"You can't go to the drug store now, it is 12:30." That was one of my earliest introductions to the differences between life in a small town in Germany and that in America. We have lived here in southern Germany for over a year now. Though so much is very much like life in the U. S., many things are different. Sometimes the difference is for the good while other times it is most frustrating. In the end it is much more similar than different even when you look at this seemly long list of differences.

Store hours

The above 12:30-closing still frustrates me. I am in town in the middle of the day doing something and remember that I want to get something else, a few stamps, some band-aids, a light bulb, of some other small thing. But the clock is past 12:15, the magic time for all retail stores and the post office. They close from 12:15 and stay so through 1:30 or 2:00 for lunch. But if it happens to be Wednesday or Saturday, they will not open again until the next morning. And they are never open after six pm. It's shades of the '50s in the U. S. In larger cities, stores are open more often during the lunch hour but even there, six or seven pm is closing time. As for Sunday, I have long since forgotten about buying anything beyond ice cream, coffee, or beer in small towns. I cannot. Again larger stores in larger towns are open sometimes on Sunday. But even then I need to know which ones are open before I drive 15 miles only to find them closed. This gives new meaning to Saturday morning shopping-you must get what you need for the rest of the weekend. I vaguely remember that from my childhood days in the late forties and early fifties. This still bugs me off and on. I wouldn't miss it if the changed to something more akin to the practice of my native Illinois. But of late the stores themselves have been complaining that they have little business here because the workers shop on the way home in the larger towns where they can shop in more convenient hours after they are done with work. Maybe they will come to understand and change for their own good if not for that of the customer.

The Euro

In 2001, 12 of the European Union (EU) countries began using the same paper money and coins, the Euro. The bills are the same in all countries. One side of the coins is the same for all countries and the other is different for each country. The Euro circulates freely among all member countries. It is amazing to be able to go from country to country and continue using the same money. In the past, I had to stop at the border or in the airport and change money over and over as I went from country to country. Today even in Switzerland, where they still use the Swiss Franc, they readily accept the Euro and give Euro change. The value of the Euro has been fluctuating between $1.20 and $1.28 to the Euro for the past year.

There is no quarter here. Instead there is a 20-cent piece. They don't use it as much as we use the quarter because they use the 50-cent here while we haven't had a use for it for fifty years. The other coins are 1 and 2 Euro and 1, 2, 5, and 10 cents. They use all equally. The two-cent coin makes little sense but it is used. They also use their one- and two-Euro coins all the time. America would do well to get rid of the dollar bill and use the Sac dollar and even invent a two-dollar coin. I don't end up with excess change as people in the US often worry about. I actually end up with less change in my pocket because I go to my pocket more often for the small purchases instead of taking out a dollar bill. Their smallest paper money is five Euros.

I can easily see that money here in southern Germany where we live moves throughout Europe. Though the predominant coins are German, we get a many Austrian, Italian, and French coins. And those of Belgium and Netherlands find their way to our region more often than one would expect. The coins of other countries show up now and then but much less often.

Sales Tax

Gas

Gas is so much more expensive here, even with the huge increases in the U. S. in the recent past. That has been true for a long time. When the prices were very high in the US, my brother quoted the price of $3.03 a gallon in Illinois. When converted to liters and the Euro, that comes out to 0.63 Euros a liter, less than half the 1.33 Euros a liter we were paying here in Germany at the time. That's $6.45 a gallon. But even here in Europe there are some significant differences. In Austria gas at the same time was only the equivalent $5.42 a gallon. So you can see why we drive down the less than 20 miles to Austria now and then to do some shopping, sight seeing, or coffee drinking AND to by gas. Since I first wrote this article, prices have dropped back down to $5.68 a gallon here with a corresponding drop in Austria so we can continue to go there for coffee now and then.

Roads and traffic

As for getting around in our car, the main roads are wide and well made here, generally better kept than similar ones in America. But there are many small country roads connecting so many small villages and many more people use them than similar ones in America. These small roads are quite narrow, often less than the width of two cars (also smaller here), so when meeting another car one has to drive with one wheel on a shoulder that often barely exists. The roads also follow the contour of the land so they wind like a snake and roll up and down with the hills.

