betty White and guys playing football.

- Speaking of commercials, Peugeot commercials are as just as bad as any other car company's, which is kind of a let-down since I was hoping the Europeans were hiding something great.

- German movie theaters have assigned seats. And people actually pay attention to where they're supposed to sit.

So not too long a list, but I'll be back soon with more exciting observations.

A Week in Germany: Education

After one week in Mannheim, I've already uncovered a lot of cultural differences between the US and Germany. In order to discuss all of them (or at least as many as I can remember), I'm going to start a series of observations related to a given topic. I'll start it off with education, since this seems to be one of the things that I've discussed most with the Germans that I've met. Over the next few days, I'll also put up posts related to entertainment, food, and other kinds of things. The long and short of it is that Germany is a pretty interesting place.

German Education

The bachelors and masters programs are combined at German universities. They used to be combined into the same degree, called a diploma, but the EU put pressure on Germany to conform to Europe's usual system. Now, Germans get a bachelors in three years and have the option of getting a masters in another two. Most people don't really like this change—even the ones who don't want to stay in school for five years: the business students I spoke to claim that back in the day, your grades didn't matter until the last two years. Now they have to study all the time at university and can't have any fun.

By the same token: the biggest partiers that I've met so far? Medical students. The medical degree in Germany takes about six years (plus one year of what amounts to a residency—but you don't get paid). The first two years are mostly spent in the classroom learning basic science. There's a big cumulative exam (kind of like the MCAT, but graded) in August, but even though the med schoolers I met are planning to study all summer, they have still thrown the best parties I've seen in Germany. Go figure.

Germans take English classes starting in the equivalent of either elementary or middle school. Near the French border (which is where I'm living) kids start taking French as early as first grade. In English class, they learn all 50 states and their capitals, which explains why one of my hosts here was aware that I lived in Massachusetts (although she thought it was in the middle of the country). Random sidenote: students take classes in religion starting very early in Germany, although the secularization of the country has led to schools offering ethics and philosophy as an alternative in primary school.

Another note on religion in the public life: all of Germany's public holidays have their roots in Catholicism, even though at this point very few Germans have any idea what these days are actually about. Yesterday, for instance, was a public holiday (I had a day off work), but the most anyone knew about it was that people march around churches in some places. It's interesting to note how different this is from America—where most of our public holidays are national in character—but I'm going to have to devote an entire post to German nationalism, so I won't get into it too much right now.

One of the oddest things that I noticed during my first week here is that a surprising number of Germans speak English with an Australian-twinged accent. Apparently Australia is a hugely popular destination for German tourists, to the point where it's nearly impossible for a German to go there without hearing someone speaking their language. Now, it's also very popular for German students to study abroad during high school (they call it Gymnasium) or to take a gap year before university, so a large number of Germans live there for a semester or a year. This results in a very bizarre accent and an inordinate number of Australian girlfriends and boyfriends.

And while we're talking about traveling, I should also mention that the German government will pay students to spend time doing volunteer work in a third-world country. One of my hosts spent three months in a Ghanaian hospital, and another worked for a year in an old-age home in India. Germany used to have a year of mandatory military service, but that kind of transformed into a year of civil service—volunteering at different places in Germany. That's been phased out, but replaced by a number of programs that encourage Germans to volunteer at home and abroad. It's a very cool program, but it's also one of the reasons that the sales tax in Germany is 20 percent.

An Extremely Brief Update

I had no idea how difficult it would be to post consistently on this blog. It's currently 5 a.m., and rather than sleeping I've decided to watch some of the Spurs-Thunder game and finally put up my blog post from my layover in Dublin. I'm too exhausted to say anything of great confidence, but suffice it to say that I've been pretty busy getting my life in order here in Germany. Once I get more settled, I'll try to put up better posts, but for now I'll just leave you with some pictures I took today in Heidelberg:

The view from Schloss Heidelberg.

The view of Schloss Heidelberg.

The view from the Philosopher's Road.

Mannheim—this is where I live!

Eight Hours in Dublin

This is not, I should warn you, a New-York-Times-travel-section-style post about how best to enjoy Dublin in a limited amount of time, unless your definition of enjoyment involves drinking a pint and a half of Guinness for breakfast and walking until your legs feel, for lack of a better word, fuzzy (I'm pretty sure these two things aren't related). But I had a pretty good time during my limited stay in Dublin, despite the fact that a) it rained the whole time, b) most of my trip revolved around me drinking alone, and c) I was operating on literally one hour of sleep. Here's a quick recap:

After leaving my guitar at the airport and meandering my way onto the Airlink bus to the city, I ended up on O'Connell Street, which is home to Dublin's most distinctive landmark: the Spire. It is, quite literally, a giant metal pole, which makes it about as useless as the Washington Monument or the Obelisk (more on the Buenos Aires connection later). 

This picture doesn't really do the Spire justice, but I like the idea of it just being a really big flagpole.

O'Connell is also home to a plethora of American fast food dining options and a continuous line of double-decker buses parading down the street. (Fun fact I overheard on the ride into town: apparently when Ireland first switched to the Euro, they got a big economic boost and invested most of it in roads and public transportation. Now they have 15 percent unemployment and a referendum is looming. The EU giveth and the EU taketh away.)

Dublin is an extremely international city. It has everything from Mexican to Japanese to Turkish to a 50's-style diner complete with red-and-white striped soda jerk uniforms.

From O'Connell I took a city bus over to the Guinness Storehouse, which is a huge, imposing brick complex in what seems like a potentially sketchy neighborhood. I was expecting a tour of the brewery itself, but instead I found myself in an over-the-top beer museum, complete with waterfall cum wishing well and a tasting room overlooking the entire city of Dublin. I learned how to pour "the perfect pint of Guinness" and even got a cheesy certificate to prove it. And I finally realized that the Guinness of Book of World Records fame is, in fact, that Guinness.

The Guinness gift shop is filled with some pretty impractical merchandise, but the ones that take the cake have to be the Guinness time Christmas tree ornament and the pink and blue Guinness boy shorts.

I ended up at the oldest pub in Dublin, The Brazen Head, which looks like a local hole in the wall until you realize that there are more Asian tourists than Irishmen there and that the walls are plastered with dollar bills and NYPD patches. They even serve Budweiser on tap, which seems like some form of sacrilege in a beer Mecca like Ireland, but whatever.

This is what Irish food looks like.

I spent the rest of my time wandering around Dublin. I got to see Trinity College (about as posh as you would expect—you can't even take a campus tour for free there), the outdoor shopping area on Grafton Street, and a quick glimpse of St. Stephen's Green before I had to head back to the airport.

Trinity: The Pomona College of the independent British Isles!

Does Trinity have grass tennis courts? You bet your ass it does!

I'm actually writing this post from within Germany, but I'll pretend that I'm not in order to give you a better first impression of Mannheim tomorrow, when I theoretically will not be loopy and sleep-deprived. We'll see how that goes.