Intersections on smaller roads are marked with yield signs, not stop signs. German drivers are very aggressive and often take advantage of a much narrower space than an American would. So when you see someone coming up to a side road intersection where you are supposed to have the right of way, expect him or her to go in front of you if there is any possibility for him or her doing so. When I first drove here it was hard for me to not stop at intersections where the other had the right of way. Now I am so used to rolling through at 25 or 30 mph that I might run the risk of getting a ticket when I return to the US.

One must also be careful for the other traffic sharing the road. More than cars share the road. Many tractors are on the road and a lot more people ride bicycles and walk here. I walk a lot so I must beware of the cars. With the narrower roads, cars pass a lot closer to you than they do in the States. At first that scared me more than I was ready to admit. Now it is so common that even when someone taps me with his side-view mirror, as they have, it bothers me little. But those same winding, narrow roads are fun to drive on. Our little Fiat 600 often gets a chance to show his Italian character and spirit as we swing back and forth up and down through the fields and woods of the Algau.

Autobahns

When you want to go long distances or get there fast, you drive the autobahns, the expressways. With four lanes and limited access they crisscross the country. Germany is one of the few countries in the world with no speed limit on many sections of their expressways. And where there are speed limits, many drivers ignore them. Even in Switzerland where there is a 130 kph (80 mph) speed limit, German cars regularly pass me at very high speeds. So how fast does the traffic move on the autobahn? Trucks and semis are limited to 100 kph (62 mph) and most of them move close to that speed. I drive around 120 kph (74 mph), as do about half the other cars that are moving faster than the trucks. But that other cars really rush down the road. I feel like I am standing still as they whiz past me like Formula I racers. 180 to 200 kph (112 to 125 mph) is probably slow for some of them. This would be little problem if they were out there alone. But those slow semis and us 120-kph-ers are sharing the road with them. We stay in the right lane. But we do have to pass once in a while. For an American it is hard to get used to just how fast one of these careening cars can change from being a faint spot in your rear view mirror to that whoosh that screams past you, that box of steel that could change you and your car into a mass of crumpled steel and blood and guts in an instant if you do not recognize and correctly calculate its speed. I have seen far too many cars flying past me with bright break lights and their noses to the ground in a panic slow-down to avoid someone slower who has pulled into the outer lane to pass in front of them. Sometimes I wonder whether driving through Baghdad, the Gaza Strip, or southern Lebanon would be safer than driving the German autobahns. That said, when you have to get from one end to the other of this 830-kilometer (515-mile)-long country, you can do it in one day, easily.

Like their American sisters, these autobahns have oases and gas stops along the way. Here they are more frequent here and they offer a lot more food and merchandise options. But they are just as overpriced and mediocre as those in the States.

Bicycles and walking

People of all ages walk for recreation here. Youngsters, families with young children, and many individuals and couples over sixty. Walkers spending many days on the long-distance trails are often in their forties and above and many are well beyond sixty. Some of the former seem to be on mini-pilgrimages to decide where to go and what to do next. The latter walk for the joy of walking and are retired so they can do more of it.

With all the bicycle riding and walking here there are many more walking and cycling paths in Europe than there are in the U. S. You can easily walk or cycle across the Germany (or all of Europe for that matter) in almost any direction or combination of directions you want. Many roads have a paved bicycle path along side them; some have separate pathways. With them you don't have to compete with the cars for space. And then, when the opportunity presents itself, those still-paved paths branch off into woods and countryside. The paths, paved and not, go through private property everywhere. It is no problem to walk down someone's tractor track across his field. That took me a long time to get accustomed to-I kept looking for someone to come out and question me as to why I was walking on his land. It has never happened here. It surly would happen in the U.S.

Public transportation

Busses and trains are so much more available and convenient than in the U. S. I can go almost anywhere in the country, even the smallest towns, very easily on public transportation. It is not cheap, but it is not so expensive either when you think of the cost of a car and gas here. And both the bus and train systems have many special fares like one in our area that gives you 20% off when you ride in a particular area. Or another that, for $31.75 (25 Euro), lets up to 5 people travel anywhere in this province. Other provinces have similar packages.

Part two

This second look into life in Germany brings you some minor and not so minor differences between Germany and America today in areas as diverse as church and state, work, birthday parties and bath houses, Mardi Gras and language, coffee time and wedding rings, as well as restaurants, bars, and ice cream shops.

Church and state

In America we pride ourselves on the separation of church and state. It is defined separate in the Constitution. To my wide-eyed surprise when I registered in the village hall, I was asked my religion. "Why?" I asked. "Because the state collects church taxes from your income automatically." "What?" Yes, that is the way it is. In the '30s the state used this mechanism to tell who were Jews and who were not. Today they let one say he has no religion so that they cannot keep track of a person's religion. But then, when one is not on the civil books as a Catholic, the Catholic Church does not consider him a Catholic and they will not marry or bury him-interesting twist on reality here. Pay or you cannot be a believer....

Work

When you apply for a job in Germany you have to do some things very differently from how you do them in America. First you have to include a very good quality picture of yourself. You have to tell your age, religion, and whether you are married and, if you are, how many children you have or do not have. You also have to include diplomas from schools you have attended. And you have to include work testimonials, letters from previous employers telling how you worked for them. If you do not have all these things on your original application, you'll never get an interview invitation let alone be considered for the job. Not the same place as America.

We work forever to get a four-week vacation in America. And when we change jobs often we have to start all over. Here one begins a job with a six-week vacation from the start. Nice plus.

Birthday parties

If you are expecting to have someone put on a birthday party for you or to get a surprise party here, you will wait a long time. No one gives a birthday party for you here. You give a birthday party for yourself. You set it up, invite all who attend, and pay for everything, even the accommodations, if you invite someone from another place and they have to stay over night. You also are expected to bring goodies to work like I did back in the States.

Bath houses

It may be different in other parts of the U. S., but where I lived in Illinois we had no bathhouses that I can recall. Oh, there are were public pools, but not bath houses like the ones here where you can bask in hot mineral water, where you can enjoy large pool areas where you can walk, swim, or just sit in the warm water, where you have a wide variety of pressure fountains that spray water from pipes onto you or from openings in the wall under the water against you, where you can sit with air bubbles coming up under your butt or stand with them bubbling under your feet, or lay with them under your back. And some baths add a waterfall coming down from on high to massage your back. To top this off, many baths also have steam rooms and saunas to boil the bad juices out of you. And when you have taken all you can of the heat, a cold shower or pool closes your pores instantly to say nothing for what happens to your heart.

Before we leave the baths, I must mention a very different aspect, one that which reflects the very different attitude toward the body from the tight Anglo-Saxon attitude of the America. Many baths allow patrons to enjoy their bathing nude, if not always at least on certain days of the week. It is not some immoral thing we had drummed into us by the church. Rather it is totally amoral. It is just a lot more comfortable and liberating to swim or go into a sauna with nothing on than to swim with clothes, even just bathing trunks. So if you aren't comfortable with nudism, make sure it is the correct day of the week for you before you go to the bath. But do go. It is wonderfully relaxing.

Mardi Gras

We have all heard of Mardi Gras and the big parties in New Orleans and Rio but seldom have experienced much like it in the Middle West where I come from. Mardi Gras is the last big bash before Lent-the party before the fasting-Fat Tuesday. New Orleans has nothing on Germany. Here it is called Fastnacht, the night before the fast, Ash Wednesday. But the whole thing starts long before Lent. Various activities build up to it through several weeks of the winter-a way to get one's mind off the cold and snow maybe. People run around in court jester costumes of a myriad of kinds and do generally foolish things at fests here and there for weeks before. And there are huge bond fires to drive away the winter, probably a celebration left over from pre-Christian times. It all builds up to the Monday before Ash Wednesday, not Tuesday as with Mardi Gras. On this Monday, Rosenmontag, the parties and parades are the biggest, wildest, and longest of all. We watched a parade in Cologne that lasted more than five hours. And there were parades like it all over the country. It was a wild day.

Language

Many Germans speak some English while very few Americans speak any German. In Germany one can almost always find someone around who can help an English speaking person who is having problems with German. The same would not happen for a German in the US.

In the U.S. we have a lot of immigrants from many lands. In Germany there are a lot of Turks and Italians. Both groups are in their new homes for the same reason, to make a better living than they can make in their native lands. In the U.S. we complain that the Spanish and other immigrants should learn English and then do nothing to help them. Here in Germany, the Germans also complain that immigrants should learn German. But they are doing something about it. A law says that all who want to be permanent residents must learn German. And they have a system of schools where every immigrant can take up to 600 hours of German at only one Euro an hour. It didn't teach me everything and I am in no way fluent yet. But I know a lot more than I would have known without it. Thanks.

The German and English languages share a lot and much is different between them. Some of those differences have been very frustrating. At times both German and English speakers think they have correctly translated something and yet confusion reigns. My favorite of these literal translations is something that caused my wife-to-be and I no little aggravation until we finally realized what we were saying to each other. One day she told me the car door was not shut. I said, "I know it, I am shutting it." She responded, "You don't know it, it is still open." And again, she asked, "Do you know Moscow?" "Yes, I know a lot about Moscow." "When were you there?" "Never." "Then you don't know it." It all comes down to the German word kennen, which the dictionary translates to "to know." But its "to know" meaning is only in the Biblical sense of "to know," that is, "to take part in" or "to visit" or "to have intercourse with." It has nothing to do with the additional general English meaning of "to understand," "to know about," or "to know of." For two weeks we both used the word "know" with different meanings and couldn't figure out why we were not communicating, why we were getting ourselves into wild misunderstandings.

Another example is the German tendency to use excessively and without reference the pronoun "it." They often truncate this and similar often-heard, clumsy translations: "It is cold, the living room." The problem lies with their frustrating tendency to leave off that second part in this sentence so that it comes out simply, "It is cold." If the speaker were only talking about the living room that's ok. But more often than not s/he has also been talking about the bathroom, the car, and the weather since talking about the living room. So I have to ask something like "What is cold? The car and the weather sure are warm enough." This is usually answered with something akin to, "The living room. What else am I talking about?" This happens in German too. I often hear an es ("it") with its associated noun some misty possibility of three or four different words used in the last five minutes. I don't know how they keep track of it.

Coffee break

We have heard of English Tea Time in the US and we have our own coffee breaks, but we have not heard of German coffee break too often. Every afternoon around three to four, the household takes time off for a sit-around-the-table coffee and cake. This, along with mid-morning coffee, makes for a lot of coffee and sweets. At some homes, I have felt like we sit more around the table for breaks and meals (three usually) than we spend doing other things during the day.

Wedding ring

Are you married? You wear your wedding ring on your right hand in Germany. I suppose we'll have to switch ours back to the left hand when we return to the U. S. I hope my left finger is the same size as my right.

Restaurants, bars, and ice cream shops

The German ice cream shop it a social gathering place here. During the warmer season people sit in front of the ice cream shop and wile away the afternoons and evenings talking as they eat ice cream or drink coffee, tea, or beer. Women sit with their babies in strollers while their toddlers play in nearby plastic climbing and sliding things and older children kick a soccer ball around the square. In our little town, the ice cream shops stay open till midnight most of the time. And they are open during the afternoon rest time when most other shops are closed.

Bars seldom open till late in the afternoon. But they, like the ice cream shops, are centers of public life, much more so than in the U.S. in most smaller towns. Also like the ice cream shops, in the warm months most everyone sits on tables in front of the bar in the public square. One is allowed to drink on the street in public.

Restaurants are open for lunch and evening meals and closed between them. Food caters to the German taste for potatoes and meat. If you are looking for something with a bit less oil, it is sometime a task to find it though there are Italian and Turkish restaurants that serve their foods also. One of the first German words I learned here was kartofln, potatoes. Everyone eats potatoes in so many forms...kartofln, kartofln, kartofln.

Very unlike Americans, the Germans often bring their dogs into the restaurant with them. And I have even seen a few with their cat on a leash sitting with them for lunch or dinner.

Part three

This edition's look into life in Germany today brings you some minor and not so minor differences in prices, breakfast, smoking, royalty, weather, farming, old buildings, house hunting, open borders, time, fresh air, and music and TV.

Drink prices

Beer comes in many flavors and versions, most of them very good. The common pils, similar to but stronger and tastier than American beer, costs between $2.50 and $3.00 for a 0.5 liter (16.9 oz) glass here in the south.

Breakfast bread

Public smoking

As a sidelight, Spanish smokers are even worse than German smokers. But in Italy, of all places where everyone likes their cigarettes, they have banned smoking in all bars and restaurants. What a delight! But they can smoke outside. So in that land of sun where there are a lot of tables outside, you have to make sure you are on the upwind side of any smokers.

Royalty

"What do you do?"

War

Weather

Farms

Cattle, dairy products, and grass to feed the cattle are the major products in this immediate area. Farmers grow and bail grass, not hay, here, three or four times a year from the same field.

Old

In Wangen, the next town south, we eat in a 500-year-old, modern restaurant. It was founded in 500 and has a wonderful bakery and seating around picnic tables. Come in and find a seat with fellow customers and have a beer and lieberkase, or whatever else you want.

And the weekly market has been on Wednesday in Wangen since 1390. I know that because they are trying to get a second market day on Saturday and a long discussion has brought out the history. Before that it was for 200 years on Friday. Many are loath to change a good thing by adding another day.

House hunting

Open borders

After I wrote this last paragraph, a train we were on was boarded twice by customs agents, first on the way into Switzerland from Italy and then later on the same day when we entered Austria. But this was only the first time in the three years I have been in Europe.

On a recent trip from southern to northern Germany, I drove across three quarters of the country. Along the way I identified license plates of 19 different countries, many odd ones (like Lithuania) on semi trucks. People are moving throughout Germany.

Time

At first these bells are an enjoyable addition to my day, pleasant enough. But with time, now well over a year, I have began to realize what they are doing and it gets a little annoying. The church is saying, "Another 15 minutes have passed. What have you been doing with your life? Are you being a good Christian and working hard with your life? You have 15 minutes less to live. And be sure you say your prayers now. Get busy or...." And the city bell is saying much the same with a secular bent, "What have you done the past 15 minutes? Have you used the time to do your job well? Are you being a good citizen? Get busy...." Do I really need all these reminders that time is ticking? I think not. Let me live NOW well and leave the past in the past and the future in the future.

Fresh air

The German passion for fresh air made for some interesting interchanges while walking on the Camino de Santiago in Spain a couple years ago. Most walkers stay in refugios, youth-hostel-like sleeping quarters where several people sleep in a single room with bunk beds. A German would come in the room and immediately open one or more windows. A French man or Spaniard would come in and close any open windows. The German would soon open them again and the other close them. Eventually they would come to some compromise but usually not until some words were exchanged. I knew Germans who would come into a room, find a bed next to a window that opened and promptly prop the window open with their bed to end any potential argument before it started.

In these refugios windows were always a point of irritation, even more than someone's smelly shoes. One would usually put their shoes our in the hall willingly when someone else reminded him or her they were a bit ripe. But windows were special. I remember one night on the Via de la Plata walk; we stopped in a clean but quite warm and stuffy refugio. One of us opened a window to let in some air. The hospitalero (person running the place) came up a bit later and asked who opened it. Whoever did answered up to it. The hospitalero said, "You do not open the window. I control the heat and have it on so you do not open the window. When you want to window open you talk to me and I will decide." That didn't set well at all with me and I called him "Gestapo." He shot back, "What did you say, if you do not like it you can leave." We left and found a delightful inexpensive hotel and had a wonderful evening on our own terms-and had the window open all night.

Music and TV

America has public TV and radio and we are encouraged to support them with donations. Germany also has public TV and radio but they require you to pay for it. A special department of the government collects fees for each radio and TV you have. When you do not pay, they fine you. We have no TV and they don't seem to believe it. Every few months we get a letter that asks if we have bought a TV in the last few months. And if we have then we should start paying for using it. We pay around $6.70 a month for the radios we have in the car and on a radio-CD combo.

[Look for this to be greatly expanded into a book sometime fairly soon. August, 2007.]